Sometimes a riot is a beautiful thing!

Have seen several posts on Facebook contrasting white dudes rioting over pumpkins and sports victories, with stores and cars set fire in Ferguson. Who are the real rioters, they ask? I was thinking about this on the bus the other day... how what they share, may be more significant than how they differ.

On the one side, there's destruction as celebration--a spontaneous eruption from joy to mayhem. On the other side, attacks on property out of justifiable rage, or at least--rage with more than enough provocation to make it understandable. But isn't that all too neat? What kind of celebration is this--destruction of public property--of shared assets in the community (buses, automobiles, breaking into stores)--isn't this as much an expression of rage as the other? A rage let loose in people by the celebration? And if so, is there not something similar in their rage to what we saw in Ferguson--a release of pent up anger?  I mean--anger that explodes out of the oppression of living in this consumer culture, of being valued not as human individuals, but only for one's exchange value--as wage slaves, as consumers pressured to want and need always more than they are able to realize?

On the other side--isn't there joy as well as rage at the burning of a cop car? And breaking and smashing things, the tangible symbols of a culture where nothing has value of and in itself, but only as means of exchange?

Maybe--however little aware (at least the whites, in their Dionysian celebrations), are of what is driving them, there is on both sides a common passionate hunger to destroy the material symbols of a culture that oppresses everyone--however unequally distributed the raw violence of that oppression--that there is a shared hunger for genuine freedom, for another kind of world?

This is why I see appeals for 'calm' and 'reason,' are but a disguised way of taking the side of power, of the status quo. And the worst--those who think of themselves as radicals, scolding those who 'lose control' --that is, who refuse to accept the top-down discipline of the tacticians and strategists who claim to 'know better.'

Let there be room for joyful destruction. For both sides. May it come together in a great celebratory conflagration to make room for a new world.

Insane Idealism of Obama

If your model of the role of the Chief Executive, and that upon which you craft both policy and strategy, is that of the ultimate mediator, such that advocacy is reserved for what remains when possibilities for negotiation have been exhausted, with the assumption that what has survived the grinder of compromise is, at this stage, the last and final responsibility of the President to explain, defend and push through to completion, the origin of policy will always be in the hands of others, whether from the legislative branch, or from agencies within the Executive branch itself (military, justice, surveillance), and of even greater consequence, will depend entirely on those who have been accepted as legitimate partners in this elite, extraordinarily limited dialog.

There is clearly no place for assuming even a rhetorical place for something like The American People, not even for Richard Nixon’s semi-mythical “Silent Majority. This is the reading I keep coming back to for Obama. A powerful, almost delusional idealism that sees the compromises he works to mediate, as representing, maybe the best and only possible representation of the national interests of the people, such that, he’s stopped cold at any critical examination of what this in fact comes down to.

I think this is a kind of insanity.

I don’t know how else to explain his opacity to the larger political reality; even a self-defined political pragmatist like Nixon saw the necessity of invoking the pretense of representing more than the interests of power that surged around him, but also, even if it was mostly rhetorical, like Presidents before him, cast himself as the one figure in government who was also the people’s ombudsmen and advocate. I see nothing of that in Obama… not a sign. There is something strangely out of place in how he operates—a neglect, if not a repudiation of what was once a central pillar of Presidential image and power.

I don’t imagine he thinks of it like this, but it’s as though he’s recognized this for what it largely was, part of the spectacle, a myth that it’s possible to dispense with—if you are a serious realist, which is how Obama seems to see and describe himself—a realism that disguises that essential, pathological idealism: his belief that working out compromises between the elite will ultimately work out for the best of all possible worlds.

Philadephia Federation of Teachers: Coalition building meeting

Here’s some impressions from the PFT meeting this afternoon (May 2, 2012). I take notes at meetings the way I take notes for poems… random disassociated impressions intended for stimulating even more disjunctive associations at some later date—not for putting together a coherent representation of whatever might have inspired them. Be forewarned.

It was a good meeting. Any time Helen Gym stands up to speak her mind, it’s gonna be a good meeting. She was awesome yesterday at the hearing before the school board. She’s done her homework, put the Knudson proposal to the test and finds it an empty shell.

Only one of several impressive voices.

Simplified synthesis from multiple sources: Managers/Administrators mediate between money and people who do the work: teachers, principles, all those who make education happen. When managers hold the power, Money always wins, money determines, money makes the rules, sets the agenda, ceases to be a means to serve education, but comes to define what education is, and is for… namely… in the end, it all comes down to one thing: to make more money.

