Occupy Delaware
GA Meeting Notes
Spencer Plaza
2012-05-23

Meeting start: 1910 hr

ACTIONS

May 31, Return to Prudent Banking action, march to JP Morgan, mapped out, stop a couple places on the way and do street theater, thinking of “gamblers anaonymous” theme. Do the prep on May 28, 12pm at the site. After that, it’s Plato’s Republic!

JP Morgan’s debacle is just the tip of the iceberg and they’re a great target. RuthAnn’s idea, do it with humor, and the tipping point, at which government officials actually do something. We’re accelerating to that point and we’re going to push it over. Invite all the local bankers to a “GA” GA. We don’t really expect them to come…

We need the group to participate.

Move the Action meeting from Tuesday night to Wednesday night after the GA to make it easier for people to attend. So twinkled and approved.

Wilmington Rally was almost rained out, the 4 hardcore, and they had a great time with honks, middle fingers, and couple “get a jobs.” Be there next week! Delaware Ave, at the I-95 overpass, 4:30 pm. [http://g.co/maps/h9wng]

MWTKUO

ACLU filed our counter-counter-claim today. We have a copy for review (it’s 30 pages), let Jen know and she’ll add you to the email list. We’re in the discovery process, a normal part of any court case. The lawyers are negotiating the discovery terms. When that’s done we can report what the terms are. Some of us are affected personally by this lawsuit and are meeting regularly. If anybody has questions ask afterwards, we can have a meeting after to discuss.

DART Bus

Buses being removed from the King St. side of Rodney Square. Personal observations of a bus ride on May 18. It’s not just the King St. side buses that are affected. The 11 St. is also affected, routes, 6, 2, 12 etc., no longer stop in front of the Wilm. Trust building. Bus riders are confused and are left off at the wrong locations so they can’t catch connecting buses. A man in a spotter car gave me a ride to the nearest stop, but there was no bench where he dropped me off, and standing was very difficult for handicapped. Some kind of violence was said have happened, an altercation broke out between passengers and driver near a temporary stop near 4th St., and that day an old man fell in the road at a stop on 8th and was taken to the ER. Somebody is going to be badly hurt or killed using these makeshift temporary stops, resulting in a lawsuit. ODE is recommended to organize a protest in front of the law offices of Young, Conaway, Stargatt & Taylor as these maggots caused this whole mess in the first place.

I had an experience with them, they’re just not nice in general, maybe it’s all the changes. DART bus drivers themselves seem to be confused, not knowing where they’re going. They’ve really screwed up this city. It’s a helter-skelter mess.

Somebody donated markers and poster board. But somebody took half of it away. So we’re back to no markers again. Please bring them back.

GARDEN

Score one for the garden!

Ray and Stoney and I were hanging at the site yesterday when Sophia Hanson (we met her on Community Project Day at the garden) walked up to ask if we wanted some tomato seedlings for 5th and N. Harrison and of course we said yes. As we were chatting we mentioned our next step is to get a fence for it, and Sophia pointed out that since it’s city property the city is responsible for putting in a fence. At this point Stanley Kozicki, Projects Manager, Parks and Recreation, happened to be walking through the plaza and Sophia flagged him down, saying he’s the man we need to talk to. So we filled him in on the details, showed him the CAD drawing in the sales packet we gave Stoney, the estimate, that we’d install it ourselves, and he pointed out it’d be better to get commercial grade fencing, and there is money in the budget available…Sophia, Stan, and Stoney went across the street to get the plants, and the last I saw (I had to leave) they were discussing details, Stan was taking notes. We might be getting fence from the city. We checked on Lowes and got nowhere. But Sophia will get back to us.

CHICAGO

Just got back yesterday. It started around Tuesday, a couple of build-up events. Wednesday night house got raided and they were detained without cause, NDAA, accused of terrorism. He had a beer making kit in his house, accused of making molotov cocktails. Bail is set at $1.5 million each. So get rid of your beer making kits. Jobs with Justice [http://www.jwj.org/], National Nurses [http://www.nationalnursesunited.org/], affinity groups, paid for buses to bring people from across the country. Thursday night there was a convergence at a church, Friday morning, Saturday, the Nurses convention, focusing on taxing Wall St. Tom Morello [http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/tom-morello-gets-fired-up-at-chicago-nurses-rally-20120518]. They had a permit for the event and the march, which were revoked, the permit for the event was restored. Small marches continued, which grew into large marches, ultimately 2500 people, shutting down a fair part of the city. Saturday we gathered at a park near the mayor’s house, 2000 people, marched through the suburbs and sat in at the mayor’s house, for an hour. No major arrests up to then. Anticapitalist marches started simultaneously spinning around the city and coverging, from 6:30 pm to 1 pm. Confusing the police, breaking through police lines and shutting down bridges. It was ridiculous. A lot of minor arrests and de-arrests. Sunday was the big day, the veterans’ day near McCormick Place, say about 30,000 people, Michigan Ave. was filled. The veterans symbolically returned their medals. Snipers, SWAT teams, National Guard. It was half veteran and half Afghani activists who gave testimony on how they’ve been affected by the 10-year conflict. They understand it’s not American citizens but the underlying capitalist structure. The only way to get it to stop is for us to unite. The veterans asked the crowd to quietly disperse, which of course did not happen. The riot squads moved in, they did not use tear gas or sound cannons to the Chicago police’s credit. There were at least 45 arrests on Sunday, 60 over the weekend. One guy got knocked out, 30 stitches. A lot of people got trampled in the crush. Monday a small march and sit-in at Obama’s headquarters and the Chicago Board of Trade, Federal Reserve, ICE building. It we overall good. Churches gave us space to sleep.

