Occupy Delaware
Open Forum GA
Spencer Plaza
2012-05-26
Meeting start: 1415 hr
New Occupy Delaware shirts are available, see Ray.
REPORT-BACKS
We went to Occupy Baltimore yesterday for a foreclosure action, 10-15 people were there to defend Beth’s house, picketing at the bank, PNC. It was a success because VP of HR of PNC approached Beth and asked to meet with her to find out what’s going on. Beth will post what he says and we’ll spread the news to FB friends and web sites to see if he follows through.
We have a need to get into the media in a positive light. I’ve been involved in various fringe groups over the past 15 years and by being a trained actor who knows how media works, they’re never going to give you a fair a shot in their media. And it is their media. As someone who has worked as a paid actor and politician to get your uncensored message out you need to have your own media. In the 40s and 50s there were color bans throughout the country so people created their own all-black radio stations, that is an alternative route. Creating your own media to control your message. It’s important for Occupy to have its own media if it’s going to go anywhere. There are governmental barriers to entry. Could go low-frequency, low energy, but that’s only a couple miles range.
If we’re going to take this bus thing to the next level, have to organize.
I’ve been subscribed to the DART First State newsletter. The only buses that are running today are to the beach, and Paratranist. That’s through the holiday. There are no city buses running today. According to their newsletter. But we’ve seen some running by the site this morning. We need to subscribe to keep tabs on what they’re saying about us.
If we can’t get Darlene Battle to come to a GA we can make an action to shadow them or something on their community outreach activities. Expose ourselves to her staff and get an opportunity to meet people who are in foreclosure, encourage people to come to GA. We’ll drop by DACA 10 am Monday.
ANNOUNCEMENTS
Monday 12 noon we’ve scheduled GA-Squared (GA*GA) Action planning. At 1 pm there’ll be an Economic Affinity group meeting. Both at Spencer Plaza.
We’re discussing changing the GA-Squared event to the 14th of June. GA*GA is a Gamblers Anonymous GA to stop banksters from gambling our money away. Get Chase on a 12-step program! Have they gotten to step 1 yet?
We got an email from Pacem in Terris reminding us about May 30, Wednesday, Memorial Day parade march up Delaware Ave. Asking for people to march with them in supporting veterans and families have made the ultimate sacrifice. Meet 5:30 pm at 14th St. and Clayton, Westminster Presbyterian Church.
We’re trying to get more people involved in GA-Squared, we’ll approach the unions and veterans, laid-off people. And NA, AA, and GA members.
Monday morning there’s a Memorial Day service at All Saints cemetery, 9 or 10 am. Kirkwood Highway. [location] Across from the library, near St. Marks, just before Meadowood.
Occupy Dover still exists and we’re contacting them to create and participate in events and actions.
CBTU are meeting next Saturday, 10 AM. 6th and Madison. Coalition of Black Trade Unionists. They have coffee. June 2.
Where do they weigh in on the DART issue? The head guy of the Septa union is a member, Don Johnson, a Delaware resident. How he may be connected with DART?
Saturday, June 2 is Newark Day, 12-5. Anybody interested in occupying the sidewalks? Check with our Newark contingents! Bring it up at Wednesday GA. Occupy Newark Day.
Pacem in Terris Soweto Festival, artists contributing art on human family and world peace, 5 – 7 pm.
FREE-FOR-ALL
The 99%’s loss is the 1%’s gain.
It’s surprising that there’s no Occupy Newark. Occupy is attracting students all around the rest of the country.
Opinion article in Al Jazeera, What Happened to the Occupy Movement?, that kicking people out of public spaces is more significant and is key to why people think there’s no Occupy going on. It’s about the place to convene and share ideas and cross-pollinate for actions and problem solving and paradigm shifts, which has to happen in public spaces. And to give the sense of community and collaboration. Read it. The author directly connected how it’s different from Arab Spring, our public spaces are so restricted and privatized and controlled, there isn’t any really public space here, and this, with the corporate media, is damping the movement. When we discuss how far to go to defend our Spencer Plaza site, after reading this article I reconsidered the importance of having a public site. Without a place that brings everyone together the great ideas don’t spark actions, and growth.
During the time I was running for President in 2000 I had a great swell of members, in 2004 and 2008…the problem is people want instant change and they want someone to do the work for them. When they don’t see this happen they fade away. This is human nature. You need a physical presence in Occupy, or it’s not going to work.