That’s what Knudson’s privatization, farming out to corporations… comes down to. Teachers have little say in how educational programs are designed. This has to change. Return education to the educators and communities. There are many problems that have to be addressed in securing financial support. Blue Cross, University of Pennsylvania… pay NO property taxes. The whole tax structure in the city needs to change… but First Order of Business must be to STOP the Knudson plan. There is no room for negotiation or modification—it MUST be stopped. General agreement on this, and first deadline is May 31—vote will be June 1. So we are under severe time pressure.

How is this to be done?

Build Show Sustain

Build coalition. Movement building. Organize to achieve goals… committees, divide tasks

Show: Education! Parents and teachers need to learn what we are facing, get out information. The public needs to learn the facts. Teach-ins. Press conferences. Target questions to expose weakness and distortions in the Knudson plan. Go public big time!

Sustain: This is about creating a vision for the future, long term goals and planning. People wanted (& there was STRONG support) DIRECT ACTION, Occupy Philly has a role to play here fer sure. We can be a valuable member of this coalition effort—if we keep in mind that there are many teachers, present and retired, community organizers—some awesome people (remember, they defeated the Edison plan ten years ago!), and we need to take our commitment to horizontal democracy seriously and not think we always have to be the ones leading the march. (Thank you Caroline for bringing this up at a May Day planning meeting—about how Occupy shoved ahead of people who should have had more say in the feeding ban hearing, alienating people we should have on our side). But there’s a load of ways Occupy Philly can be good partners here.

Some targets are more immediately vulnerable—or likely to respond. Every City Council person—who know that when the schools to be close are named (they have refused to do this so far), parents and community people will be pounding on their door.

Every school, a man named Ralph pointed out, is a little economic engine in its neighborhood. Any closing has an immediate and powerful effect in the local community. Council peeps should be called and meetings set up starting ASAP. And the Mayor… because of how he’s backed this—is vulnerable to its potential success or failure. Unions need to be mobilized. Important coming dates: May 15, Corbett will be in Philly at Chamber of Commerce meeting!

May 31, SRC vote.

A side note. Someone stood up at a recent meeting at the AME Bethel church—“We need to Occupy 440!” he or she said… and everyone stood up and applauded. Think about this… when we’re asked about what difference Occupy has made. This is the kind of difference you can’t see or measure. It was just the word “Occupy”… that’s not coming from any working group, or General Assembly—or participants of Occupy this or that… it’s a word that has grown powerful, charged with of yet to be defined actions and implications—how loaded and powerful it has become… that’s the power of a Movement, not any one institution or Cause or lobbying group has that kind of power… to spring up in new forms, spontaneously, spreading where no one would have expected it.

A new world is possible!

Solidarity!

Non-Violence: Forum Discussion on OccupyPhilly Web Page

Forum discussion opened on Non-Violence: Occupy Web Page, Free University of Philadelphia Forum

My first commitment is to communal anarchism--non-hierarchical direct democracy: "Nothing about us without us!" For me, this entails a secondary commitment to non-violence, which is both strategic and consequential. Violent action fails on both counts. Active, aggressive, and transgressive Non-violence—not “Pacificsm!’

Individual, spontaneous violence fails strategically. It does not, and cannot effectively threaten or change existing power structures. It produces no effective message that might expand revolutionary action beyond small fringe groups, easily contained and crushed. It represents most of all--a suicidal inversion of anger. It’s only real message: “We are so angry we want you to destroy us, and we will make it as easy as possible for you to do so!”

With organization, discipline and leadership, violence can be effective.

But the very vertical power structures which enable its success outlast its efficacy and purpose and installs in turn, new regimes of oppressive power.

Communal power does not reside in or depend on, and cannot be created by violence… or in Simone Weil’s terms: Force – which turns a human person into a Thing, at worst… a corpse… and becomes itself Master of those who falsely believe they can control it. (Simone Weil: The Iliad: a Poem of Force) .

The regimes of power we would change are regimes of Force. Freedom in any meaningful sense, is freedom from the arbitrary compulsion of Force, freedom to work out our lives and decide together without surrogate gods, leaders or so-called ‘representatives’ deciding for us, telling us what we need and what we desire. I see no way to win that freedom by robbing us of its very essence—by the self-slavery to yet another set of Masters in yet another Empire of blood and theft.

The Martin Luther King Obama has forgotten

The Revolutionary Martin Luther King

A Pathology of Our Culture

Why do we have so much difficulty discussing questions of value?

