NYC General Assembly # Occupy Wall Street

In the interest of transparency, I think we need a clear explanation of what occurred in the decision to remove the Demands WG. Was this an attempt to take over OWS in some way, or was it a more innocent matter of frustration with the consensus process? Was this a consensus decision of the GA? I would like to hear from both sides of things. Hopefully there will be more information available when the Thursday 10/20/11 minutes are posted.

… and by the way, am I the only person posting on the new forums????

This group is beginning to work toward someday presenting proposals for possible demands and demands platforms to the G.A. A Demands working group has every right to exist., and just because you don’t agree with the ideas of the group, that does not give anyone the right to delete the group! Who made this decision????? This is not the process.!!!! This issue is much more complex than making one demand or not making any. I can’t believe the behavior that I’m seeing right now.
I’ve been coming to the park since the 22nd of September. I think the movement has been and will continue to be successful with or without “demands.” I think Demands CAN be one part of the movement. And I don’t think we are limited to making only policy demands, or only ONE demand. I am obviously not the only one who feels this way. This deletion is very disturbing. I need a better answer than, some people disagree with the group. WHY the group deleted and by whom. If a structure and process you create and support produces something, (a group) you don’t like, I would hope you would still trust that process to be able to cope with the work that group produces. I don;t understand, yesterday, I was in the park and asked to be made an admin so that I could post the time and place of the next group meeting. Today the the group was deleted. Our group may have some kinks to work out, but we should be allowed to do that work. What is going on????

I agree there needs to be a place to discuss thing we would like to see happen – but why not use the group for that specific topic

all of the ’demands’ you would come up with should be discussed in one of these groups relevant to the given topic- that way the experts (and those interested) will be able to see it and people who don’t care about that specific demand will not have to read about it (I think this is the point of the working groups, isn’t it?)

If one of the demands doesn’t fall into a specific group, just create a new group.

Also – having a general ’demands’ group will discourage people from using the specific groups for economic / teaching / politics.

I didn’t delete the group- just my two cents

A related question is how the “demands” group was ever formed, and how working groups are formed in general.

A demands group organized with the sole intent of bringing one demand to the GA. That GA was to give more authority to Federal Government, further expanding its role and our dependancy on it by taxing what we call the 1% in order to create jobs by rebuilding bridges roads, education, healthcare, etc. A noble gesture, but inappropriate technique. By demanding tax code regulation as our demand, we choose a short-term solution to a long-term problem. In that moment, we are settling for the talking points of MSNBC, CNN, FOX, ABC and alike. Tax reform is something the 1% talks about on the media all the time. In fact (cooincidentally) Buffet, Obama, and the Democrats are all over the tax the rich campaign. It’s a very sensitive issue which is why we have all started to define this movement individually and by our collective ACTION within sub-groups. In time, perhaps we will come to demands that we all agree upon. But the purpose of the demands group seemingly wasn’t to openly discuss demands, but rather to start with passing this one demand. Hey, we all have our priorities, so I can’t fault anyone, but that’s what happened. How the group got deleted, I don’t know but I’ve heard the rumors about this demands group from so many people so I’m not suprised. I participated in this demands group at a meeting a few days ago where it was turned down 14 to 11, whether to create a timeline to make This specific demand to the GA.

If we were about to make one specific demand at this stage I would start with something like we would like to see the states pass a constitutional amendment like:

no corporation doing business in this [any] state shall pay or contribute or offer consent or agree to pay tribute directly or indirectly any money, property, free service of its officers, employees or anything of value, to any political party, organization, committee, or individual for any political purpose whatsoever or for the purpose of influencing legislation of any kind or to promote or defeat the candidacy of any person for nomination appointment or election to any political office. nor should any corporation donate to, own or trade stock, product or service, ownership, or serve on the board or interest of a corporation which any elected or nominated candidate has a interest (financial or any other), including subsidiary, parent and shell company relationships

From everything I’ve read, and what I’ve heard(tho I count that less), the demands group was/is not going through a process of determining what demands should be. Instead it had demands it was interested in pushing forward and was trying to get those approved by the GA, not taking input on what those demands should be. I will be attending the meeting scheduled for tomorrow because I definitely have an interest in talking about possible demands. I hope I have misinterpreted what this group has been about.

I thought this was the Accountability and Transparency group…instead of talking about process this conversation has devolved into an argument about the substance of a particular group/proposal. In a regular discussion board some of these replies would be categorized as “off-topic” and would be moved or deleted.

This goes against the process. I joined this group last week, as did hundreds of others, two days ago. This group exists to discuss issues around DEMANDS; the history of demands in revolutionary movements, methods of and approaches to demands; and to collect data on possible demands (a subgroup of this group is trying to form to gear up to begin working with media and conducting outreach; and to formulate demand proposals to be brought before the G.A.

Again, this group has every right to exist. A demands group does not discourage people from joining other groups.

I am very interested in understanding te COLLECTIVE process that went into deciding this group cannot exist, or be visible. Since it is not on the website, we cannot list the date and time of our meeting, which more than 100 people wanted to know. That is not transparecy.

If you disagree that there should be demands, that’s fine, and it may consistently be voted against in the G.A.

BUT THIS DELETION I PROBLEMATIC. It points to the possibility that a small number of people have the final and autonomous decision about what sorts of groups get to exist in OWS. That goes completely against the structure and process
Chavisa Woods