A Call for Mass Action Against the Suppression of the Occupy Movement, says in part:

“On September 17, 2011, people from all across the United States of America and the world came to protest the blatant injustices of our times perpetuated by the economic and political elites.  On the 17th we as individuals rose up against political disenfranchisement and social and economic injustice.  We spoke out, resisted, and successfully occupied Wall Street.  Today, we proudly remain in Liberty Square constituting ourselves as autonomous political beings engaged in non-violent civil disobedience and building solidarity based on mutual respect, acceptance, and love.  It is from these reclaimed grounds that we say to all Americans and to the world, Enough!  How many crises does it take?  We are the 99% and we have moved to reclaim our mortgaged future.  Through a direct democratic process, we have come together as individuals and crafted these principles of solidarity, which are points of unity that include but are not limited to:

• Engaging in direct and transparent participatory democracy;
• Exercising personal and collective responsibility;
• Recognizing individuals’ inherent privilege and the influence it has on all interactions;
• Empowering one another against all forms of oppression;
• Redefining how labor is valued;
• The sanctity of individual privacy;
• The belief that education is human right; and
• Endeavoring to practice and support wide application of open source.

We are daring to imagine a new socio-political and economic alternative that offers greater possibility of equality.  We are consolidating the other proposed principles of solidarity, after which demands will follow.”

Additionally, we also follow the Statement of Autonomy, which states the following:

“Occupy Wall Street is a people’s movement. It is party-less, leaderless, by the people and for the people. It is not a business, a political party, an advertising campaign or a brand.  It is not for sale.

We welcome all, who, in good faith, petition for a redress of grievances through non-violence.  We provide a forum for peaceful assembly of individuals to engage in participatory as opposed to partisan debate and democracy.  We welcome dissent.

Any statement or declaration not released through the General Assembly and made public online at www.nycga.net should be considered independent of Occupy Wall Street.

We wish to clarify that Occupy Wall Street is not and never has been affiliated with any established political party, candidate or organization.  Our only affiliation is with the people.

The people who are working together to create this movement are its sole and mutual caretakers.  If you have chosen to devote resources to building this movement, especially your time and labor, then it is yours.

Any organization is welcome to support us with the knowledge that doing so will mean questioning your own institutional frameworks of work and hierarchy and integrating our principles into your modes of action.

SPEAK WITH US, NOT FOR US.

Occupy Wall Street values collective resources, dignity, integrity and autonomy above money.  We have not made endorsements.  All donations are accepted anonymously and are transparently allocated via consensus by the General Assembly or the Operational Spokes Council.

We acknowledge the existence of professional activists who work to make our world a better place.  If you are representing, or being compensated by an independent source while participating in our process, please disclose your affiliation at the outset.  Those seeking to capitalize on this movement or undermine it by appropriating its message or symbols are not a part of Occupy Wall Street.

We stand in solidarity.  We are Occupy Wall Street.”

These principles are difficult to uphold.  Sometimes, they may even seem contradictory – how can we behave transparently if we insist on individual privacy?  We are stumbling upon vagueness and apparent contradiction, from the root of the only two documents we presently hold as our statements of values and methods.  It does not help that the Principles of Solidarity state only how one should act, but not what should happen should one fail to uphold these lofty principles.

In fundamental concept, the Statement of Autonomy makes it clear in the end: that which is not a part of Occupy Wall Street excludes itself by its own actions, and it is in the best interests of the Occupy Wall Street movement to note that those whose actions and behaviors do not follow appropriate standards stand apart from the movement by their own actions and their own choices.

Inclusion does not mean the failure to ever exclude – that is simply exclusion by a different metric: “How long someone can put up with this bullshit,” “who has the loudest voice,” “who is the most violent or has the most credible threat.” Having drawn the line between the 99% and the 1%, we fear to ever exclude someone from our all-inclusive movement.  However, to say an individual deemed within the 99% can never be excluded is to say that the 99% is the 1%, for we hold no one accountable for their actions.

A process is being formed to help with this.  We are working on defining “what we will abide by” and “how we will treat each other” via the forthcoming Community Agreement and Code of Conduct, documents that are as-yet works in progress seeking further development or consensus.  We are defining “how we keep things within the boundaries of what we have agreed upon,” via de-escalation tactics designed both for physical and for social situations.  And we are creating a way to resolve our differences or earn forgiveness for our transgressions against each other, defining “how we get along with each other after things have gone less than smoothly” via a Grievance Circle that focuses upon repairing harm and restoring fairness within the community in a restorative-justice process that seeks to educate and heal rather than apply punitive judgments to serve as negative values in some complicated game-theory system of the world that is the modern criminal-justice system.