That we have yet to come up with a clear code of conduct for meetings? That we can easily entertain ideas about digital discussions and voting, but have no way to examine what it is we desire from this--not what we want to happen or do--as some form of mechanical problem solving, but what we want to happen to us, what we desire from one another in being together, in how and what we want to become?

This is a pathology we've contracted from living in this empire of money & death, our severely damaged capacity for imaginative empathy. It reveals itself in every GA--where at least it's visible, if painful to see (like licking a supporting open wound)--even more evident in FB, in comments to posts and articles, but there likely to be misread as individual bad behavior, not as the universally shared pathology it is.

I was asked, what do you mean by values?

What we really want, and why. Justice is not an abstract idea--it is a desire experienced in the gut. Where does that come from--in you? In me? Talking about values means including--becoming aware of and sharing the individual experiential roots of our ideas about what we are doing and what we want and why.

"We are creatures of desire not of need."  Gaston Bachelard

Society of the Spectacle Guy Debord

Desire Democracy Imagination

I post this out of context--as one post in a discussion on on-line voting and decision making. This is the heart of why I think this is a profoundly wrong way to build a democratic life together.

Decisions that involve our mutual desires are built on, depend on-- our capacity for imaginative empathy--and nothing has been more degraded by our current alienating economic/social/power structure.

Healing cannot happen apart from the challenge of working within diverse, physical assemblies--discovering once again what and who we are, else we cannot know what we desire.

Bob, of course sex is important--and nothing is easier to see, than how this is so. If it's not, that's maybe cause we are so used to 'gender' as a euphemism--and misleading one at that.

When a woman speaks, she speaks not as a generic cipher but out of her social and biological experience as a woman, and is heard as such by men, and by other women. So too, men, queer, trans.... This is sex, is it not?

Let me repeat--decisions that involve our mutual desires are built on, depend on our capacity for imaginative empathy. This is not a technical problem. It cannot be solved by any sort of technological fix. Only out of a profound alienation from our animal lives, from our biologically rooted social imagination, is it even possible to think of building democracy apart from face to face deliberation.
I

Occupy Thought! proposal for an Occupy Critical Journal

I would like to see a journal--on-line, multi-lingual, but important to have cheap & easily reproduced and distributed print version (physical copy can be taken & read independent of electric digital wireless infrastructure access)--maybe networks of POD capable sites to reproduce on-line issues (see “Long Term Proposal for (Post encampment) Revolutionary Action”

Occupy Thought!

... on critical theory philosophy political analysis... moving beyond street chants and clever sign sloganeering--though all these would themselves make good subjects for analytical essays--even necessary -- to keep theory engaged with action & action informed by critical thinking.

Multi-disciplinary. Drawing on whatever background writers bring to the effort, but, like Occupation process--thinking form the ground up, working to construct thought from experienced reality, building on what is new and contingent with emerging situations--not forcing the movement into existing ideological boxes; eclectic over orthodoxies. LIke the Occupation camps--embodied, physical, materialist & action oriented rather than idealist and abstract.

City of New York, destroyer of libraries: a conversation interrupted

Librarians speak at a table covered with the few books salvaged from the 5,000 volume OWS People's Library--trashed by the City of New York.

Heartbreaking. Many of these books were signed--with notes by authors. If there is a more powerful argument to carry on with this struggle where ever it may take us I don't know what it would be.

This is not the End of Occupy Philly...

I’ve heard a lot of discontent about how Occupation conversations, meetings & assemblies are consumed with what some call minutia, the details of working out process, housekeeping, defending our camp from our anxious uncertainty about what the city has in store for us—uncertainty, I might add, which is tactically generated by the city to divide and distract us. We would be better, some tell us, to get on with the business of confronting the problems that brought us here: economic inequality, the corruption of the electoral system, demonization of immigrant minorities, persistent & systemic racism and homophobia. It’s a long list. I’d like to address these points, and end with a word about where we might go from here.

By coming together as an encampment, some holding down our Occupation by living here in front of City Hall, many more spending as much time on site as their jobs allow & working every hour they can spare to the movement, we find ourselves involved in an experiment essentially different from protests & actions we may have experienced in the past—an experiment in living, where every decision effects our lives together with an immediacy quite unlike signing MoveOn petitions, holding signs for few hours, or chanting slogans on a march—even when those actions might involve civil disobedience and arrests. It’s the difference of knowing it will be over in a few hours or days and we’ll be going home again soon enough, to wake in the morning with the same sense of anger, frustration and alienation—knowing that nothing has really changed. Here—even for those not sleeping in tents, it becomes more home than home, more real than the strange alien world we have to return to—of cubicles and commuter drives, of surreal TV ads, sound-bite news, celebrity gossip & sports--every window of every store you pass shouting at you BUY THIS BUY THIS BUY THIS! even as you wonder how you will make it to the end of another month without going deeper in debt.

