NYC General Assembly # Occupy Wall Street

INTRODUCTIONS/REPORT-BACKS

Jose

Simon

Gail, Kitchen – breakfast & point person – offsite kitchen closed for 3 days, trying to reduce onsite kitchen budget, eliminating onsite kitchen budget. They want to reduce the budget for lunch & dinner; not clear where that money will go.

Max, Organization –

Max, also Town Planning –

Debbie – working with health people; interested in issues of sustainability; relationship between OWS people and the people living in the park.

George, kitchen & library -

Daniel,

Eric, Food – working on restructuring the kitchen; many emergency meetings lately; we’re at risk of losing our offsite kitchen; we lost our van. This is largely due to people getting burnout & leaving & no one knowing what they were supposed to be doing.

Ryan, Alternative Currency – pressure coming from existing power structures that’s resistant to developing alternative currency. Waiting for camp to grow towards tipping point at which we’re ready to do something about it.

Bill, press – no report-back

Sophie, trainings – we have a bunch of trainings in the works; not very many of them have taken off yet. Hopefully this week, a consent class, an orientation training, and a self-defense.

AGENDA ITEMS

Kitchen

Town Planning

Kitchen

Eric: things are kind of falling apart due to lack of communication between off-site & on-site kitchen operations. We’ve discussed reducing it to two meals but have not . We are being audited by Finance. We spent 40-something thousand dollars. Financial officers are burning out & no one knows exactly what they did. We have food rotting in a kitchen; all we have to do is get volunteers out there & cook it. Assuming we don’t lose the kitchen, we’ll get people over there, start cooking the food. New systems proposed; there’s a meeting at the kitchen at 3:30 to address these issues.

Gail: we  have a budget of 2,000 / day. In the past, there was no offsite budget, because everything was donated. Of that $2,000 / day, I can account for $1,000 of that & I don’t know where the rest of it went. They want to restructure the budget: onsite, offsite, and projects. Our main concern should be this site & we shouldn’t be extending ourselves too thin anywhere else.

Eric: Our budget is only $2,000/day on weekends.

Gail: I think cancelling hot breakfast is a big deal. Should we be cutting back on services? I think we have the money for these things; and we’re spending the food offsite.

Eric: We serve food until there are no more volunteers awake to serve it.

Gail: We pay for catering for eggs & home fries. I don’t know where the rest of that 48000 comes from.

Eric: Chinese food, etc.

Gail: We’re ordering Chinese food & then people don’t eat the offsite food & we throw it out.

Kitchen: we had some

Daniel: the reason the kitchen decided to close down during the night is security & that’s still an issue. It’s cold enough at night these days that we don’t need refrigeration overnight. There’s no reason to throw anything out. We should be serving oatmeal & rice & beans every day, because it’s cheap.

Ryan: We have a lot of non-participants here.  When we’re ready to direct resources to people who are participating…

Architects & Town Planning

Max: We

Eric: two things regarding Town Planning – I want to build chicken coops in the trees so we have eggs. Trying to make that happen, perhaps in Spring. We need a safe place to have sex. We should have a tent for that purpose.

Gail: Need communal space for eating.

Panda: Chicken shit?

Jose: Architects working on modular bunk-bed/table/work-bench/storage units.

Gail: We’re having a lot of problems with sharing in the kitchen.

