Occupy Delaware
Wednesday GA
Meeting Notes
Spencer Plaza
2012-06-13
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Meeting start: 1920 hr
10-MINUTE DISCUSSION TOPIC
Proposal: National Gathering issues discussion.
Return to Prud Bank
Glass-Steagall
End the Fed
Gold Std
Banking is a Public Utility
Delaware’s Role in Supporting Corrupt Banking
Replace Capitalism with Economic Democracy
Economic Equality
Fair Taxation
Full Employment
Sal Cap for CEOs
Oligarchy/Corporatocracy
MIC
Military Occupation
Climate Change
Corporate Control of Basic Resources
Commodities Transparency
Housing Rights
Hospital Care
Public Health Care
ERA
Rights for Former Offenders
IRV
Money Out of Politics
Reverse CU
Add to the list?
Student debt, free higher education
End war on drugs
Discussion on narrowing down the list
The first 2 items are the same, G-S and Ret. to Pru Banking is one topic. That has been a consistent demand of ODE since day 1 and it is one of the most important demands.
The cancerous economic tree dropping its poisonous fruit is the source of a lot of the problems but not all of them.There’s also corporate control, in addition to bank control of our government. The combination of social issues, like healthcare is very important.
It’s the large international corporations that are the problem. Any that’s large enough to influence our legislators.
We can take every single thing on this list of ways we want to influence our government to be less corrupt, but none can happen until we get money out of politics and fully publicly funded elections and no private money in politics. Otherwise the corporations own the government.
Not everything falls under getting money out of politics. Corporations rule by other modes besides elections, through domination of the social and economic systems. Let’s get the issues down to categories.
If corporate money is taken out of elections then politicians would be beholden only to their constituents. It wouldn’t make the world a utopia but we have to start there.
We need to cut the list down to the top 10.
The goal of this is to take to the National Gathering and the goal of NG is to get the one thing that all of the Occupies can agree on. The Visioning Process, a way to get all of us paying attention to one thing. We should pick ours accordingly.
After we finish this discussion we might benefit from a separate meeting to combine this list into categories and summaries to narrow it down and present the results next week.
Since we are from Delaware, Delaware enables the banks to do what they do, we might want to emphasize the banks in Delaware. Also get money out of politics. Hand-in-hand.
Categorizing? Twinkle-fingers up.
REPORT-BACKS
If we call people the day before the Wednesday Wilmington Rally we get more people out. So we’ll do that.
Infrastructure
We need to find out about getting the command tent out of here. I’d like to get a group together to empty the tent and take it down. I want to work on securing the signs and I need to purchase materials to do that.
Is it a foregone conclusion that the command tent is coming down? We have to decide that.
We still have contingency funds for dealing with whatever the city throws at us.
Financial
A friend was holding on to a $500 check for us but it was returned, so we don’t know what its status is.
TMITTKUO
It’s been a busy week. Last Friday Rich got an email from L&I saying they want us to take the command tent down, citing the specifications from the 300-page book we sent them, the mil specs, and they read it. They are saying the technical manual contains warnings that the tent is not flame proof or retartdant. And also that it must be staked down, which we can’t do at Spencer Plaza. This is factual, not mere harassment. [But see below.] Legal advice is to take the command tent down. Addtionally the letter talks about the signs attached to pilasters, which cannot be attached to city property. We can secure them in other ways. Also legal advice to do that.
Tents meet firecode but you still can’t have a fire in them. If the tent is suitable for our soldiers so why not us? We never have open flames on site. We should review the document ourselves.
We still have the issue of it not being able to be staked. Which the manual says it must be to be secure.
Rich thinks that if we don’t take it down the city would go right to the judge and the judge would either make us take it down or kick us out. Of course it’s semantics, it’s lawyers.
We’re doing the exact same things with the other tents. Are they coming after those next?
There’s a setup in the command tent for a stove. It’s a military tent with a setup of for a heating stove, and a chimney hole.
The difference between the command tent and the others, and I fully agree with you, but the difference is that we sent a 300-page document with specs they can use against us for the command tent.
We sent it to respond to their questions about the tent.