It’s easy to miss what’s closest to us. Like how revolutionary this is—what we’re doing here—in the very minutia that feels like distraction from our real purpose, from the truly important stuff—as though dealing one on one with our own entrenched habits, the mistrusts and stereotypes drilled into us to keep us divided and servile—weaning ourselves from our belief in ‘leaders,’ as though confronting how racism, our awakening from these things--blindness to the structural exclusion of the disabled, from the unexamined assumptions that drive male domination, finding that the way we make decisions is not indifferent in its effects, but perpetuates the very things we would change—so we have to learn how to it in another way, how to work together in a way that changes us at the same time we seek to change others out there in the world we’ve temporarily almost (but not quite) left behind—there is nothing trivial in any of this! This is the work—the indispensible foundation building necessary if we are to go on and tackle the doyans of entrenched power.

No, we haven’t come up with a clear and definitive list of demands. We haven’t found solutions to the complex interrelated networks of problems that plague us. We haven’t ended war or poverty or figured out a lasting way to care for those here with us—without housing, proper medical care, social services, who lack support for addiction emotional & mental disabilities. But we are here with them—as no one else has done, where the invisible dehumanizing walls have eroded--are impossible to maintain, experiencing for many of us—for the first time—the reality of a shared world where all such divisions are artificial—and it’s not been easy. We’re learning to to acknowledge that those we called in the beginning, ‘the homeless,’ as though living without a roof were an identity, and not a situation, an unfortunate condition, are our fellow Occupiers, our brothers and sisters in the same all encompassing human movement.

Add to that the skills we’ve only begun to learn—conflict resolution, cop watching, de-escalation, non-violence training—and the never finished work of making a truly democratic decision making process. Never mind that some find that too much, too different from the way things work ‘out there,’ who just don’t get it. Not everyone will progress at the same rate, and we have to recognize that resistance to being pulled backwards may generate divisions—sadly necessary if we are to continue to move forward. There is a difference between slowing down to help someone catch up, and allowing our movement to be destroyed by fearful collaborationists, who may be cajoled into believing that it’s possible to negotiate with Power to give up its privileges, or will do so once they see the reason and fairness of our cause.

From a nearsighted view, we see all the petty squabbles, personal conflicts, factional clashes—like pressing our faces up to a magnifying mirror and staring at all the dirty pores on our noses—but back away, stand in the sunlight, and look at one another—and we will see the beauty of a new face, of a hundred new faces, of a thousand… 7 billion strong in the making.

This is a beginning. Even as the time comes, as it will, when they destroy our tent city, carry many of us away in resistance, this is a beginning, not an end. We can take the lessons we’ve learned, a new way of seeing the world, a better understanding of ourselves and move past this phase. Let them destroy the encampments—they are but a husk, a chrysalis of the winged rainbow colored angels of revolution even now beginning to take flight.

There are collectives we will need to create, organizations to be built with our new-found skills.
In destroying our camps they will be breaking open wasps nests. The problems that brought us together will still be there, and we will be here finding new ways to network and challenge and to build, wave after wave of this tsunami, a movement that will sweep away and transform the world.

It's time to begin looking beyond the encampment phase of the revolution. They've served their purpose. Let the serious organizing begin.

When the Father Figure Frowns...

The 99% mantra works as an invitation to the Big Tent, but as a facade of unity it is dangerously misleading.

There are many of the 99%, not just the police, who will fight us, who will try to destroy us, many who simply don't understand how to transition from a hierarchical culture, who use intimidation to grasp for attention & power and work to undermine and betray the movement... sometimes with the best intentions. Others who are too intimidated by the prospect of disapprobation by authority figures whose smiles and vague promises make them forget whose interests they serve, forget that no matter how 'nice' a mayor or police chief might be, they are inexorably bound up in an essentially undemocratic power structure that exists primarily for the benefit of the few at the expense of the many.

Lets not be overly distressed that when Authority begins to frown, many will scuttle to what they believe to be safety, many will turn their backs on us, others will seek to push us toward a defensive authoritarian response to the perceived threat.

What we have done is already part of history and they cannot destroy what has begun here--not from above, not from within.