Feedback for Kitchen

More accountability & audit

No need for all-night food

More control of the back space

11/9/11
megan facilitator from kitchen
kitchen is revamping kitchen focus on cooking instead of relying on
catering and trying to get a bus.
Katherine- what kitchen being utilized currently. East and flatbush
soup kitchens
currently looking for a more a permanent situation, current
Betsy from Library,new branch at the Tree of Life.  Books keep
disappearing but they keep restocking
Paul- from sanitation just observing
Ryan from PR- needs more feedback from other groups. however it takes
Evangelina from outreach
Jose just observing
Josh from comfort and they have a meeting at SIS 11/9/11 tonight,
comfort outreach program, possibly working with community watch,
proactive approach to fulfill needs. meeting at 8p at SIS
Nicholas, Tea and Herbal medicine group, ideally we could all be
drinking tea right now, just observing meeting
Jez no reprot back
Anatoli just observing, he’s from sweden, travelling different occupations
Katherine with facilitation and Occupy Dignity, last night CT Butler
from FNB had teach in on model of consensus, he’ll back after
Thanksgiving.  Occupy Dignity new working group, dignity in the park.
Meeting at 11 am in Atrium.
Eric with Food and Water,
solicitating donations. $20, 00 Earthlust sending stainless steel water bottles
Nathan, Info and SIS just observing
Jeff previously with Tents, taking over Town Planning, 6pm meeting at
Atrium. Keep meeting shorts. 30 minutes, tents and people same page.
Stop gap proposal keeping people from being moved. Currently no tents
to be put up. taking 2 days for mechanism of emminent domain and plan
for which tents going up next and which working group.
If working group wants tents come to meeting
Clarifying questions, is working group being asked. Library had
structure, that’s being taken down.
Jeff, since group defunct, it is being restructured.
Beth from press, good stories needed, always at press table, she deals
with corporate owned media, so unless we provided good stories
Drew with Tech: make sure events are up to date on website. Tech is
working on news and aggregation system, so all diff news feeds are
current. need people to sanitize data.
Randall with outhreach , creating data bank system for educational info.
Gypsy plan in place with all human agreement, very hostile
Agenda Points:
*concerned about violence, we hand to police or we allow violent peoples to stay
*mark areas where people have moved to clear out assembly area
*should weather be discussed in preparation for the snow
Ryan: lack of enforcement of violence, thievery
 comments from group:   certain individuals can’t coop situation,
trying to deescalate
ostericisms are a form a violence, because it isn’t consensus, music can heal.
community watch/security/alliance should attend meetings to help with
this.  Security needs ideas.
Several specific situations were given, however some system of
deciding who should be in who should be out.
we are all part of community watch.  We see something say something.
If you’re not involved in a scene where perhaps it’s not a crucial
situation, don’t give it attention and it helps diffuse situation.
Ostercism is only way to maintain anarchist system because we don’t
want the police involved and if you are racist, then you cannot stay,
for example.
Mention how Direct Action provides nonviolent action, that may assist
in dealing with situations.
Difference in ideals doesn’t qualify to kick someone out.  More
experimentation on buddying up with these individuals.
Next Topic:
In Reach: Proposal going to be taken to Spokes. We need to engage
people.  We need our common area back, the problem is how to implement
is to mark areas with red tape when someone moves tent, to start
blocking space, to open up the assembly area. one by one, dialogue,
with community about opening up assembly area, and helping people to
move to new areas.
idea of reorganizing, there are quite a few tents that are just taking
up space, perhaps just a tent check to see how much free space there
actually is.
some ideas that tents are not needed and we don’t need tents to live.
hypothermia isn’t an option, tents are needed
consensus idea is why not create sections where people can do where
people can do what they want,since we don’t want to remove people.
Point of Process, not relevant point
Bridges need to be built on bringing people together to sustain
community by group tents vs 2 people per tent in personal tent.
Point of Information: we have a form where we pass around to park,
census form. specifics to keep clusters that already exist.  Town
planning not trying to remove people, trying to be respectful, but
they are trying best they can, hopefully process can be smoother.
Small tents not engineered to last during winter.
Tape idea is a problem because someone may mark and not return and
people will create tense situations.
Break out groups on this since meeting time is over.

REPORT BACKS

Josh – comfort – still some political power problems in comfort

Evan – open source – issue w/ generators: we have a fire egress issue.

Kirill Ravensong – starting new group – moving housing off-site

Max – facilitation – getting more people coming & getting trained; it’s awesome.

Luke – Media is undergoing mediation; PR wants input from everyone, so they know what’s going on in the park, so when press comes, they can give good answers.

Lori – Organization (Tu&Th @ the Atrium) – still working on office project.

Hall – Liaison btwn Architects & Town Planning

John Marko – grad student doing project on OWS

Stefan – structure (6pm @ the Atrium, but not always) – still waiting for official word on space for Spokes Council; we have a potential space @ a high-school but not a definitive answer. The address is 411 Pearl Street. We’re also looking for alt. backup spaces. If you haven’t heard the confirmed loc, go to the info desk & they’ll have the answer.