Were there 99% Spring people? From my understanding, no. They usually don’t touch those fundamental issues. Amy Goodman covered a lot of this. [http://www.democracynow.org/2012/5/21/no_nato_no_war_us_veterans] Veterans returning their medals was absolutely heartwrenching.

ANNOUNCEMENTS

We got an email from Nzinga Debrick re the garden [http://www.occupyde.org/2012/05/slideshow-garden-project/] and she said it’s fabulous and they’re all very happy.

Wilmington in Transition movie night, tomorrow, DIRT, The Movie. [http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/dirt-the-movie/] Westminster Presbyterian Church, 7 pm, Rodney Chapel meeting room. [http://wpc.org/]

Thanks everybody who has registered to vote! [https://registertovote.elections.delaware.gov/voterreg/TermsAgreement] We will continue our drive through Friday. It looks like the Green Party will be on the ballot. Talk to Andy and Bernie. Thanks for your love!

First-time voters, we’re still eligible to sign them up. They’re a good resource for us. Occupy is having an impact. People are starting to slowly understand and our approach has been wonderful, a real shining light for the rest of the country.

I was here on Saturday for the Grand Prix with my Occupy button, people stopped me and registered to vote just because of the Occupy values. And the cookies were delicious!

It was good to see Bernie in Delaware City (where the cookies came from).

Yesterday I was at a June Eisley’s birthday celebration, a wonderful stalwart in the peace movement. A couple people there said they didn’t know what we’re doing over here. Perhaps the word isn’t getting out well enough. Temperature check on using our distribution lists to distribute a newsletter periodically. We want people to feel there are all kinds of ways to be involved and that’s something we can work on.

I brought heirloom tomato plants again. [See Laura.]

We need a pamphlet to hand out.

The Spanish Indignados [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Spanish_protests] came back in force recently, very Occupy-y and Arab Spring-y, an example of the bubble bursting and boom 100,000 people on the street. Montreal has 200,000 students marching on the streets.[http://www.infowars.com/police-state-law-banning-protest-leads-to-violence-in-montreal/] 75,000 people showed up in Chicago. [http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/natosummit/chinews-nato-summit-protest-final-da-20120521-001,0,5273451.htmlstory] There’s some serious fcking movement so take heart in that. [http://www.democracynow.org/2012/5/23/headlines#5236][http://www.democracynow.org/2012/5/23/headlines#5235]

Occupy Student Debt [http://occupystudentdebt.com/], Kyle McCarthy, who wants to go after UD on May 26, ship us balls and chains for the protest. This weekend is graduation, so people will be gone by then. They want to get people at the school. Commencement speaker, Soledad O’Brien, and big action at Sallie Mae headquarters right down the street. [https://www1.salliemae.com/about/news_info/newsreleases/070110.htm] There’s a FB event which everybody will be invited to. [https://www.facebook.com/events/231740240270141/] It was the banks before, 25% students can’t pay their loans. Who’s going to bail them out. Mommy and Daddy will be on the streets! [https://www.facebook.com/studentlabor]

Occupy National Gathering, September 17, planning a big action. Co-coordinated with Occupy Caravan [http://www.occupycaravan.webs.com/] to bring people in a slow-roll caravan from the west, converging June 30 in Philly. After July 4 marching to Wall Street from Philly.

If anyone has need seen Dassi’s FB post, she’s been at Occupy Krakow, Poland, night 2 for them. Downtown Krakow. [https://www.facebook.com/occupykrakow]

We have a major national event coming to Delaware in July, Firefly, big outdoor concert. Occupy Dover thinking about Occupy Firefly, an opportunity, we’ll stake out some space we could share. Around the 3rd weekend in July. Thousands of young people camping there, chance to outreach and inform about what Occupy really is. 50,000 people to reach. [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/02/firefly-music-festival-lineup-black-keys-the-killers_n_1396213.html]

We need to refocus on banks for our events. The big parasites that are killing this country.

