Bottineau Neighborhood Association Board Nominations are now open until August 20th, 2020.

Please email [email protected] to nominate yourself or a neighbor, tell us why you want to participate!

The ballot of eligible board nominees will be mailed to the neighborhood in early September.

You can also vote at the annual meeting on September 24th, 2020 on Zoom or Call in 312 626 6799 , Meeting ID 832 2634 9823.

California Street Farm, Mondays 4-7pm

The California Street Farm, the urban farm right across the street from the California Building, is doing a weekly farmstand on Monday evenings from 4 pm – 7 pm. They’re selling sustainably grown veggies, all grown right here!

The farmstand is Pay-What-You-Can because the farmers Ashley and Chris want healthy produce to be available to everyone in the community, regardless of financial means. You can stop by the stand anytime between 4 and 7, or order online in advance at this link: https://www.californiastreetfarm.com/order.html.

Thank you to everyone who participated in Bottineau Neighborhood Association’s annual Plant Giveaway Saturday, June 6th.  This yearly event was pushed out a month, in an effort to adhere to the state’s Stay at Home orders.

Plants were ordered, volunteering was organized and plans were made to present the neighborhood with herbs, vegetables and flowers of all sorts with no clear information on whether or not it would be lawful to do this type of event early in June. It turned out to be a beautiful, sunny day with a constant sound of birds chirping in the background where the neighborhood was eager to come out and support each other.  Residents were presented with seven different vegetables or herbs, twelve different flowers and two different perennials and were told they could choose any plants to take home.

BNA offered up gloves, garbage bags and other cleaning materials for the community to use during their self guided clean ups of the neighborhood and river front, since we could not continue our yearly community clean up in April this year as originally planned.  MaskMvmt.org donated masks to the residents who needed masks, so we could all practice social distancing. There were 74 households that came to show support and obtain plants, one of the largest turnouts the  Beautify Bottineau event has ever recorded! We hope everyone enjoyed the new life and found solace in the time spent cleaning up this year on your own, we look forward to seeing the fruits of your labor as we walk around this summer.

Don’t Recreate Policing With Our Community Watch

Quick tips for non-Black neighbors

The best way to protect your neighborhood is to invest in community building directly with neighbors.  Community watches often recreate the violent police state we are attempting to uproot, especially if we don’t organize thoughtfully. Here are a few tips to build community and an effective community watch. 

• Doorknock your block and introduce yourself. 

Go to every house. The goal is to be known to all of your neighbors, not just those who were invited to organize.

• Provide your contact info and your house number.

Make sure your block is well connected. If giving out your contact info to known neighbors makes you nervous, please question why you want to do community watch. If neighbors of color don’t share back, don’t be suspicious. You haven’t earned their trust. Ask if they have folks nearby to connect with and trust their answer. 

• Be present and visible as a neighbor. 

If you have a porch, a stoop, or a big street-facing window, try to be visible several times per hour. Keep your lights on. Bad actors are less likely to come into a neighborhood that is present and active. Keep eyes on houses that are unable to do this themselves.

• Disarm folks by engaging them. 

If you see someone you don’t recognize, say something simple like “Hey – you good?” Engage rather than attempting to scare, threaten, or make assumptions by reporting them. They might just be trying to get home. 

• Document what you observe, but only report when something actually happens. 

The goal of community watch is to promote safety, not to recreate police surveillance and targeting. That first step is visibility and presence. The second is sharing information. 

Only report when and what has actually happened that poses a credible threat. Try to only share information that you’ve witnessed, or name the source if it’s second-hand. Try not to create panic by making judgments of what “seems suspicious.”

• Send direct, plain language updates in one message. 

Provide only the factual information in a useful way: “Red Chevy truck, plates XXX-123, slowly headed south on Nicollet from 24th Street, 3 white men inside flashing automatic rifles. 12:31AM” That’s it. That’s the update. 

If there were no automatic rifles in that update, is it still a threat? Interrogate why or why not. 

You can access a digital version of this document and further resources at bit.ly/MplsNeighbors

Further Resources and Reading

• What to Do Instead of Calling the Police
• Don’t call the police, call your neighbors
• Strong Communities Make Police Obsolete
• Strategies for Resistance: Community Protection
• Stop, Drop, and Roll (A method to interrogate and disrupt your role in causing further harm)
• Beyond the Hashtag: How to Take Anti-Racist Action in Your Life
• For Our White Friends Desiring to Be Allies
• Beyond Separation Resource List
• Anti Racism Resources
• 75 Things White People Can Do for Racial Justice
• White people, here’s how to be a better ally and proactively anti-racist

Image designed by Micah Bazant with the Ella Baker Center in July 2013, for Night Out for Safety & Democracy, their community alternative to the police-sponsored event National Night Out.

You can access a digital version of this document and further resources at bit.ly/MplsNeighbors

Bottineau Neighborhood Association Board Meeting

Tuesday June 9th, 7pm   via Zoom

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86292404308

BNA Board Meeting

May 12th, 2020 7pm

Zoom Meeting Link

Or dial in:

1-646-558-8656

Meeting ID: 894 9451 4515