The VVAW don’t have any plans to use the tent in a ceremony at NG.
I suggest that we take pictures of the tent of the facility for the stove and show that it’s made for a stove.
We should go over the 300-page document ourselves to check their contentions and if there’s additional information to use to counterclaim. There’s a link to the document.
The tent is designed to withstand heat from an enclosed flame, not an open flame.
Deadline? Rich wants an answer tomorrow morning about what we intend to do.
My understanding is that the other tents’ status is within the court case and the command tent came later so they can apply L&I standards to it. L&I is concerned that the command tent specifically would be a hazard to others, whereas the other tents are not.
Obviously they’re picking away at us and there’s a good reason to resist that as much as possible, so the question is where do we make our stand, and when we evolve into something else. I would suggest that this is not where we take our stand but I will go along with whatever the GA decides.
The command tent is a 300-lb tent so it’s not likely to blow away.
If this were to be our last stand how long would it take them to sue us and get a court date, it could happen after the Aug. 21 court date.
They have actually already gone to court over other things. So this could potentially happen quickly, but we’ll follow up with Rich tomorrow. This would happen on an emergency basis.
I know a lot of Vietnam Vets with a huge property in Townsend area and they might be interested in taking the tent.
Did Rich read the 300-page document? We don’t know. We should tell Rich to tell the city to give us a week to read the document.
If we do respond to the city as such, we should not let them know that we have not read the document.
But that admission is in the minutes!
Anticipating Rich’s response, that they’re not going to make it up, they’ll take the document to court and what they’re claiming better be in the document or they’ll be in a whole lot of trouble. That doesn’t mean that there isn’t something we could counter with, but this is being presented to us as an emergency. If we decide to not take the tent down everyone should be ready to be kicked out. Is this what we want to dig our heels in over? Personally I would actually like to take the city to court.
Even if we donate the tent we should take it down right away, and store it on the plaza.
The command tent is a symbol of strength and they don’t like to see that. It’s all about ego and we don’t need to be focused on a statement of ego.
As soon as the command tent comes down this occupy is gone, there will be no reason for them to stop. It’s precedent, splitting hairs. A license for them to kick us out.
L&I said they are not going to deal with the rest of the site until after the court case, they said that in their letter. So they can be taken to court if they do.
They’ll claim an emergency for the rest of the tents. That’s their tactic.
We could cinder block down the tent all along the inside.
The writing is on the wall, they’re paying Mike Cochran a whole lot of money to get us out and they’ll persist, bit by bit.
That’s exactly what they’re doing but our stand should be for a lot more than a tent.
As far as I’m concerned they know why we’re here. These are symbols, they can’t kill the idea. But we are going to fight for the symbols of the idea.
Why is everybody acting surprised — we had this discussion two months ago. And we’re still here. There’re big egos up in that building and that’s what they think they’re being paid to do is to win. As long as we’re here we’re winning. If we had more tents, we’ll replace the command tend with an occupied tent.
Up-or-down vote? How do we vote on this? By consensus? Let’s see what we got first.
Temperature check in favor of taking command tent down: 11
Opposed: 4
How do we feel about this? It’s not consensus. It’s not a majority.
Should we break out into discussion groups?
I would abstain to allow a consensus, I won’t block the majority. (x3)
Straw Poll: In favor of taking down the tent: 12
Opposed:
Binding Vote: 11
opposed: 0
abstentions: 3
Regarding the minutes it’s a good thing nobody was taking minutes in the mayor’s basement during the riots of ’68. I hope John Rago enjoys reading this.
I will tell Rich that we will take the tent down. He thinks that Saturday is not unreasonable.
We also need to fix the signs, this weekend as well.
There was another communication from Cochran to Morse regarding the GA minutes from last Saturday’s GA. Minutes mean something in corporate world. Our GA meeting notes are always referred to as notes, not minutes. There is a difference.