Mayor Nutter said in his news conference that Occupy Philly had changed. That the "leaders" had changed. What he meant was, there is no select few who stand apart from the people and pretend to speak for us in our stead, who can be manipulated, cajoled, used for their own ends.

Lets not be fooled. His complaint acknowledges that we're making a difference. That's why they will eventually try to destroy us--no matter where we move.

Northeast Regional Occupation Conference

Philly_OccupyTogether WG is planing & helping to organize local & regional Occupation conferences to workshop and discuss implications, strategy & logistics of expanding Occupations beyond the local level. Here is the webpage & email for POT (woot! ) Please check this out and come be a part of a growing movement.
BREAKING NEWS! Come to Philly & meet with OWS on the NYC to D.C. march, 11/13-14.

         OCCUPYNORTHEAST

EMAIL

Occupation Philly: Glossary & Working Groups

Not alphabetical. Working Groups as self-described & posted at City Hall
10/26/11

Not in alphabetical order

Working Group (WG
Another name for a committee. Autonoumously generated. Anyone can start one. Represents only itself.

General Assembly (GA)
Discussion & decision making body of the whole. Decisions made by G.A. represent Occupy Philadelphia

Bottom Liner
Those in a GA, through regular participation & availability, able to serve as Principle Contacts

Coordinating Committee (CoCo)
Vets & sends proposals to Facilitation, which puts them on agenda for GA & discussion. OPEN TO ALL. Voting limited to those representing WG.

Facilitation
Stage manages agenda for GA. Experienced facilitators available to help guide meetings in WG’s and elsewhere if needed.

Process
The guidelines agreed to manage decision making. Not fixed. Open to revision & change by the GA.

Current Process for decision making (10/27/11).

1) Facilitator asks for QUALIFYING QUESTIONS  (what is this about? What does it entail?) STACK is taken for those who want to speak

2) Facilitator asks for CONCERNS. STACK is taken for those who want to speak

3)FRIENDLY AMENDMENTS. Suggested changes subordinate to Proposal itself. STACK is taken4)Non-Binding STRAW POLL by show of hands, first of FRIENDLY AMENDMENTS,  then of PROPOSAL 5)Binding vote. Super majority (currently defined as 2/3^rd) required for approval or rejection,

6) If there is no clear majority for either FRIENDLY AMENDMENT or PROPOSAL,  discussion may be continued with additional CLARIFYING QUESTIONS, & CONCERNS, and/or BREAK OUT into small groups for discussion.

7) Begin again with Concerns...

Proposal Item brought to GA (or WG) for general approval or rejection

Qualifying Question    See PROCESS

Concerns See PROCESS

Straw Poll                  See PROCESS

Super Majority           See PROCESS

Hand Signals              Gestures to speed decision making and discussions and take pulse

                                                of group.  Currently in use with Occupy Philadelphia:                                                 ‘applause/approval: hands-up, wiggle fingers. Disapprove: point                                                  fingers down, wiggle. Speak louder! Point upward. Move it along,                                                  you’ve made your point, rolling motion with hands in opposite                                                  directions.

People’s MIC             When amplification not used,  speaker uses short phrases (4 words                                            are optimum) & whole group repeats to create human                                            amplification

Stack                           Facilitation role. Takes names of those who want to speak

Progressive Stack         Favor those who have not spoken, women, people of color—                                                                       anyone who might otherwise be marginalized by domination by a few

---------------

Working Groups (Committees)

Direct Actions                                     Coordinates Marches and Rallies

Food                                                    Accepts Food donations/ prepares meals

Comfort                                              Accepts & distributes tents, blankets, clothes…

Medical                                               Provides basic medical support

Donations & Resources                      Accepts & distributes donations & resources

TECH                                                  I.T. support

Facilitation                                          Organizes GA/ provides facilitation service. Meets daily at                                                              6 PM. Open to all

Environmental                                     Present focus—Stop Fracking/ Tar Sand/ Mt Top Removal

Homeless Outreach                             Support citizens without homes

Outreach & Solidarity                         Works with different WGs – intra Occupy Philly

Media                                                  Press dept (seeking camera personalities)

Information                                         Provides schedule of events & general information

Communication                                   Improves inter WG communications & public relations

Legal                                                   Legal support

Arts                                                     Crafts signs –Occupatioin Art/Poetry

Education & Training                        

Coordinating Committee (CoCo)       Receives reports from WGs & selects proposals for GA.                                                                   ALL WELCOME. Meets daily, 5 PM

Festival, Events

Religious-Spirituality

Safer Spaces                                        Develop community norms so we all feel safe

Friends Center                                    Coordinates Oph with FC

Occupy Housing                                 Harvey’s Homeless Tour

Sharing Our Community                     Translating real democracy to our government

Move Your Money                             Promotes moving money from banks to Credit Unions

Music Collective

Philly Occupy Together                      Cross-Occupational/Regional/National/International                                                                         expansion of Occupation movement

Journalism

Messaging                                           Surveys, develops talking points

Violence/ non-Violence

Violence begets hierarchy (the biggest thug wins).
Organized violence REQUIRES hierarchy. (The War Lord becomes King)
Violence and democracy cannot long endure together.