But it would be a misnomer to state that every problem one might bring forward in the grievance process will be able to be answered with both individuals still within the Movement.  It is a failure of imagination and a failure of judgment to say that there will never be a transgression so grave that we as an assembled body might have to sever connection with an individual or group within the Movement, and it is this continued failure that sees us tolerate the intolerable and play the game of exclusion by attitude rather than principle.

It is a simple principle.  If you come to our events or our meetings, use our websites or phone systems: it doesn’t matter who you are, by the act of involvement, you agree to follow our community standards.  If you leave the relationship, you don’t have to follow our standards – Occupy Wall Street community standards are held between members of the Occupy Wall Street community, they do not follow you home and decree how you treat anyone outside of the Movement when you do not represent the Movement.

The General Assembly should stand empowered to sever ties with those who do not follow the Principles of Solidarity, the Statement of Autonomy, or other standards of behavior that have been agreed upon. If we leave the relationship with you, you also don’t have to follow our standards. It stays that way as long as we’re not involved in each other’s business. If we get involved with companies, they have to follow our standards, too. Our standards apply to OWS as a whole and also to all our working groups, caucuses, and other component bodies acting on our behalf or in our name.

Continued participation in Occupy Wall Street, as a movement, confers benefits.  An individual whom the General Assembly proposes to exclude from the Movement via direct and transparent participatory democracy, based on their adherence to the standards of conduct that define a member as part of OWS, thus loses access to these benefits.  They include, but are not limited to:

• The ability to attend General Assembly, Spokes Council, or other forms of decision-making bodies and be placed on stack;

• The ability to access Occupy Wall Street funds and resources, such as metrocards, housing access, *@nycga.net email accounts, food, clothing, and similar supplies;

• The ability to join Working Groups or Caucuses, and participate in OWS discussions;

• Access to bail funds for any arrests they may be subject to at Occupy Wall Street marches or events;

• And the ability to state to the outside world, and those within the Occupy Wall Street movement, “I am a member of Occupy Wall Street.”

An individual whom the General Assembly consenses is ‘not a member of Occupy Wall Street,’ should not be seen to be a member of the Occupy Wall Street movement by its membership as a whole, or attain any of the benefits conferred by membership.  We of course wish to repair and embrace rather than give up on and exclude – anyone can have a bad day, after all, and an individual act of violence may have several root causes not seen immediately.  We have stated that we wish to exercise personal and collective responsibility, and this cannot be done by avoiding difficult problems just because there is no fast and clean solution.  The problems we face make the Movement stronger, and better-equipped to change the world.

This is the standard that any such proposal the General Assembly brings forward should seek to meet, before excluding anyone: be it for failure to uphold the Principles of Solidarity, or failure act in keeping with the Statement of Autonomy, or the failure to abide by any other community agreement or code of conduct as yet forthcoming, efforts must be made to heal the breach and repair the harm if such repair is possible.  Refusing to repair this failing to the community as a whole by the airing of grievances and making of amends via the transformative justice process of the Grievance Circle, when it is in place, shall be recognized strictly in proportion to the offense to our standards and our ideals – no one shall be asked to leave the Movement for tripping and falling on someone, then calling it ‘assault,’ for these are the tactics already being used against us and we shall not use them against ourselves.

Actions taken by an individual shall be seen to be against the Movement as a whole only if they are grievous in nature, or systemically repetitive.  The line in the sand between the individual and the Occupy Wall Street movement is drawn by that individual themselves, by their failure to abide by our standards of behavior or community agreements which have achieved consensus in the General Assembly, and a proposal to the General Assembly to formally recognize that an individual stands outside of Occupy Wall Street by their own choice and their own actions should abide by that decision on their part and ratify it lest the individual continue to harm those within the Movement or the Movement as a whole via their actions.

AN EXAMPLE –

Johnny the Homicidal Protestor says he is part of the 99%, and a good member of Occupy Wall Street.

Johnny the Homicidal Protestor doesn’t show up to GA’s, communicate via NYCGA.net or participate in any working groups either face-to-face or electronically.