3 things that bothered Cochran about the meeting notes, 1) “paint grenades at NG” — Rich’s response was “the notes of the GA do not support your conclusions…” ODE believes in free speech so even Mayor Baker can attend and say what’s on his mind. We’re open but they are not! 2) They had a problem with a statement about not moving the command tent until July 29, again Rich told them they misunderstand what the notes are. 3) Re report-back about meeting with Rev. Livingston, ODE should allow others to use Spencer Plaza, Rich responded that ODE does not restrict anyone from using the plaza and referred to a recent 80-person non-Occupy demonstration at the site.
The meeting with Rev. Livingston, the first day of the Greek Festival. I have copies of his letter I’m passing around. [See previous GA notes.] Jen, Bernie, Akiva, and Dassi went, after Rev. Livingston ran into Bernie saying his congregation does not want us on Spencer Plaza. He supports ODE but not on the plaza. We did agree to have another meeting.
At one point I had this thought during the meeting, in light of the fact of city pressure, we might try and make a deal with the city in order to get something in a very public way and agree to go to a different location. In particulary, some way of getting the Wilmington black community more in alignment with us by getting the city to agree to start the renovate the site by July 1. That was just a thought that I had.
If we voluntarily leave before our court date we are forfeiting our case.
I talked to the Reverend’s people, they only own the grave site. The city owns the rest of this plaza. I spoke to a girl who is part of the church and she said they just want all the tents down.
To me this is a racist attitude and people should be judged by their character not by the color of their skin.
The 300-page document says the command tent is flame retardant!
One of the things that Rev. said was that we would delay the renovations and he wasn’t aware of our agreement with the city that we would move to facilitate the renovation. He also had a different date for the planned renovation.
The black community is multi-faceted and I have a lot of support from my friends, my building, my church, a lot of African Americans show a lot of support for us. So Rev. doesn’t speak for everyone.
I think they may be working in conjunction with the mayor. They’re using this conservative black church. I’m the only white person in my neighborhood and my neighbors thank me for being involved with Occupy.
We should take this as an opportunity to understand that there is a mixed sentiment among the people who live here. The things we’ve been fighting for are the things that hurt the 99% and that hurt African Americans even more. Let’s not pick a fight by taking their input as negative but to continue to dialog. Not take it personally. There are political pressures, there are also people who feel we’re intruders, not a question of skin color. There’s good reason to be sensitive on these issues. Don’t pick a fight, stand our ground, but emphasize the positive aspects of the issues.
Rev. Livingston talked about the emotional attachment to the site, theirs. And we have one too.
People from his parish honor us for being here fighting for everyone, blacks all through Wilmington honor me and support Occupy. I’ll stand up for everybody’s rights!
Media
We got a press release out and we got an interview with Delmarva public radio, 90.7, re the action tomorrow.
The caravan for the NG is coming through Wilmington, and we’ll put out a press release and it’ll be a good opportunity for an outreach letter. [Twinkle fingers.] So we’ll be working on that.
ANNOUNCEMENTS
I’m going to church this weekend, if anyone wants to go with me.
We are still on tomorrow to do the guerilla theater, at noon. Meet at the site at 11.
Action committee meeting after the GA for some important information.
I’ve been hearing more about the concept of intentional communities. It may be a direction we may be going in in the future, my sense is that that is a movement that will take off in the near future.
In talking with Rich Morse today, he told me that in the beginning of our occupation he had passed around “protestor information,” and he sent another copy. Tips and Tricks for Protestors, from the ACLU. See the Web site for the link, after Rich approves posting it.
I have copies of the tentative schedule for the National Gathering. And also of Guidelines for Effective Occupation.
I have 303 of our brochures, and there are 250 more available.
The NG site is horrific.
The command tent doc states that the material is flame resistant, all the material in the tent is flame resistant. It also gives directions on staking down, it doesn’t say you can’t use another method, it just says everything needs to be taught. “May result in injury.” We could argue that. It also gives directions about how to put a stove in the tent.
In light of this, I’d like to see how many people are comforable with the vote.
Revisit the vote: 10 people.
So, revisiting the vote.
The flame retardent issue is null.
“Failure to follow tie-down and staking instructions may result in damage…”
Temperature check to revisit the vote: no, we will not revisit the decision. Therefore, the consensus remains to remove the command tent.
Meeting adjourned: 2122 hr.
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