Letter to a Frustrated Occupier

What's our mission here? What is this all about? Why aren't there clear statements telling what we're doing? Why is everything all bogged down in "process?" And what is this about, anyway--this "process" stuff!?!

The 'mission' is what we decide it is...not a script handed down from above or written ahead of time that we then dutifully follow. That's what all this bothersome 'process' is about... an orderly way to arrive at general consensus. First in a working group (or 2 or 3)... where you--and anyone else, can contribute ideas.

Then if you have something you believe the whole Occupation should endorse or do, come up with a proposal.

Then bring that to the Coordinating Committee (which is just reps from other Working Groups who want to attend--not a fixed member thingee)... there, vet the idea and be sure there's someone who understands it well enough to decribe and explain it at the G.A., & when there is... it's sent to Facilitation (who meet back to back with CoCo, & who put it on the agenda and get a team together to facilitate the G.A.)

Everything about the process can fit on two pages (compare that with Roberts Rules of Order ! & every single point of process has gone through the G.A., beginning with the 1000 who decided to Occupy City Hall on Oct. 4... & every single point can be reviewed and changed by the G.A.

Opponents of democracy like to say that letting peeps decide is 'mobacracy'.. that have to have bosses and leaders to tell peeps to keep in line and what to do. Gotta have some kinda order to get stuff done, to not turn into a mob, to keep headstrong lone-rangers from hi-jacking the process. I'm old enough to remember when the Weathermen hi-jacked SDS & SNIC... and people died because of that when they set off bombs...this is a serious undertaking... don't underestimate the ways it can go wrong. Respect for the process WE have chosen together is respect for one another, and respect for democracy.

We need your voice, your ideas, your passion! Help us prove the Patriarchy wrong! Let's make democracy work!

Let's ackowledge our own vulnurability...

This is an email I sent to the Facilitation List. It pertains to the whole community. We have a commitment to transparency & I see no reason to hide our growing pains. I trust we will address and overcome them, &--they may help others.

We have--with almost 500 tents, close to or more than 1000 people living on the plaza. Counting those who come and pass through, thousands more. This is a potent and volatile force. It's not entirely overreaction that so many police are monitoring what happens here. Not one of us know where they might go, what they (we ?) might choose to do with our newly felt power.

I'm old enough to remember when the Weathermen hi-jacked SDS, taking advantage of their tolerant democratic process. People died because of that. The wide ranging progressive movement they had been building was lost--ended with the end of the Vietnam war.

We--I mean, everyone on this list, knows this is serious business. That where this energy takes us ... could be lost, soaked up into the broken electoral process... or blow up into violent fragmentary explosions of rage & violence.

But not everyone out there appreciates this. We saw tonight someone with a personal agenda, with nothing but contempt for democratic process, nearly high-jack the G.A, single handedly--and seriously embarrass what so many have so carefully and selflessly helped to craft. His interests didn't happen to go beyond using our Commons for his idea of a multimedia rock festival. But if one person--running lead to bring in a bunch of bands and performers, can come that close to disrupting, and disrespecting our democratic process--we have got to give some serious thought to what might happen if a few more savvy minds bent on using the movement for more dangerous adventures should decide to intrude.

This many people... means we aren't playing games, this isn't a one-shot protest. Lives are potentially at stake--ours, and those our power-in-numbers might unleash.

If it had only been about music versus one night's GA, what happened tonight wouldn't have bothered me that much... I came home, lay my head down on my arms and wept.

This was really disturbing.

We need--despite the 'festival' tomorrow, to hold that fac training, and more important than ever--figure out how we can restore the noon GA so it functions to include our Tent City... or we are in deep trouble.

--Jacob

New Working Group

6:00 PM, Friends Center, 1501 Cherry. First meeting of Occupy World, cross-occupation working group--building strategies and structure to create an international web of occupations.

Tentative Agenda!

