Aurora meeting of 7th December 2005
The meeting included members of CAGS and Croydon LGBT Forum, but the numbers were very small. We discussed the need to attract more members and especially members of other ethnic and religious groups. We are making efforts at personal contact with many LGBT minorities, and a gay Muslim had been contacted who may be interested in joining Aurora.
Minutes
A community member of Aurora is now taking minutes with support from CAGS.
Community Safety Unit Report
There were three “homophobic” crimes reported, two against the same victim. These two included the use of graffiti including the name “Keerir” in September followed by a firework incident in November. The victim would not have reported the first had the second not occurred. We noted that people are much more inclined to report gay hate crimes if they have had a positive experience with the Police first. There had been other firework incidents in the same street, so this one might not be a hate crime.
The other incident involved a drunken man whose injuries were more consistent with a fall than an attack.
An incident involving two transsexual women at Tesco was raised. The police officers present were unaware of the case and the administrator agreed to e-mail the details to the chair who promised to look into the matter. Another transwoman who could not be present had sent in a question asking what transpeople can legitimately do to protect themselves if they can’t carry weapons. Two members were delegated to work on this issue and report back to the next meeting.
Gay-to-Z letter
Gay-to-Z website, run by the Gay Business Association publishes material on cruising grounds. The information on Croydon is very out-of-date and suggests that one of the more dangerous areas is the safest. It also presents an image of gay men that is unrepresentative, extremely tacky, and would contribute to the attitudes that encourage hate crime. A draft of a proposed letter to the webmaster was produced and, rather than sending it directly, it was agreed it would be better to seek to discuss the issue with the webmaster first.
Anti-bullying initiatives in schools
A lot of concern had been expressed that Stonewall, the gay campaigning group, was producing a short video on bullying in schools. Stonewall does not have the extensive experience of many other organizations in this field, neither does it have the support of other organizations that it claims. It is feared that this well-publicised initiative would damage the long-term and well developed work done by others, particularly in Croydon.
The Greater London Authority is promoting the video, and our initial enquiry suggests that it is for use only with adults (school governors, teachers and others). The meeting agreed that we are not concerned if this is the case and we have asked for clarification.
Promotion Working Party Report
i) Pamphlet to advertise Aurora
The WP distributed leaflets to give an idea how the proposed pamphlet to advertise Aurora might look. It was suggested that diverse, welcoming faces might be added to convey that we want to welcome diverse lgbt people. This raised concerns about copyright and gaining the consent of the people concerned. A member was delegated to investigate this with the Pink Paper and possibly other image libraries. It was suggested that we might use outlines of the faces, but this would not suggest the approachable, welcoming range of people that we want Aurora to be. The issue was referred back to the WP.
We agreed that the crime reporting information on panels 2 and 3 of the leaflet should be replaced by colloquial version of the agreed Aims and Objectives. This is because we are not really involved in crime reporting.
We also noted that the effectiveness of the project depends far more on where the leaflets should be distributed than on the size of the print run.
ii) Visibility magazine
The community administrator drew the meeting's attention to the quarterly magazine Visible, the profits of which will go towards financing LGBT History Month. She had spoken to the editor who said that he was looking for proposals focusing on the historical aspects and this would include the development of Aurora. Simon offered to draft an article from the Police point of view. We agreed that we should prepare a bank of such articles for any local press opportunities that might arise as they are a good source of free publicity.
Anonymous Internet Reporting
Simon reminded us that both report-it.org and Crimestoppers already exist for anonymous crime reporting, but concern was raised that members of the lgbt community might not perceive them to be independent of the police. A local alternative system had been suggested that would bridge the gap between lgbt people who had serious misgivings about the police and were not reporting for this reason. The local alternative could bridge this gap, but it had not so far found favour with Aurora.
Aurora E-newsletter
This had been proposed but is still not implemented.
Transgender Working Party
Simon reported that he would arrange a meeting between Dee Caryl of DCC4 and himself, two members of the Transgender Working Party would discuss DCC4's problems with the “Which Loo?” document.
Procedures Working Party
We noted that we had spent, and wasted, far too long on this document. It was no longer a binding ‘constitution’ and the WP produced a simpler draft document with the fine detail relegated to a separate document called “Standing Orders”. We agreed the uncontroversial items, with a few amendments sent back to the WP.
We turned to the four sections concerning officers. The relationship of the Police to Aurora in chairing and administration was the sticking point. The WP proposed four increasingly less bureaucratic options. Simon said that the Police did not generally tie themselves in to the administration of similar community groups. It was proposed that a final solution to this should be proposed in the document presented next meeting.
Police event at Empress State Buildings
Simon reported that as part of LGBT History Month the police will be holding a display at Empress State Buildings. It was decided that Aurora was not yet prepared to take part in the display, but individual members would visit the display with a view to Aurora taking part in 2007.
IDAHO, the International Day Against Homophobia
We agreed to commemorate IDAHO, as it would publicise Aurora’s aims. To this end we proposed a meeting in May to coincide with May 17th. Also, December and August are difficult months to hold meetings so that this is a good time to change to meeting in odd, rather than even, months. It was agreed that the next meeting be would on the 9th February and the following meeting was provisionally agreed for the 29th March so the next meeting could be May.
Longer items were not raised as we were out of time.
The meeting closed at 21.09.