Johnny the Homicidal Protestor only communicates with Occupy Wall Street via, you guessed it, homicide – Johnny is the sole member of the “Killing The 1% One By One” Working Group, or as some might call it, ‘Really-Goddamn-Direct-Action’.  He kills Wall Street investment bankers and carves “The 99% Are Coming For You! #OWS” onto their bodies, because much like Twitter, you can only use so many characters before you run out of room.

Johnny the Homicidal Protestor is not following the Principles of Solidarity, and Occupy Wall Street should recognize formally (and quickly!) that Johnny’s autonomous actions exclude him from OWS by his own actions and his own choices.

The question before the General Assembly in this proposal is not “where does this line exist,” but quite simply “does this line exist.”  Individual proposals brought before the General Assembly against an individual whose actions and behaviors may be seen to be against the body of Occupy Wall Street as a whole will establish in each case where ‘the line’ is, and whether it has been crossed, as well as whether efforts have been put into place by the movement as a whole to repair the connection between the individual and the group via the restorative justice process (at this time, still forthcoming).

This will be brought on Sat, Feb 4.

In our view InfoHub’s proposal indirectly solved the problem of deciding over operational/movement groups, which moreover has been the main structural (as opposed to socio-cultural) problem plaguing spokescouncil since it began way back in October, in one form or another. What this proposal aims to do is make manifest InfoHub’s implicit solution of moving this problem from SC to GA, that is, by changing the distinction from between operational/movement (which is now irrelevant insofar as it is based on us living in a park) to the distinction between OWS working groups and unrecognized/unofficial affinity groups.

In our view this finally makes clear the purpose of spokescouncil itself: a venue for OWS working groups to check each other’s direct budgetary access to our communal pool of money (as opposed to anyone’s ability to indirectly access it via a GA proposal).

Spokes Sign-in Sheet

Facilitation: Jason, Lisa, Brook, Negesti

Time keeper: Brooke

Minutes: David Buccola

Report Backs (8:05): Housing, Accounting, Library, OWS en Espanol, Alternative Kitchen, Occupy Dignity, Direct Action (DA), Occupy the Youth, Picture the Homeless

Proposal 1: Spokes Council Budgeting (27:00) This proposal was not formally proposed; instead it was discussed among break out groups and then feedback given back to proposers to better understand needs and concerns.

Proposal 2: Democracy in Spokes Council Proposer wasn’t able to be at the meeting but out of respect we discussed proposal to provide feedback. In straw poll 21 in favor of first item in proposal with 2 concerns. Many uptwinkles for second section of proposal. And a more mixed reaction to the last part of proposal.

Proposal 3: Emergency Proposal from Accounting (1:56), Direct Action, and Class War. Accounting brought forth the following proposal and then had to leave to do jail support. The proposal was then picked up by Class War and Direct Action:

Who do we bail out? There was an action in Williamsburg that was not an OWS event. It was a party for activists. They moved into an abandoned building on Bedford. Within a half hour police showed up and there was a confrontation with police. Four of them were arrested. Three of them are out. The people in Williamsburg posted their own bail. How do we feel about this? There were occupiers there. Do we bail those people out? Can we break spokes and let anyone say what they feel?

Result: The proposal to bail out this individual was tabled until more information could be gathered regarding charges and bail amount (which had yet to be set at the time of meeting).

Announcements: Direct Action is having an action tomorrow at Grand Central at 5:30pm

*Unfortunately the batteries died in the audio recorder and I was only able to record the first five minutes of the meeting.

Full Minutes:

Respect for time, respectful listening, stay in the practice of gratitude when people are speaking.

Working Group Report Backs (8:05) allocating 30 minutes for these. We have about 7 working groups with report backs.

Housing: We are no longer housing a West Park and we have one more week at Park Slope. You can call the housing hotline if you need help.

Accounting: With the spending freeze we have about $320,000. Office hours have been reduced to Tuesday and Saturday from 1 to 5. If you have a budget come see accounting.

Library: Yesterday everything went really great. We gave out more books than we received. And we have found our first satelite area. Library almost had a mini schism over whether we should house people or not.

OWS en Espanol: We’re just starting to figure out how we’re going to function this year.

Alternative Kitchen: I feel bad pretending to be a working group. The abuse our of accounting has destroyed the ability of my working group to work. It’s hard to work with kitchen and it’s hard to cope with the abusive culture of this movement.