True movements take a decade or more to achieve their goals.
I agree that we have infinite numbers of things that can be done but we need a vision or plan that draws people on board. I have a 4-year degree in leadership, and a leadership vision is key to getting people involved. Adbusters’ vision wasn’t save the world, it was just let’s just occupy that Wall Street shit and it worked. It has to be a shared vision that people feel improves their lives, a vision that inspires people to feel passionate.
We had a similar discussion at our Wednesday GA and there are two camps: we just need to talk about corporate monetary 1% power that dominates everything else, and all the things that piss the 99% off are fair game. There were really great points made on both sides.
Individuals offer their vision and what catches on is what works. We’ve listed our top concerns to take to the National Gathering July 4 event, which is exactly that idea to trickle up the ideas with the broadest support.
I’ve been unemployed for 3 years and I’ve never turned down any work, I’ve never been on drugs, broken the law…I just want to contribute.
Lots of kids with way too much debt out of college are working too hard to keep their heads above water can’t afford to participate, they understand the message but they don’t have the time to get out on the streets. We’re all wage slaves. If there were a way to help them help themselves.
You need something that will catch the public’s eye, symbols, catch phrases. Is the message getting out to the masses? Our word blurbs are just floating around cyberspace. Something has to go viral. Are we speaking to the choir or are we breaking out to a larger audience. How do you make the spontaneous messages catch fire? Last week in the paper, Flat Molly, also Trayvon Martin. How do you make that happen? Occupy gnomes! A Message to Garcia, written during the Cuban American war picked up nationally, inspirational, must read. You can do something that can catch on. Fills a niche in desire, there ways you can use word blurbs to get the message across. You present certain things, “economic equality,” “social justice.” Something that people want today, economic equality is more timely now than ever. “Economic justice.” Stickers, not just Internet.
The guardrail on the ramp off of I-95 at Delaware Ave. is filled with stickers, and I look at them every day. It’s hard to miss the message when it’s everywhere. The power of the message when it’s everywhere. Like we did for Green Friday at the Christiana Mall.
We could go around the circle and get people’s idea of what a good, broader vision of the world Occupy could work for. My vision personally is, armies have a bad connotation right now because they’ve been abused, but they’re intended to defend people. My vision would be to have a mobile army to protect people from being marginalized. If we had a force that protected all the marginalized people. As long as all the people on Earth aren’t squeezed into a little tiny corner and set on fire.
We are that army, if we’re going to convince people of that, we have to be willing and able to effect that change. We lost a battle when when we lost encampments. The timeline is the issue, keep people from losing hope because it didn’t happen in 6 months. The corporatocrcay has spent 40 years and billions of dollars to create what we are now, it took them 80 years to get as far as they are now. Back in 1900 we had small mercantiles, town revolved around a store, a church. The corporations didn’t get here overnight, they won’t go away overnight.
You want a striking arm of the people you need to organize like an army. They use our money to pay their soldiers. That’s one thing that’s wrong with our army. Nobody will really put their ass on the line for just money. A people’s militia.
They’re coming down on us now, as soon as they read these notes!
The Civil Rights movement and I am grateful to God that it happened. But it only was taken seriously when there were riots. I’m not for violence but we’re looking at history. I’m surprised Occupy isn’t filled with the black community. Maybe they’re feeling like they don’t want to risk what they have gained. Power doesn’t yield peacefully. How can Occupy organize to guide a peaceful change? Create a bureaucratic structure…but we don’t want to become the thing we’re trying to get rid of. Force only understands force, but responding to force with force is a temporary solution, you become the thing you’re trying to get rid of. But you better have something in mind to replace the thing you’re trying to change.
12-21-12 ….
If we start being that way our negative publicity will outweigh our reason for being here. It will define us. E.g., the Black Bloc. Whenever there’s a major war there’s never a lack of resources, 18,000 B24s etc. in WWII, we had no lack of physical wealth to achieve the goals of the 1%, but 5 years before that, same people, same resources, but massive depression and starvation. An army could be something that ensures the provision of necessary resources to sustain people, not violence, but defense.