Thursday October 20, 2011

Remember—we have ONE HOUR before GA! Let’s have someone remind us of time…

Introductions. Each of us state in single sentence if possible, what we imagine this Working Group to be.   

Ask if everyone is familiar with Occupation facilitation and decision making process—how proposals are selected for GA. If some here are not—briefly go over process.

Present some possible working ideas—see the following:

1)      Messaging Letter as brought to and endorsed by GA. Called for ‘regional assembly’ but Absent plans for implementation or structure.

            They are compiling list of Occupations and contacts. Should coordinate with them            & update them on our meetings and decisions, along with other pertinent       WG’(Tech) -- request they do same with us.

2)      Need someone to volunteer (from this group or outside), to begin gathering info on what other Occupations have done or plan, to set up WG’s with objectives in line with ours

3)      Do we see a need to encourage meta-discussions, and the means to implement them—with goal of imagining models for the transition from local to regional/national/cross national representative assemblies, encouraging critical thought as to how such proportional changes might effect the underlying commitment to democratic process?

            We might, for instance, set up on-line forums for such meta-concerns, which          could in turn lead to physical conferences. As the indispensible nutrient for     decision making in local assemblies are the on-going face-2-face discussions,            conversations and WG decisions, so too, these conversations need to take place on   an expanded scale to ground larger structures in an open, inclusive democratic       process.    

Page 2: Agenda 10/20 Occupy Global

4)      Cross-national, cross-occupation information service to relay key events, actions, ideas & decisions made around the world. For this, we need Translation Teams in cooperation with Tech.

5)      Ask for volunteer to take notes, and post to list

6)      Move to open discussion/ brain-storming.

7)      Last of all-- Make such decisions as we agree are needed for THIS MEETING.
           
            That would include at minimum: Setting time & place for AT LEAST next             meeting… perhaps deferring decision for regularly scheduled meetings till we see         if more peeps join us

             Someone to volunteer to bring report to TONIGHT’S GA

            These are only my suggestions. As in all matters, I defer final decisions to the wisdom of
            of the collective. 

            --Jacob

Reply to a letter of concern from someone who has left Occupy Philadelphia

If you want to know who the people are who are camping, talk to them. Ask them.

This is not a protest. This is a deliberative, decision making, community building body. Protests and actions and demands may flow out of those decisions. They will change over time as needs and concerns change--that's why the Occupations can't be pinned down to this or that specific statement. And that's one reason why, in 4 short weeks, they've become a world-wide movement. This would never have happened had they been narrowly targeted 'protests.'

As a community, music, art, dance--and drum circles that announce our presence--are no less a part of the movement than specific demands for change. You want real action? We are feeding hundreds of homeless men and women every day, and working to find them places to live. Does that not count as real action?

We can no longer pick out this or that concern or problem and expect to bring about meaningful change, not when they are linked in a complex economic and political power structure that can never be altered from within--hence, we reclaim Commons as outside space to begin a larger, overall challenge to entrenched power.

We do not need a 'permit' to occupy what is ours. No one grants the people rights. The rights belong to the people. It is up to us to claim and seize them from those who pose as our caretakers and benefactors, while working only for the benefit of the few and the servitude of the many.

The police may well crush this movement. I suspect it may come to that. But our roots sink more deeply every day and if they crush us in one place or many, those roots will spring up and grow into another wave and another.

We need faith in ourselves, in the power of our decision making bodies and our creative spirit--faith to overcome our fears, for fear is the only effective weapon they have. Not their pepper gas or billy clubs or jails--not even the power to kill--none of this can stop us if we cast off the inhibiting shackles of fear.

Come back to City Hall, Paul. We need you. We need your creative love, your art, your voice, your beautiful self. As you need us. We will be there for you--all of us, in love, brotherhood, solidarity--and belief in freedom for all human kind.

Peace&Solidarity,
Jacob Spirit Stick

Occupy Wall Street, Occupy Philadelphia, Occupy the World!

When I first posted on this movement, Zuccotti Park had only been occupied for less than a week, main-stream media was pretending it didn't exist. There are now more than 1500 occupations; it's become a global movement impossible for press or politicians to ignore. Here's Huff Post's review, with many links and videos, on Occupation, one month old.

Much of the info and the links in my earlier posts are already out of date--and stands now as a small part of what may be the best documented movement in history.

Occupy Philly: Philly & New York

Richard, of OHTARZIE, responded a comment I left. Here’s my reply, highlighting what may be some features specially characteristic of the Philly Occupation.