F: Is there a request that would help you?

Alternative Kitchen: I’m trying to work with kitchen but I don’t know how to deal with the issue of what I call communism, but if you need something special you’re a bad person.

F: If anyone can respond

Facilitation: The GA is now meeting three times a week: Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. We don’t know where we are meeting on Wednesday for Spokes Council.

Occupy Dignity: We’ve been helping Occupy Portland; there’s a big action in Washington State on April 15th regarding nuclear. Four members are traveling to Washington State to do restorative justice work. There are four generations of people working in this nuclear facility. We want to make sure people are prepared and educated. This is our first effort at restorative justice work.

Direct Action: (18:00) A coalition of groups have come together to talk about May Day. On Sunday there was a breakthrough on the language. We want to learn from the past and make sure that everbody knows about the action. The language is basically the larger frame of May Day 2012. OWS and NYCGA are in support of a day without the 99%. The framework that came out of DA is that people want to see maximum numbers of people participating in the streets that day. In the morning more disruptive actions. A day of actions revolving around a day without the 99%. Wednesdays at 33rd West 14th street at 8:30

Occupy the Youth: We had an outreach event on Saturday. We have an event at noon at Bronx Lab high school on Stop and Frisk, Direct Democracy. Meeting at 6pm at 60 Wall in Wednesday.

Outreach: We are talking about how we are organizing outreach. If you want more information email us at outreach@nycga.net. We have a printing budget. Print@nycga.net and email with your working groups email.

Picture the Homeless: On Saturday they had a meeting with POC DA in the Bronx that went very well. POC DA will be having another meeting this week to know what our follow up actions from Friday. Sunday we had a solutions work group as well as asking for accountability regarding the money that has been donated to OWS.

Working Group Report backs ended: (26:25)

Spokes Council Budgeting (27:00)

Participatory budgeting: The process of collectively making a budget.

Discussion on Monday
1) Request from each WG on where they see themselves in the budget and financial needs
2) Request from each WG on how they see themselves with fundraising and their attitudes toward it
3) Request from each WG to give ideas towards a centralized budget versus a decentralized budget
4) Request from each WG to analyze outside fundraising of affinity groups
5) Request from each WG to think up other financial models outside of fiscal sponsorship

Lady: Is it possible to present the idea?

F: Yes.

Sage: (33:33-36:41) Talking about the formation of Spokes Council. When they made the documentation of Spokes Council for a lot of people it meant the camp. It was the camp.

F: Give the floor to Lady about the budget process. Click here for a look at her proposal.

Lady (40:00)

1. Headquarters: Where info can be obtained, books can be stored, a stable environment people can visit. A space. Thinking of it more as a store front. Whatever they look like they could move in.
2. A decentralized way of raising funds. Something like kickstarter. She has a company that does this.
3. Create an app so we can stay more connected within the movement.

Breaking out into groups for 15 minutes.(45:00-01:10)

Minutes: Our budget needs are much smaller. We’re in favor of outside fundraising and lean toward the decentralization of funds.

Translation: We don’t really have many needs for money except for special projects. Those are usually done through affinity groups. We’re open to fundraising. Centralization is easy for accountability but for ongoing costs it should be diversified. I like kickstarter.

OWS En Espanol: We don’t have a lot of needs. We have leaned more toward working with other organizations that already have space and equipment and doing a lot of barter. We advocate for a barter network and work around money. We lean more toward decentralized, like a kickstarter network. As long as it’s being funneled through an OWS initiative. Barter networks already exist.  Barter.net exists.

Town Planning: We have no expenditures that could be deemed regular or reoccuring. We occassionally spend money on stuff like tents, lumber etc. But those would be one-off things. When money is needed we don’t want to feel like there is no financial support. Regarding Lady’s proposal we could get behind the kickstarter portion.

F: This feedback will go back to the proposers.

Meditation: These questions were very difficult without context. We had no information to judge prior spending to compare it to. Gene said centralization but we all had different ideas. We had a question about who writes the checks. Who gives out the money?

Haywood: The expenditures are listed online from October 1 to about a week ago with the stuff that went down at the office. We have to signatories: Bobby and Pete. They only get to write checks that GA or Spokes determines. We are not a decision-making body. We are bound to what Spokes and GA says.

Meditation: Decentralized is empowering. We’re afraid that decentralized groups might be linked to people who can generate a lot of money and may

Accounting (1:26) We are sponsored by a non-profit.