Julian – outreach (M,T,Th @ 6:30 @ 52 Broadway) – This weekend, Occupy Your Block: occupy your block however you want to; starting teach-ins via churches, etc. Community Relations doing a small-biz event & services at local congregations.

James – organization – working w/ internet to develop tools for groups to share docs, names, etc.

Evangelina – Meetup for all the GAs from all the borroughs, about Occupy Your Block & to help them build up their structure.

Jose – I bring food to Coordinators’ Meeting; also having inter-cultural music & dance

NVC mediation; doing trainings & Community Watch. Texting network

Eric – food (everyday @ 5:15 @ The Atrium) – yesterday was 1^st day of the new delivery system; we fed over 300 people.

Eric (also reporting for) Water – looking for space for winterizing our water.

-Alt currency is having guest speaker today at 3pm: Edgar Kohn

Sully – Education Empowerment – if there’re any teach-ins, etc., you want to bring to the plaza, contact occupy101@gmail.com (occupy101 null@null gmail NULL.com).

Sully (also reporting for) Facilitation –

Agenda

How to take public space

Proposal to create indoor living space to free up Zuccotti for operational protest affairs

Discussion of role of coordinators’ meeting

Hierarchy

How to take public space

–Can’t walk across the park. Spaces between tents are filling up w/ stuff.

–Big tent budget is approved & locations are planned out; we have a fire expert involved in making sure egresses are sufficient.

–I’m in favor of doing this all at once, but

–I overheard an extensive plan last night to move kitchen

–there is a basic plan outlined: if we prioritize medical & food, we can create two effective corridors

–let’s take action on this; let’s start red-taping spots when people vacate them.

Indoor Space

– we have way too many people in the space & we’re trying to fit two different functions in the space. One group is deeply committed to creating an effective movement. The other has an important role but comes w/ a lot of needs. Proposal: housing set up off-site for those in working groups; working w/ city to create more evolved homeless shelters for the second group. Clear up all of Zuccotti for operation of the movement.

– the big tents can easily transition into just working spaces. Also, it’s not a hard line between the two groups; people can be changed into activists by being here.

– isn’t the occupation part of the protest?

– otherwise, the space immediately becomes unusable

– there’s a problematic move here to classify people into these two groups

– there’s a danger to this plan: if we take people w/ high needs & reconnect them w/ the same system that has failed them; we need to maintain a relationship w/ those people

– big difference between those who want to help out & feel part of the movement & those who actually feel empowered to join a working group.

– three concerns: one, if we don’t have a strong enough presence over the winter, we may get cleared out; two, it institutionalizes the class system that we’ve already seen emerging, esp bec if you house people together who are in working groups, they become kind of stuck in those working groups.

Purpose of the Coordinators Meeting

– I think this

– should be focused on solutions

– I come to these meetings to see what people are doing & how I can best collaborate & contribute

–

– maybe we could decide as a group that we won’t talk about philosophy or leave it up to the facilitator

– disagree; this meeting is an effective info clearinghouse but

– recent meetings have veered far into philosophical & long-winded

– philosophical is ok but only if it’s aimed at action.

– what if, at the beginning of each topic, after the person who opened it presents, we take propositions.

– if we started w/ discussion, we might get additional discussion that we don’t need

– it should be facilitator’s call

– if you have a topic you want to discuss, make it clear how it’s relevant to your working group, so even if it’s philosophical, it’s grounded in something concrete

Hierarchy in Working Groups

– I was reading t about Tyranny & it’s exactly what’s going on in my group; there’s a concentration of information that doesn’t get out to everybody in the bottom.

– who is it that info concentrates in the hand of.

– bridge gap between meeting-attenders & non-attending workers, make sure that you get everyone there for loaded votes

– that article (that Jose mentioned) is amazing but this isn’t what it’s talking about: it’s about how in a horizontal organization, you get a small group of people that’s doing the majority of the work & therefore has all the information. Then it becomes hard for people not already in that group to get involved.

– I’m concerned about this & I think it’s real, but the past couple days I’ve gotten a lot of negative feedback fr people, bec. a lot of my work happens in an office. It’s important to give people the benefit of the doubt.

