The Intro portion of the meeting included introductions, role assignments, and a review of the previous week’s material, similar to the previous week. The remainder of the time was spent nailing down consensus on the specifics of the agenda.
Ben and Jed began with a 20 min tag team presentation on the evolution of corporate rights and personhood. Because of time constraints, their presentation was mostly limited to the 19th century and earlier. In order to finish their presentation and bring us up to the present, a 15 min part two by Jed was agreed to for next week. For a summary, click here.
Eric presented next on the status of the OWS national convention. The current plan is for a convention in Philadelphia modeled at least in spirit on the original Constitutional convention with two elected delegates from each Congressional district. Presently there is no approved list of demands or goals. The list put forth by the working group of the 99% Declaration was apparently a renegade effort that was never approved by OWSNC GA and has been disavowed by them. Sharon, who just returned from a “Direct Democracy” training session with the facilitators group of OWSNC gave some clarifying details on the workings of their GA. There are currently 79 working groups. A Spokes Council for the groups has been formed to transmit ideas and recommendations to the GA. There is no consensus on goals. But statements issued by the various working groups have been posted and can be read at NYCGA.net.
In conjunction with Eric’s presentation, Gary spoke eloquently on the original “Declaration of the Occupation of New York City”. As the founding document of the movement it is a visceral declaration of grievance and purpose over the loss of the basic rights and freedoms that we the people have suffered at the hands of our corporate state. He recited some of the more inspiring passages. There was an intense discussion how best to reflect and utilize the spirit and letter of this document, particularly in regards to the formation of our own local goals. For starters, it was consensed that we should all read the document for next week.
Somewhere in the course of discussion precipitated by these presentations, a formal proposal was made and adopted for a recommendation by the education group to be made to the OWSNC GA, to encourage folks to attend, without a specific endorsement, an information/action event on Weds the 9th, hosted by Public Citizen and Move to Amend.org on abolishing corporate personhood and overturning the Citizens United decision.
After a lengthy one minute break Gary and James presented their work on the OCCUPY 101 core curriculum.
James produced a finely tuned, handout outline of 10-20 headings and sub headings for each of the main topic areas agreed upon the previous week. His only substantive change was to breakout Social and Economics into two separate topic areas. Gary spoke again on applying the heuristic formula of the “descriptive”, the “diagnostic” and the “prescriptive”- where we are, how we got here and where we want to go- to the curriculum. He also spoke of aligning our educational goals with the need to find simple, compelling words to educate and inspire the honkers, so that they take the next step and get out of their cars and pick up a sign.
There were two main threads of conversation around the curriculum. One was about the content and how to include larger concepts of community and spirituality in the curriculum. The other was about various formats for learning such as continuing with the current presentation format, large group discussions as opposed to breaking into smaller groups and bringing summations for discussion to the larger group, and how the information produced by this group gets circulated to a wider audience in an inclusive fashion.
James produced a finely tuned, handout outline of 10-20 headings and sub headings for each of the main topic areas agreed upon the previous week. His only substantive change was to breakout Social and Economics into two separate topic areas. Gary spoke again on applying the heuristic formula of the “descriptive”, the “diagnostic” and the “prescriptive”- where we are, how we got here and where we want to go- to the curriculum. He also spoke of aligning our educational goals with the need to find simple, compelling words to educate and inspire the honkers, so that they take the next step and get out of their cars and pick up a sign.
There were two main threads of conversation around the curriculum. One was about the content and how to include larger concepts of community and spirituality in the curriculum. The other was about various formats for learning such as continuing with the current presentation format, large group discussions as opposed to breaking into smaller groups and bringing summations for discussion to the larger group, and how the information produced by this group gets circulated to a wider audience in an inclusive fashion.
The concerns voiced in these conversations flowed into the discussion surrounding next week’s agenda.
There was a consensus, as a general guideline, that in the future we would have fewer presentation topics per meeting leaving more time for discussion. After considerable back and forth, the general outline for next week’s agenda was agreed to as follows: Intro, 15 min for the second part of Jed’s presentation, 25 min. small group focus and discussion on the NYC GA statement- group size to be determined, followed by a 25 min. large group discussion on the same topic. There was specific agreement that the concepts of community and spirituality would be considered in the small groups discussion. After a (?) min. team building break for “light and livelies”, there will be a 40 min focus and discussion on the formulation of goals in light of the NYC GA statement. This will be followed by the X number of minutes it takes to consense over the next agenda.
There was a consensus, as a general guideline, that in the future we would have fewer presentation topics per meeting leaving more time for discussion. After considerable back and forth, the general outline for next week’s agenda was agreed to as follows: Intro, 15 min for the second part of Jed’s presentation, 25 min. small group focus and discussion on the NYC GA statement- group size to be determined, followed by a 25 min. large group discussion on the same topic. There was specific agreement that the concepts of community and spirituality would be considered in the small groups discussion. After a (?) min. team building break for “light and livelies”, there will be a 40 min focus and discussion on the formulation of goals in light of the NYC GA statement. This will be followed by the X number of minutes it takes to consense over the next agenda.
I think it is fair to say that there seemed to be two complimentary undercurrents that were animating the more intense parts of this week’s meeting. One was reflected by Sharon’s passionate statement that our goals- our local goals and the goals of the national movement- are still not big enough to properly encompass and represent what we are really about. I took that to mean that we are still at the stage of struggling to understand and come to terms with the enormity of what we are proposing to do. That maybe, in fact, this movement is both creating and cresting a change so fundamental to the current order it amounts to a revolution, albeit rooted in the Constitution, but a revolution nonetheless, of, by and for the people. If that’s the case, we already know that we want it to be; a leaderless, grass roots, nonviolent, democratic revolution. Those, however, are all adjectives. What are the nouns that are going to say what this revolution is? I think that’s where the other undercurrent of this meeting was coming from; the concerns over fundamental nouns like community and spirituality and how they are going to fit into and drive whatever enormous thing it is that we are doing.
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