Picture the Homeless: When people don’t get transparency people they think there are lies. We need to put this stuff out on paper because not everybody has access to the internet. We need to see this in writing. What’s not in writing is rotten.Put it in writing for us and disseminate it.

F: We need to know who’s really responsible.

Accounting: We have four of us present.

Sage: (1:29) Pointing out he’s never seen any of the four present take a receipt and give money.

F: Making the point of white priviledge and how white people tend to have greater access to resources. (1:30)

Anti-Racism allies: We felt it difficult to have this discussion without the discussion of values and priorities and criteria for allocation. We have real concerns that decentralization could lead to really unequal access to funds and resources. We were thinking of ways we could balance centralized and decentralized. We also spoke about transparency.

Facilitation (with visitors from other groups): We did a strawpoll. The group was well divided and nobody was completely in favor of having a completely decentralized funding. It was mixed. There was concern of funders influencing the movement. We’re more interested in a public space. People liked the idea of the app but wanted to go to tech about that. Not just class but sexy vs non-sexy projects. Facilitation isn’t sexy; DA is sexy.

DA and five other working grouops:(1:38) We talked about autonomous spending and fundraising. Whether donors could pick which working group they wanted to donate to. What working groups would get what. And give attention to less sexy working groups. To have a budget it’s important that we have a vision. We’d have to establish where we want to be in six months and based on that have points of solidarity in spending. We talked about affinity groups having no transparency.

Occupy the Youth: Doesn’t spend a lot of money. If we could fundraise we could raise a little money.

Anthony: Working groups should be able to fundraise. Maybe take 75% of fundraising and put 25% into the General Fund.

Outreach: We’re really interdependent on all the other groups. We’re by ourselves and don’t really need much; but as we come together we become stronger. I see issues with a decentralized fund. We help to bring in money to OWS. We bring in human resources. It’s a strange question for us when our relationship is so dependent on everybody elses.

Lady: I’m going to bring this back when we talk about finance.

Haywood: I’m running bail tonight and have to step out. Wants to know who understands the fundraising concerns. (1:43) #OccupyWallStreet was founded on anarchist principals. The money that comes in is supposed to be spent by the will of the collective. An affinity group has a shared affinity with what we do but they are not accountable to GA. If that’s the case you cannot speak in the name of #OccupyWallStreet and you cannot have access to General Fund money. We’re operating on an all or nothing model. (1:45)

Town Planning: These things can be weighted and valued. It doesn’t need to be either or.

F: Need for transparency. What are our priorities? A need for balance. Safeguards for equity. Permbanks, bartering and other needs to get us the resources we need. It doesn’t have to be cash. Good principals to build this proposal on.

F: Ashley can’t be here tonight with her proposal: Democracy in Spokes Council:

1) – All proposals must be mentioned one meeting before the meeting it is to be voted on so there is sufficient time for community members to take part in an actual democratic process. If someone from the WG or CA is unable to attend the prior meeting, they must inform Facilitation or another WG/CA and ask them to inform the SC of their proposal

2) – All proposals must be posted on the NYCGA.net website at least 48 hours prior to them being voted on.

3) – All Working Groups and Caucuses must be notified directly at least 48 hours prior to the proposal being voted on. A system will be arranged where an email can be sent at one time to a designated point person from each Working Group and Caucus.

The principles of solidarity and democracy that the Occupy movement stands for asks that we enroll as much community buy-in, responsibility, outreach and collaboration as possible in our voting and proposal process. We feel this proposal will help inspire just that.

The most popular chant on our OWS marches is “Show me what democracy looks! This is what democracy looks like!” In an effort to show the world what real democracy looks like, we must give as many community members, WGs, CAs as possible the chance to be involved.

Ensuring that decisions being made are done so in a just and open process is what our ideals stand for.

Straw poll on the first part: 21 in favor:

1) – All proposals must be mentioned one meeting before the meeting it is to be voted on so there is sufficient time for community members to take part in an actual democratic process. If someone from the WG or CA is unable to attend the prior meeting, they must inform Facilitation or another WG/CA and ask them to inform the SC of their proposal

F: We just wanted to give Ashley the benefit of feedback since she can’t be here.

Sage: concerned about the rigidness.