>Richard wrote:

What you describe is very different from what I see here and what I hear about from other cities. i am not simply speculating that there are Obamaphiles here. There just are. Nevertheless, what I see and hear is certainly more radical than anything Americans have done since the 60s. There is no question of that. I think you may be onto something with self-generating momentum to greater radicalism. It could be that everyone’s heading toward the same place but at different speeds.

I am curious, are they using the Horizontal leadership meeting facilitation stuff in Philly? Have been wondering if that’s been embraced all over. Would also like a little more details over what is specifically radical about the Philly group and what is their general movement bent: anarchism? socialism? Are they inclined to agitate for policy changes like tax hikes on the rich? Criminal investigations of the banksters?<

---
The only apologists I’ve heard for Obama have been from a few Afro-Americans, who want to give him some slack for being asked to do an impossible job, but even there–his Wall Street cabal comes up. Over all I’d say he’s held in about as much esteem as Jr. Bush.

Philly has it’s wealthy enclaves and suburbs, it’s hipsters and yuppy micro-brew beer bars,, but is overwhelmingly a working class city with a long festering discontent with the political establishment, local state & national. Mayor Nutter is a pro-business Democrat who’s in deep trouble with the unions–a potent factor in his kid glove treatment so far–the unions love us. TWU (public transit) is paying for 2 PortaPoties–and have their ear close enough to the temper of peeps here to have one of them wheelchair accessible.

While there seem to be a significant number of the occupiers in NY from around the country–Philly is overwhelmingly local, with many of us regulars commuting daily from neighborhoods, making for a strong organic outreach that helps spread the word and draw in new people (We had 310 tents as of yesterday’s morning count–hard to say how many overnighters–some tents have 4 or 5 peeps, some are one person mountain tents–but has to be over 600 and could be as many as 1000–which makes our actual occupation quite a bit larger than NY). And neighborhood support in Philly means labor unions & working class–a strongly disaffected demographic that doesn’t blink at radical, militant proposals. The young tattooed mufti-pierced kids here (they're kids to me! I’m 70 years old!)… don’t look like that cause they have corporate management jobs in mind for their futures). I’d guess that might be true in NY as well. I can’t offer any statistical verification, but in conversations I’ve had–they are always from working, low middle class, municipal service families. They don’t have now and don’t envision having any sense of entitlement or stake in what they see as the established order. This is not movement of future young Democrats!

We use pretty much the same process model as OWS. Working Groups (committees–about 40 now in Philly) send reps to the Coordinating Council (CoCo), if they want to bring proposals they’d like to present to the GA. CoCo votes on those they feel are ready. Basically–if the purposal is clear, the WG is well able to explain and defend them, they are put on the agenda for the WG. CoCo meets two hours before the GA. They take the proposals to Facilitation, whose sole purpose is to step back from advocacy and guide the meeting through the agenda, and see that Process is observed. It takes a team of 6 to 8 facilitators. We make an effort (so far pretty successful), to have different faces up front for every meeting, and bring new people in every GA. Both Fac and Coco are open to anyone to participate fully. WG’s also bring brief reports (& appeals for Occupants to join) to every GA.

Transparency is a huge issue–peeps come from outside with near paranoic fear of hidden power in any form whatsoever. City wants to meet with us–GA has rejected proposal after proposal for how to do this, from a liaison committee with legal team, to a select group to “listen” & explain to them our process.. why we take so long to make decisions (clash of horizontal and hierarchical power cultures) … seems to have come down to–they can either just be part of the GA, observing process like everyone else–or agree to a meeting preferably livestreamed, or at minimum, with a video posted and available immediately after. The more we learn to trust one another, seems the less trust we have for THEM.

As for the general bent–there’s a handful of very genial anarchists, fully committed to democratic process. They all of them came before the GA, introduced themselves–this, to reassure everyone and defend themselves after one or two trolls attacked them on the web, accusing them of all sorts of nonsense. Everything else you can imagine. It’s a VERY big tent. Ending corporate personhood would prolly get unanimous support–strong recognition of linkage–that we can’t isolate cause from cause. Everything is related. One reason why no specific set of demands or manifesto has come out of this. This will take time… we’ve been at this less than two weeks, and have managed to build a community, 300 + tents, feed 1500 peeps a day, including several hundred homeless–many of whom are part of the camp (they lived around City Hall before we came)... all from the ground up. If there are 'leaders' here in any traditional sense, I couldn't tell you who they are. I don’t think anyone can say where this will go or what its limits may be. We’re really breaking new ground. .