– It’s the authority’s responsibility to enfranchise its members. Should people feel disenfranchised, they should take power by occupying their group.

– I totally agree; there’s a way to talk about this that’s not all about guilt. Training & documentation needs to be a priority for every group.

Sophie – various
• planning consent workshops for all working groups.
• info is getting more organized & Sophie is leaving

Eric – food
• running a delivery system for working groups having meetings in a number of locations
• trying to start a water working group; how do we get our waiter; water rights, etc.

Ronnie
• outreach: community organizers lunch @101 6th Ave & Canal to tell people about how to organize their own Das
• 11th, 12th, 13th – occupy your block; get the focus off Zuccotti, out into communities
• Occupy New Haven
• Outreach meeting here, today, at 5:00

Cynthia – info, outreach
• Info & Outreach are merging
• New volunteer desk

Daryl – SIS & other needs
• Setting up google docs to make it easier to do meeting minutes, etc.
• Working on top line visions & goals

Evan – open source, etc.
• Permabank by end of week
• Generators should be back by the middle of the week
o Legal sent a letter to FDNY
o They stonewalled a while then said we could get them back
o We’re assembling a fire-fighting team in order to maintain fire safety.

Ryan – PR
• No report back

Diego – Kitchen
• No report back

Max
• Facilitation trying to get fewer white males facilitating
• Tents Project got $20,000 for more communal tents.

Jill
• Teach-in on time-sharing
• Time-bank software

Sparkle
• Doing security outside women’s tent.
• Upset that we still have people sleeping in the streets

Josh – comfort
• There’s been a power structure in comfort lately, but it seems to have burned itself out.

AGENDA
Race
Top line visions & goals
Homelessness
Get assembly area back
Inter-group communication tools
Health in communal tents

RACE
Daryl: Race is not balanced in this movement; we have a ghetto of disinvolvd people at the downhill end of the park.
Sparkles: I don’t understand how people can say they can’t be part of the process when they don’t try to be part of the process.
Shen: there are societal people we need to unlearn; but in this movement, we also  want to spread this culture of personal responsibility. This is one place we can empower anyone. We people of color need to step forward. Facilitation, organization, etc. need to reach out.
Ryan: some people are here because it’s a safe place and will stay a long time and use movement resources. Is the camp a symbol or an encampment of activists.
Jose: I got to a lot of meetings that are all white. I ask other people of color to come but they’re intimidated. We need affirmative action; we need to reach out to the community.
Brian: When we’re trying to diversify, we don’t want to silence another voice.
Jill: The history of racism is so old, we can’t expect to overcome immediately. We need to reach out & communicate w/ people w/ street vernacular.
Daryl: there are differences in culture that can create misperceptions. Directness may be perceived as violent or aggressive, when it’s not really meant that way.
Sophie: this is a difficult topic & we need to devote time to it. There are other ways to participate besides speaking. Also, there’s a group trying to integrate more conversations about race, class, & gender, and make that a larger part of our culture in the park.
Josh: geography is a big issue; we need to be more geographically mixed in the park.
Evan: white is too much of a catch-all. I’m german-Jewish. That’s more complicated than just white.
Daryl: let’s have a breakout group to talk about

VISIONS & GOALS
Daryl: wants a movement that is a flexible platform for national change; people living in the camp should have to work min 20 hrs/wk, go to teach-ins, present photo id, etc.
Eric: working on getting spaces for the winter
Brian: don’t like the idea of requiring people to work & show IDs, etc.
Evan: this is an economy of abundance. Quantitative requirements interfere w/ that.
Sophie: I agree w/ Evan but also see value in what Daryl is saying.
Daryl: I’m not saying we should make everybody grind or work in a particular area, but if people don’t work then they’re not contributing, and stuff won’t happen.
Evan: work is the gifts people have to give. This movement is about the qualitative over the quantitative, richer information not documented by x number of hours, etc.