People want to know what we’re doing to help people.

In 3 weeks is the DuPont Clifford Brown Jazz Festival [also sponsored by Bank of America], and opportunity to reach thousands of people. [http://inwilmingtonde.com/festivals/cliffordbrownjazzfest/]

Our actions do focus only on the banks.

We each have our reasons for being here, if we’re confusing people so what, we are effecting change! That’s what we’re here for, to help everyone feel empowered enough to effect change on the things they want to change. There are core issues but not all our demands relate to the banking industry. That’s the beauty of the Occupy movement.

I’ve shared the same frustrations but Occupy is an idea big enough to embrace all the issues. A community garden combats oligarchical families. All these things add up. Even though I want to see direct assaults to key things and groups, it all ties together and that’s why Occupy works, it addresses the web. Griftopia, Matt Taibbi [http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/exclusive-excerpt-america-on-sale-from-matt-taibbis-griftopia-20101018] about the system. We have been getting together to learn and discuss these basic economic issues; the Economic Affinity group.

We tend to grandstand at the end of the meeting and I don’t want to do that. A few weeks ago Michelle 2 said we don’t have enough actions and people have stepped up to the plate and started to do more actions. The big message is that there is a large group of people in this country who are just fcking pissed off, this is an awareness raising, pockets of people are finding things they can relate to and seeing they do have a voice and a say. With actions and demands and using our voices we want to effect change, period. It’ll take many different ways and it will converge into one big fluid thing like the marches in Chicago.

There’s another national thing happening in September, the Women’s March in DC. The political arena is going to get really ugly when it comes to women, the war on women and now they’re trying to split women, stay-at-home moms vs. not. So I’ll be planning something to get us down to DC.

My favorite chant from this weekend, What Do We Want? Slow Reform! When Do We Want It? Eventually!

Let’s not forget Citizens United, which overarches everything.

From an outreach perspective, focusing on many things will grow our numbers.

We have resources to bring to bear on banking issues. Any reform that was started has ended, so we have to rethink ways to effect change in the banks for individuals. To cause great pain to the banks without legislation. BoA and Chase, and JP Morgan can tip over at any moment. All we need is to get the first domino over and they all go, without any legislation being enacted.

Think about a vision of what life should be like, there won’t be a silver bullet for change. We want to see how life will be in terms of a better life for everybody, in terms of the way people treat each other. We’ll have to be a lot more focused on each other and not so much on ourselves, so that the cycle is broken. We have to do that by raising the values of our culture.

Chicago, the main focus was the war machine. So they didn’t lose the forest for the trees. There’s not just just one taproot, they’re all tied together. If we just look at one tree we miss the forest.

All these things are one problem, it’s the capitalistic, plutocratic oligarchy ruling elite not caring about the people. It all stems back to over-the-cliff capitalism. We’re worse of now we’re reduced to numbers, not humans.

Be careful of blaming capitalism when what we have here is anything but. We don’t have capitalism here.

One percent of the population controls all the wealth, the rest starve. It’s not true capitalism.

That is true capitalism! Which is all about maximizing profit.

Continue this discussion at the end of the meeting?

We need to discuss what we’d like to take to the National Gathering. Just trying to move it along.

The international transition town movement is Occupy Your Corner, it’s restructuring our society at all levels. In almost every way they are aspiring to the same goals.

Josh for Mayor of Wilmington!

TEN-MINUTE DISCUSSION

Topic: Each who wants share your top 3 things to take to NG. And we’ll winnow it down over the next couple weeks.

The topics that were developed:

# Return to Prudential Banking Act
# Glass-Steagall
# End the Fed
# Gold Standard
# Banking is a Public Utility
# Delaware’s Role in Enabling Corrupt Capitalism

# Replace Capitalism with Economic Democracy
# Economic Equality
# Fair Taxes
# Full Employment
# Salary Cap for CEOs

# Oligarchy, Corporatism
# Military-Industrial Complex
# Military Occupation (Homeland and Abroad)

# Climate Change
# Corporate Control of Basic Necessities for Life (Food, Water, Energy)
# Transparency of Production Processes for Commodities

# Housing is a Human Right
# Hospitals are Places of Care, Not Financial Institutions
# Public Healthcare

# Women’s Rights: ERA
# Restoration of Rights for Former Offenders
# Proportional Representation
# Instant Runoff Voting
# Money Out of Politics
# Reverse Citizens United

Meeting adjourned: 2116 hr