F: Strawpoll: Concerns about the first point: 2

F: 2) – All proposals must be posted on the NYCGA.net website at least 48 hours prior to them being voted on. Mostly positive responses.

F: 3) – All Working Groups and Caucuses must be notified directly at least 48 hours prior to the proposal being voted on. A system will be arranged where an email can be sent at one time to a designated point person from each Working Group and Caucus. (mixed reaction)

F: (1:56) Moving to an emergency proposal from Accounting.

DA: We’re talking about somone in jail; that should have went first.

F: Lisa: I’ll take the heat for making that call. I appreciate you bringing that up.

Haywood: Who do we bail out? There was an action in Williamsburg that was not an OWS event. It was a party for activists. They moved into an abandoned building on Bedford. Within a half hour police showed up and there was a confrontation with police. Four of them were arrested. Three of them are out. The people in Williamsburg posted their own bail. How do we feel about this? There were occupiers there. Do we bail those people out? Can we break spokes and let anyone say what they feel?

Sage: POI There were no arrests at the building. They were arrested on a march.

Negesti: POI: To be an OWS event has to get approval from DA.

POI: It was hashtagged as an Occuparty.

Lady: I was arrested at Zuccotti Park and it wasn’t an action.

Haywood: The Occupation was an action.

F: This will be a formal decision-making process and we will be working as Spokes. (2:06 –2:24)

Brook steps in to facilitate.

Discussion to address bailing out people (2:36)

F: In order to move forward we need a proposal from a working group that we want to bail these individuals out. (2:38-2:46)

Negesti steps in to help facilitate.

Town Planning: Asks Negesti if she should step down from facilitation because she has vouched for this person.

Negesti: I have a very proven record of not being partial.

POP: Only operational working groups can bring forth a proposal.

F: Class War and Direct Action with their proposal (2:49)

Class War: (2:50) We believe if an #OccupyWallStreet is involved in an action they should be supported by the #OccupyWallStreet community.

F: Defining an emergency proposal.

POP: That only applies to General Assembly

F: Taking stack

Question: Who is this person and how did the arrest happen?

Class War: His name is Ellis. He’s from PA. He’s part of Class War and does a lot of work in PA, doing work against Congress. He came back two weeks ago. He was arrested at the Occuparty, which was not an OWS event. I don’t know the circumstances of his arrest. When I was arrested I was charged with inciting a riot and I was arrested by myself. What is on paper is not really what happened.

Town Planning: What’s the charge? What’s the bail amount?

Class War: We don’t know. Around $25,000.

POI: Up until he goes for arraignment his bail amount may be changed.

POI: The arraignment has not happened and a bail amount has not been set. This is to deal with a hypothetical situation.

Town Planning: Not knowing what the charge might be means we can’t make a decision (2:57) Leisure Caucus involves OWS people but that means nothing. Why is this so time sensitive?

Class War: When he gets arraigned we want to know whether or not we can bail him out.

POP: Back and forth

Education Empowerment: This is almost a blank check. How do we know this is an OWS participant?

Class War: He used to live in the park with us.

Education Empowerment: No. How do we define it?

Class War: Someone who participates in OWS events.

Meditation: Will OWS bail someone out for murder?

Class War: We have principals of solidarity. We’re a non-violent movement. So if you’re charged with murder we can’t be your judge. They will charge you with things you didn’t do.

POP: Everybody is speaking out of turn.

F: We only have six minutes left.

Town Planning: Bail is decided not by the police department or the DA. They are set by an impartial judge.

Safer Spaces: Why is it just one person?

Class War: That is the one person that is part of OWS. (3:04)

Safer Spaces: As a movement we cannot be accountable to actions in our private lives. We were told to not stream this because it’s illegal and it’s not an OWS function.

Class War: Tabled it and will bring it back.

Announcements 10:31

A gentleman is going around to donate to a cause.But if we can’t pull that together we won’t be worthy of his money. There’s going to be a law saying  protesting is illegal.

DA: Tomorrow we have an action at 5:30 Grand Central.

2, I propose that if a meeting is to be moved to another location there must be a minimum of 12 hours notice posted on the websites.  If this is not possible, the meeting will be rescheduled for another day.

Reasons behind these proposals

1a, I know many people who either have a hard time going out at night in the winter or it is impossible for them to do so hampering their ability to participate in the movement, including me.

1b, to have meetings at different times of the day will bring in new participants.

1c, other occupations have meeting times that vary.