Report Backs

•           Chris Bentley, just an observer – nothing to report

•           Frankie, just observing

•           Michelle, Sustainability & OWS in Espanol – Battery stuff w/ pedal-power, harvesting rainwater, today is barter market; here to coordinate w/ kitchen about battery; 4-6 hrs to charge a battery. We have @ least 8 batteries. Media seems to be coming 2+ at a time. We need as many people on the bike as possible. If you know any electricians, send them our way.

•           Fix, media – working to make media mor organized. Moving forward w/ budget proposal

•           Jose, fr. kitchen, sanitation, etc. – yesterday, for the first time, kitchen opened at 7. Today, we have a new lady, Gail, taking inventory. She’s really good.

•           Gypsy, floater – have something in the works to get indoor shower & bath facility. We have porto-potties coming. Tentative to get us office locker room w/ toilets & showers in the back. Laundry left last night. We need to put our permanent facilities in permanent housing.

•           Ryan, PR – @ the end of the day yesterday, the same politicians were standing w/ Bloomberg, attacking the culture of the park, talked about something positive that we are doing to improve quality of life in the community.

•           Josh, fr. Comfort – there’s a strong authority structure @ Comfort these days; how can we change that structure?

•           Jill, organizing teach-in for squatting & part of open-source – open source is not recruiting people who would like to work & giving them credit. Trying to use software to allow people to contribute & get credit for it.

•           Andrew, alt banking – discussing things that could actually be done abt financial system; lots of interest; lots of people coming. Very concerned about the risk of our group not being integrated w/ the rest of OWS. We don’t want to come up w/ proposals & then sell them to others; we want the proposals to be collectively drafted.

•          Shen, fr. Organization – working w/ interior designers & builders on our off-site workspaces. We have a couple spaces, open 24/7, separately funded. We have created a pilot program to help get office space for those who need it. We have a google form for people to fill out to describe their office needs. We will soon put it up on the NYCGA website, and announce it at Spokes Council & GA.

•           Judy, fr. Library – great poetry assembly last night.

•           Dave, fr Occupy Toronto, Marshals, DA – having a lot of issues in Toronoto, here to

•           Lana, fr. Occupy Toronto, logistics, labor, outreach, finance, DA

•           Bryan – fr. Occupy Toronoty, media, facilitation

•           Sandra, Outreach – working on info list to revise it; trying to reach out to other organizations w/in New York. Sunday 2pm Organizers Meeting @ one of the union halls

Agenda

•           Hierarchy in groups – 4

•           Growing class divide & inequity in the park & how we can begin to deal with it – 9

•           Toronto report back – 7

•           Organization: laundry problem – 7

•           Resources online.

Hierarchy in Groups

•           Gypsy: hierarchy is a necessary part of life; people have to have roles or nothing gets done.

•           Jill: we have people running departments who don’t know how to communicate; people’s skills are ignored; advocates use of time-bank to give people credit for the time they work.

•           Jose: help me understand hierarchy. A little group of people who control everything but don’t listen to the needs of others.

•           Gypsy: everything needs chain of command, order.

•           Shen: point of info – the biggest strength of this movement is spontaneous order, but the idea is this: this of th is movement the way you think of the internet: no leader, no center. How do you have efficiency w/out leaders? Processes, procedures, chain of command. Think of Wikipedia: no leader, no expert; yet within less than a year, it became the largest, most comprehensive, most accurate encyclopedia in the world.

•           Jill: leadership does evolve naturally & we need leaders. Nothing’s black & white here. Internet’s great but it’s not accessible to the poor. Wikipedia is great, but that’s just facts, not functionality.

•           Functional def of hierarchy:

Growing Class Divide & Inequity in the Park

•           Gypsy: We need permanent structures for permanent facilities; we have given our permanent structures to our permanent population.

•           Jill: I am concerned about allocating resources to transients, but we can’t just reject our transient population. We’re getting ourselves into trouble. We have a vernacular problem. People w/ vernacular have a lot to say.

•           Fix: we need to prepare people in the park as best we can; the park is important. What we’ll probably see is a thinning; but we want to help people

•           I think we depend on our transients. Transience is a solution to a class problem.

•           Are transients people who come in to occupy people who come in & leave?

•           Gypsy: we have both occupiers & homeless people.

•           Winterization committee to look at larger structures & individual tents to make sure people are actually prepared.

