NOVASEN General Body Meeting
December
18
2025
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On North Irving Street. On Basement to the left
1305 N Jackson St, Arlington, VA 22201
text this phone number for code: 571-309-9196 or 571-579-9416
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12:30 PM
-14:30 PM EST
General Body meeting!
Meeting Minutes
In attendance: Johanna, Eleanor, Nairuti, Sahnun, Kei
Summary: We met last Thursday at Lost Dog and enjoyed pizza together using funds leftover from the VASEN dinner. Our time was a mix of informal chatting and spending quality time together and then NOVASEN business discussion at the end. We made one significant decision together, which is to cancel our regular meeting, which falls on the 1st , and instead wait until January 15th , giving everyone a break and some time to recharge. I proposed, bouncing off a suggestion from RoseAnn a few weeks ago, to take that as an opportunity to collectively reflect on – and write down! – all that we’ve done and accomplished in 2025, and start establishing hopes and goals for 2026.
Next meeting
1/15 at Clarendon Presbyterian, 5:30 pm
I propose we set aside 20-30 minutes for a 2025 “Harvest” of accomplishments, as well as 20-30 minute brainstorm for 2026. I strongly encourage folks to think ahead and come maybe even with a short written list of accomplishments over the last year and goals for 2026. Nairuti has also offered this framework we can use if we so choose:
Step one: Gather in groups of three
Step two: Tell your stories. Honestly. Without interruption.
Step three: Name what’s hurting you and the common spaces that you care about deeply. These may be the natural world, digital space, democratic institutions, public spaces or something else. Identify systems and local influencers of those systems, not just symptoms.
Step four: Plan four actions. Legal, creative, mutual, and tangible. And then hold each other accountable.
Decidim: At some point, perhaps in February, we need to set aside a whole meeting to train on the new Decidim. Kei thinks this can be done via Zoom.
Book club: We will keep reading Emergent Strategy into the new year. Folks are finding it to be really crucial and helpful for structuring our work and how we work together. Johanna is hoping to do the next meeting in person. Johanna can you confirm some of the details about the location/time you have in mind?
Housing research group: There are updates here but we’ve not had a chance to visit them in depth since the VASEN dinner.
People’s Hub training: We’re hoping VASEN as a whole will apply to this but folks in attendance thought we do not have capacity to do it on our own at this time (requires 1/week Zoom meetings for 5 months)
Building our networks: We discussed making a list of regional coops, which we can do starting from the DNOVA database, and our own networks.
We thought of going through our lists – from DNOVA Summit, VASEN Dinner, and our own networks – to come up with a list to invite to our new Decidim. We could also make that communication an update about our activities and an opportunity for individuals to re-engage.
Meeting Schedule 2026
Nairuti again raised her desire to adjust to a more advisory role in our organization given our current meeting schedule, which then raised the question of whether we can occasionally meet elsewhere in NOVA – closer to Fairfax, for example – while meeting the needs of folks who don’t have cars. It seems like we can and should adjust our meeting schedule and format to our goals for the year. We floated the possibility of meeting in person once a month, while meeting once a month via Zoom. So the same schedule but alternating between in person and Zoom. We also floated the possibility of meeting on a weekend.
Recent Resources and Items of Interest
https://www.demos.org/research/challenging-dominance-big-tech-us-not-amazon-arlington-va
https://jacobin.com/2025/12/mamdani-popular-assemblies-democratic-socialism/
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