2a, there is no reason that weather should have to hamper participation in meetings.  To move the meeting to an indoor location that would allow more people to come to the meeting is only useful if you can make the plan to come.

2b, to have some indoor meetings will bring in new participants (see 1b).

~~
There is no greater fallacy than the belief that aims and purposes are one thing, while methods and tactics are another. This conception is a potent menace to social regeneration. All human experience teaches that methods and means cannot be separated from the ultimate aim. The means employed become, through individual habit and social practice, part and parcel of the final purpose; they influence it, modify it, and presently the aims and means become identical. From the day of my arrival in Russia I felt it, at first vaguely, then ever more consciously and clearly. The great and inspiring aims of the Revolution became so clouded with and obscured by the methods used by the ruling political power that it was hard to distinguish what was temporary means and what final purpose. Psychologically and socially the means necessarily influence and alter the aims. The whole history of man is continuous proof of the maxim that to divest one’s methods of ethical concepts means to Sink into the depths of utter demoralization. In that lies the real tragedy of the Bolshevik philosophy as applied to the Russian Revolution. May this lesson not be in vain.

No revolution can ever succeed as a factor of liberation unless the MEANS used to further it be identical in spirit and tendency with the PURPOSES to be achieved. Revolution is the negation of the existing, a violent protest against man’s inhumanity to man with all the thousand and one slaveries it involves. It is the destroyer of dominant values upon which a complex system of injustice, oppression, and wrong has been built up by ignorance and brutality. -It is the
herald of NEW VALUES, ushering in a transformation of the basic relations of man to man, and of man to society. It is not a mere reformer, patching up some social evils; not a mere changer of forms and institutions; not only a re-distributor of social well-being. It is all that, yet more, much more. It is, first and foremost, the TRANSVALUATOR, the bearer of new values. It is the great TEACHER Of the NEW ETHICS, inspiring man with a new concept of life and its
manifestations in social relationships. It is the mental and spiritual regenerator.

Its first ethical precept is the identity of means used and aims sought. The ultimate end of all revolutionary social change is to establish the sanctity of human life, the dignity of man, the right of every human being to liberty and well being. Unless this be the essential aim of revolution, violent social changes would have no justification. For external social alterations can be, and have been, accomplished by the normal processes of evolution. Revolution, on the contrary. signifies not mere external change, but internal, basic, fundamental change. That internal change of concepts and ideas, permeating ever-larger social strata, finally culminates in the violent upheaval known as revolution. Shall that climax reverse the process of transvaluation, turn against it, betray it? That is what happened in Russia. On the contrary, the revolution itself must quicken and further the process of which it is the cumulative expression; its main mission is to inspire it, to carry it to greater heights, give it fullest scope for expression. Only thus is revolution true to itself.

Applied in practice it means that the period of the actual revolution, the so-called transitory stage, must be the introduction, the prelude to the new social conditions. It is the threshold to the NEW LIFE, the new HOUSE OF MAN AND HUMANITY As such it must he of the spirit of the new life, harmonious with the construction of the new edifice.

To-day is the parent of to-morrow. The present casts its shadow far into the future. That is the law of life, individual and social. Revolution that divests itself of ethical valuesthereby lays the foundation of injustice, deceit, and oppression for the future society. The means used to prepare the future become its cornerstone. Witness the tragic condition of Russia. The methods of State centralization have paralysed individual initiative and effort;the tyranny of the dictatorship has cowed the people into slavish submission and all but extinguished the fires of liberty; organized terrorism has depraved and brutalized the masses and stifled every idealistic aspiration; institutionalized murder has cheapened human life,and all sense of the dignity of man and the value of life has been eliminated; coercion at everystep has made effort bitter, labour a punishment, has turned the whole of existence into a scheme of mutual deceit, and has revived the lowest and most brutal instincts of man. A sorry heritage to begin a new life of freedom and brotherhood.

It cannot be sufficiently emphasized that revolution is in vain unless inspired by its ultimate ideal. Revolutionary methods must be in tune with revolutionary aims. The means used to further the revolution must harmonize with its purposes. In short, the ethical values which the revolution is to establish in the new society must be initiated with the revolutionary activities of the so-called transitional period. The latter can serve as a real and dependable bridge to the better life only if built of the same material as the life to be achieved. Revolution is the mirror of the coming day; it is the child that is to be the Man of To-morrow.