•           Conflating two issues: class issues & winterization issue. Distinction btwn people who are trying to make things work in the park & real security issues. It’s not all oppression; it’s also real security issues.

•           Jose: in a couple days there will be a permanent transient tent.

Toronto Report Back

•           We’ve been around for 15 days.

•           First night: 50 people sleeping over.

•           Now, about 200 tents.

•           Park is about 3 times the size of Liberty Plaza

•           Large Gazebo for Gas

•           More spaces, so committee meetings have places to meet.

•           Got yurts a few days ago: library, workshops, _____.

•           A lot of committees:

o          Logistics: getting resources, tents, sleeping bags, etc.

o          Outreach: bringing in activists from the outside to talk about their permanent work on the ground

o          Finance: having trouble securing a bank account, so haven’t been able to take donations onlne. Credit Unions don’t want to give us an account, since we’re not an official charity.

o          Labor: unions are giving us stuff: canopies, tables, chairs, skids

•           Park was traditional crack, meth park. Difficult people in the park.

Report Backs
• Max, Organization: nothing new.
• Olivia, Outreach: working on intake program, hopefully twice a day, orientation for newcomers; trying to centralize outreach to organizations, businesses, labor, universities, etc.
• Sophie, Occupiers/women/etc.: we’re working on having a consent training that we’re going to share w/ every working group. Want to find a meeting time during which we can do an hour-long training. Planning solidarity walkout against sexual violence.
• Jeanni, Financial Research & Application for OWS: nothing to report
• Bill, PR:
• Lorin, arts: doing outreach to NYC’s interfaith movement; met w/ Occupy Faith last night; they’re looking for spaces, kitchens, etc.; they want to help but are having trouble navigating our system; they want to have a faith & family tent for the winter.
• Gypsy, “we get shit done”: contact list for ; working on getting Go Phones (w for everyone in the ; now working on contact info for each working group;
• Jose, reporting for comfort: their shelter is too weak
• _____
• _____
• Jose,
o medical:
o Setting up protocols for how to deal with incidents in the park; that group has empowered itself to police the park & has asked some people to leave based on their behavior in the park.
o Small affinity group setting up intentional community w/in the park.
• Pete, Finance – 5:30-6, Friday, @ the red cube, and moving to somewhere else.
• Rick, alt currency: 12:00 meeting at Charlottes, Anya & Katie, thinker & filmmaker abt at currency;
• Chris & Megan, kitchen: kitchen is experiencing growing pains. We’re trying to branch out as an entity that feeds people but also does other projects.
• Angelo, no group: I’m working on a website called the occupyassembly.org, aimed at being an online GA. Not officially affiliated with OWS.
• Special Report: the internet proposal passed last night
• Catherine, fr. occupiers: I’m starting a social justice workshop for people in the park.
 
 
Announcement: we have major donation for office space for approximately 50-people’s working space. Organization has been tasked with organizing use of the space. We have an office manager who is also an occupier. The donor picked 11 groups that they want using the office. Send your liaison (ideally, experienced project-managers) to the Organization WG.
 
Announcement: General Strikes: Nov 2nd Oakland, Nov 17th NYC, building towards Nov. 30th nationwide.
 
Agenda
Discuss certain items in the news
Consent training
Safety at night, winterization, & cultural issues in the park; certain kinds of music, partying, dancing
Protocols for this meeting
 
Items in the News
 
Bill: The Post has put on its cover a story about  business near here that’s laying off a bunch of people & we’re being blamed. There’s no quote from OWS. The barricades are a serious issue for everyone in the community. That’s on the mayor. Statue is guarded 24-7 at great expense. Since the first day, the NY Post has been covering us negatively.
Daily News was fine; not much about us.
The bank story is being viewed as riding the general wave of anger by consumers & others.
 
 
Consent Training
 
Training will put OWS in context w/in larger culture, Viz. gender & sexual violence. Trans-friendly
Come talk to me if you have more questions afterwards.
Discussion of “rape culture”: putting responsibility on he victim.
Olivia: let’s email that out to working groups in advance, so we can discuss it.
Sophie’s contact: 802-291-3634
 
 
Lorin
 
There are a lot of different projects going on around safety at night & winterization. A few people working on large group tents. Can we get a status update on that?
 