The Great Depression of 1929 was created as a wealth grab. WWII got us out of the Depression, but for the same agenda. An army doesn’t have to be violent, it can be a force to ensure safety and comfort of the people. Who benefits from the wars? Global. So we need to mobilize a more global defense organization to protect personal sovereignty, it’s a system that draws all the cows into the slaughterhouse. Provide the basic physical resources people need, an army to provide that. Like the UN Peacekeepers but not controlled by the corporate state. This global army is a vision that I have. Some kind of vision that draws people together.
All the global threats affect every individual at a local level. You can’t solve the old problems with the same rule book that created them. Violence will never defeat violence.
What if we called it a global defense force. We should focus more on networks of alliances, all of the global issues can only be solved locally, networking collectively for the global solutions. That’s the power of the Internet, local groups who live together in the same community, addressing things locally and then cooperatively in an international call to action carpet bombing the planet with good, with local actions. Global organization has gotten us to where we are now, giving them more teeth, they’re just fighting each other in zero-sum games.
As long as there are people somewhere struggling for their lives there will always be a problem. A larger force to help is needed.
If everybody occupies their own space, mutual defense, locally, is the real army, as opposed to a top-down organized traditional organization, which ends up going inevitably to evil. But trusting on trust is scary. It’s learning to trust.
How would you keep a peacekeeping force from being used to push the smaller people around.
A creed of just providing a defense force that ensures the basic provision of physical needs for people. Is it possible that it would be used for evil? Yes, look at what happened to the UN. It start out like that but now it’s a puppet for the US. Unless you change human nature such an organization would be subverted. But if we don’t coordinate effort, if we’re separate cells of people, we’re back to tribalism.
The Roman Empire built a patchwork quilt empire, all had autonomy under the empire. The only way a global government structure would work would be like the ancient Roman Empire. It was pure coercion, and they fell when they became greedy and corrupt. And America is falling apart just like the Roman Empire in the end.
It’s not everyone for themselves, it’s everyone looking out for each other in their group and their better nature will make them that way. There will be pathological, greedy people but in a strong local community, e.g., the Amish, people who have learned to trust each other, they’re effective at dealing with aberrant personalities, and not letting them seize power. Hierarchies tend to always get usurped by sociopaths. Giving stuff away is very powerful in defeating this.
Start focusing on the local options, people with vested interest in helping the local community being healthy. Do a Free Friday, and get stuff out of our closets and going to local businesses, create the global organization as a network of global actions.
This defense force idea is an organization the produces food and housing and provides it. Like a CSA, a cooperative.
Can’t be just bottom-up, or just top-down. It has to be some of both. There has to be some sort of structure. Not like the parasitic landed gentry just draining away the wealth. Parasites should not be in charge of the structure. They don’t care what happens to the people.
Replacing failed global organizations with other global organizations wouldn’t work. But some global organization, in some form, is needed.
There is something seriously wrong with the planet. We’re here to take care of this planet, but we’ve almost destroyed it. The ruling elite parasites are raping the planet and sucking it dry. It’s insane. Unless they have spaceships and habitable planets to escape to.
Capitalism needs destructive growth. Do we really need more Nike shoes? No. It feeds on itself. Making and selling stuff that’s not needed. How many Walmarts do we need? A consumer economy is unsustainable. They shut down the pickle factory in Millsboro, it’s cheaper to ship the cucumbers to Michigan.
This solar system could provide for any number of people. We need to protect Earth and the only cradle of life we have. Go out and get asteroids and bring them back. We need these things now in order to survive. We needed it 20 years ago. We don’t have another 10 years. We didn’t have winter this year. The climate has changed. The planet is really messed up bad.
John Byrne talked to Wilmington in Transition in last year and he said with our consumption of fossil fuels, the climate change that already is affecting us is from what we did 150 years ago, and that is infinitesimally small to what we’re producing now. If we don’t stop it now it’s all over. Short of violence, consumer power is the only global power we have. Stop consuming.
Here’s a sign for you. It’s too bad the universe has 600 trillion years left and we have only 10 seconds left [cosmic clock].
Back in the 40s there was the Manhattan Project that resulted in a massively destructive scientific result but it showed we could pull together resources on a large scale. One thing that could help humanity is that if we had a shared software development like a robotic operating system and if we paid 250,000 programmers, a new kind of Manhattan Project, to produce a robotic operating system to be a shared operating system. The Blue-Green Alliance Apollo Project.
Meeting adjourned 1604 hrs.
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