Notes from the
Occupy Delaware
General Assembly (GA)
Open Forum Meeting
2012-03-17
Spencer Plaza, Wilmington
Occupations and assemblies are the basis of
a new global justice movement
to confront a global crisis.
~~~~~~~~~~
Meeting started: 1415 hr
Newark city council is proposing to support reversing Citizens United. Write letters to the other city councilmen starting Tuesday — Ezra Tempko will be introducing legislation “Corporations are not persons” at the city council meeting at 6 or 7. Steve will have more details
See Forum, and FB.
Re the language we use when we do protests and what impressions other people get. On Tuesday we marched through the courtyard area of Chase bank chanting “Funk the bank.” Some people thought it was something else. The turns off some people. There are a lot of misconceptions about Occupy, a lot of positive and also a lot of negative. We don’t want to be marginalized and dismissed, the way we convey ourselves to the public is important. We want to invite and engage people in, have passion but not alienate people.
At the St. Patty’s day march it was wonderful, but people reacted negatively to the mic check.Though the mic check was great.
Today at the protest a woman came up to us and was worried that we’d get arrested because of bad language, even though we were saying funk.
There is a law in Delaware you can get arrested for bad language in public. It’s an excuse they can use. How can we be engaging and make it into a chant. Hey Hey Ho Ho local banking is the way to go.
There are plenty of things we can chant, positively.
How do we ingrain that chant? Dump the banks.
There might be people who think we do need to be in their face and they should not be silenced. Like the signs on the camp we’ve left it up to individuals. It’s up to the group, it’s their voice. Though you’re standing there being identified as part of Occupy.
But individuals will do whatever they want to do. But we don’t have to repeat it.
The anger and passion should be communicated, but we have to think about our local climate and how we can adjust what we’re doing to the climate of Delaware.
There are people who can really relate to strong language, there are two groups of people, some audiences we can reach with strong language.
We should take any sort of interaction and engagement as a way to educate.
People will only see what they want to see.
People do actually change their minds. The biggest thing we can expect is to get people to re-think their ideas.
We handed out balloons at today’s action it’s a great way to engage people.
Really depressing facts on candy, “Death Candy,” engaged people.
If that were true then therapists should give up.
In Delaware and not anywhere else, we don’t have the education outreach, a lot of chanting and yelling. When that was going on minds did change.
I think there’s more of an issue than just banks. Not a whole lot is being done about waste in the Department of Defense.
I don’t feel I have any access to this group.
Welcome back Chris, and Rio!!
I interact with people at Rodney Square and they don’t know what Occupy is but I gave them some basic info and they were really interested. We can pass out flyers to them.
I did educating in RS every day for 3 hours a day for 4 months until we set up this camp.
No one is stopping you from doing that.
Dissent don’t attack.
I do not remember you asking you asking at GA or action meetings for help doing this.
I was working at the Department of the Navy as an engineer until I was laid off. Government civilians making hundred plus thousand dollars not doing anything. Research labs waste a ton of money. I don’t know if we can protest that.
I’m not sure what the actual issue is that you are presenting.
Government waste.
I don’t know what the Occupy movement overall has to say about waste.
We haven’t really talked about that in the Occupy movement.
What’s the reason why they are spending so much money on something that doesn’t do anything.
Job security, they know this research isn’t going anywhere.
You use it or you lose it mentality.
I agree with what you are saying. Friend says he could complete one week’s work in one day. Bored, asks for work.
Encourage you to attend Action and Demand committee meetings.
I saw you were trying to do something in Newark, I’m from UD and good luck with that. We tried to unionize grad students and they don’t support free speech.
I wanted to mention that I have been working with CT Lawrence Butler, founder of Food Not Bombs. He does workshops on Value Based Consensus and we have a tentative date for April 21st and 22nd in Philadelphia for one.
Can you tell me what VBC is?
Value Based Consensus. The group defines what their values are.
It sounds like you want to connect all the things you do with your value.
Something’s been bothering me. We should be passing the hat around.
Agreed, let’s just do it.
Something has been on my mind.
Lady in Boston, microfinancing, ways to fight the banks the only way for us to over come that is to make them obsolete so they’re just gone. That’s what the Demands committee is doing, they’re also obsessed by this.
This goes along with investing locally, it’d be a good teach-in, microfinance, microcredit, land banking.
I went to a training, Alternatives to Violence Project, they go into prisons and do intensive training teaching conflict resolution, experientially in a group setting. It would be an idea, we could get the training at Spencer. If people are interested.
It is going to be really nice this Wednesday so let’s have GA here. [Generally positive response.] It’s good mojo. So it will be.
Conflict almost always happens because of personality conflict and not so much as a result of misunderstanding. Lack of skill in managing their interactions.
Remember the group process principles. Conflict is something we’ll always have. Conflict in and of itself is normal natural human behavior, it has to happen for growth to occur. The trick is, to keep your opinions based on your own experience and not attack others for theirs. Teaching people how to dissent without attacking is very tricky.
Conflict is to be embraced. People get upset when they don’t feel they are being heard, for different reasons. The consensus structure that CT teaches is a step-by-step way of dealing with conflict.
If you’re coming from the heart all that’s taken care of.
Not if your heart is in a very different place.
We should tag on Respect the process and respect each other, to the meeting guidelines.
Town-hall meetings have been well attended, generally. There is a tent-city town hall for campers, et al., Sunday at 2. Thursday night we had people throwing rubbish and bricks on us from the balcony. People on security dealt with it. It wasn’t political.
There has been a huge improvement over the past couple weeks. The security is working.
As we build up security and we get get each night covered, then at least on the weekends we can get two people on.
Just having people here randomly the word gets out, is effective. Especially during the witching hours, Friday’s…
What if security person has a camera? There are plenty of cameras around this site!
Meeting ended: 1536 hr