Chris: personal experience last night w/ safety in the park. Someone accused of sexual assault came into the park; a large group of people appeared & asked him to leave.
Jose: the girl who was assaulted has decided to press charges.
Jose (hat): if you have not done survival training, please be very careful about how you discuss sexual assaults in these groups. If you are interested in getting involved in safety & security, please get involved in Community Watch. There’s a training today @ 3pm, here at 60 Wall. To clarify: no one is kicking people out based on rumors; we have trained professionals dealing with this.
 
Clarifying question: how do you get in touch with peace council.
Jose: don’t call a mic check; call for security via someone with a walky-talky
 
Shen: Org. is trying to help keep track of all these efforts.
 
Kitchen has been asked to condense our food times & there’s been a lot of backlash about not serving food 24/7. We need help not being the bad-guys of the park.
 
 
 
Meeting Procedures
 
Lorin: Concern that people are missing info by coming late. Shen talked about lateness rules, and we should put them into place.
 
Pete: People have other things that need to get done. If that’s the way you want to run it, I’m never going to speak & I’m going to stop participating.
 
Need to put meeting times on a board.
 
 
Announcement: organization group has been facilitating this meeting, but it’s not exclusive; please come to us, come to any of us, anyone who wants to facilitate or co-facilitate.

The minutes-taker missed the report-backs on this day)

Agenda

• Winterization
• Proposal from structure & organization
• Problems with last night’s GA
• Internal community issues inside plaza Viz. media & substantive issues
• Chip: solution to our electrical problems that requires nothing but money & involves no fire-dept. issues
• I want to propose a coalition around emergency preparedness for raid

Agenda Item 1: Winterization

Groups involved:

·         Sustainability – working on pallet system to collect drain-water to specific site & keep everyone off the ground

·         Library has accepted donation fr. Patti Smith for large canope tent

·         Town Planning

·         Community Affairs

·         Organization

What are we doing about roads

I’m working on a plan in conjunction w/ town planning to put event tents over the entire park, including the trees (???)

Ric: quick point on legality—the tents we have now are not legal; they were never supposed to be there; if it’s something we want to do, we just do it.

Agenda Item 2: Proposal Regarding Spokes Council & Coordinator Meeting Planning

Proposed: Coordinators will meet only Sunday, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings, in order not to create redundancy with Spokes Council.

Concerns about procedures used when the Spokes Council was voted in; specifics were cleared up: facilitation team was hand-picked; stacks were not finished.

Decided: we will keep the 9am meeting through Thursday, in order to see what happens at the first Spokes Council.

Announcement: emergency occupiers meeting @ 2pm in order to address issues of safety, violence, sanitation, etc. at the park. We have rumors that the city is sending destructive people to us. Please share this info with others.

Agenda Item 3: Problems with Last Night’s GA

Seemed

Announcement: Today’s Daily News contained an article claiming that the occupation I being occupied.

PR deals with lots of media outlets, both large and small. We need info all the time. In the last couple weeks, often lead by the NY tabloids, there have been a lot of stories trying to pull at one thread of the community and unravel it. If you’re not prepared to deal with the media, find us at the press table. It’s not just a PR problem; these things also involve substantive problems. Issues the media is talking about:

·         Weather – mostly positive

·         Halloween – the OWS contingent of the Halloween Parade promises to be really great.

When you read or see stuff, ask yourself, is it more negative or positive, and does it contain our central message.

AP has a security report in the works.

Be careful with accusatory words. We don’t need to escalate things any more than they might already be.

Recommendation: it would be very helpful if PR could offer trainings for info, kitchen, direct action.

Announcement: Someone at food is now offering catering for working groups. Get in touch with them if you have a meeting during mealtimes.

Shen: The minutes for this meeting are not getting on the website.

Haywood: Send them to me. I can do it.

Meeting took 49 minutes.

Breakout Group: Winterization

My friends Teddy & Hall got money from Finance to get 40 pellet boards to insulate underneath tent.

Some MIT kids are working on sustainable, rechargeable, gel heat-packs – talk to Sarah from Sustainability.