General Assemby on First Saturday of the Month

The Occupy Asheville General Assembly will be held at 4 PM at Pritchard Park.  Date is 10-6-12.

 See you there!

Coordinating Council Minutes from 9-24-12

Coordinating Council minutes 9.24.12

Present:  VFP, Homeless Network, Seniors and Friends, Finance, Socialist Caucus, Social Justice

Facilitator:  Kathryn

Agenda Items:

Lisa Landis would like $425 to get her legal transcripts from her case so she can file a civil suit for unjust arrest.  Need to look at the process for disbursement (written up by NVDAT) that OA consented to this summer.  Will talk about it again next week.

Proposal to give money from legal defense funds to Ben Scales for his work on behalf of Occupy.  Will look at process for disbursement and talk to working groups this week.

Visioning:  looking to meet Wednesday Oct 3^rd to continue/finish the process started in June.  Suggestion to do this at GA on Oct 6^th to get more participation.

Announcements:

Website is now linked to new OA blog, which is at: http://occupyashevillenc.blogspot.com/

Asheville Homeless Network will meet in the basement of Jubilee for the next 5 weeks, until Firestorm reopens.  7 members of AHN have helped with the restoration at Firestorm. 

Update on Tim Zoz--doing better, Lindsey brought a card for CC to sign & will send it to him in Detroit.

Coordinating Council Meeting

This upcoming Monday, September 24, the Coordinating Council will meet at Prtichard Park (for one week only).  Time is the same:  6:30.

International Day of Peace Rally

Occupy Asheville celebrates Occupy's anniversary

 In the beginning - this is the pre-march rally, with the parade marshal giving directions.

 On the move - through downtown Asheville.

 Our Occupy sign.

 The front of the march going down Wall Street in Asheville NC.

 A short break in the march, where we stopped in front of the Federal Building.  This is where the encampment started.

 On to City Hall, where we gathered for some soapboxing and for a General Assembly.  I counted 48 people at City Hall to start with.  I did not include the police or legal observers.

 The soapbox is in place, and the first speaker steps up.  They have 99 seconds to say their piece.

 This was the start of the General Assembly, and the picture below showed that the crowd thinned out for this, but it was 2 hours after the event first started in Pritchard Park.

 I love these pictures of the kids filling in the OCCUPY sign.  They are so cute.

Occupy! First Anniversary!

September 17, 2012 is the one year anniversary of Occupy Wall Street.  To mark this anniversary, Occupy Asheville will gather in Pritchard Park at 4:30 PM for a short rally, and then will march to the free speech zone in front of City Hall for some soap box speeches, followed by a Coordinating Council/General Assembly meeting.  We hope you can join us and bring your OCCUPY signs.  And bring rain gear!  See you there!

General Assembly Minutes from 9-1-12

Occupy Asheville General Assembly September 1, 2012.

Kathryn Facilitating.

Jonathan Minutes

Mark read the general agreements and we had a moment of silence.

*Working Group Reports:

Social Justice Caucus. Continues to work on the bus service petition.  The petition has reached over 1000 signatures and Jon would like to do a press release about the it.

NVDAT-WG.  Offered a training for folks going to DNC.  3-4 people are going to Charlotte Sunday there are also others from OA already there.

Outreach WG  Meeting at 3pm first Saturday of the month.   Intimidation of workers organizing at Sitel has stepped up.  There will soon be a call out to support workers organizing there with a picket or other action outside of the Sitel building.

Seniors  & Friends meets Sunday at 12:30 at Wall St Café

*Criminalization of homelessness.

Both Homeless Coalition and AHN are working on the issue of discriminatory enforcement.  Mark suggests we use the phrase discriminatory enforcement as opposed to Human Rights or decriminalization as the AHN and the Homeless Coalition continue to work on this issue.

* BID

Look for an update on next BID meeting. A resolution is being brought forward about the BID.

We also might help with a survey that Libertie has been working on.

*OWS Anniversary Sept 17^th

The one year anniversary of Occupy Wall St is coming up this month.  We agreed to have a moving picket on September 17^th to mark the one year anniversary of OWS.  We’ll meet at Pritchard Park at 4:30 and picket up to Pack Square and Vance monument.

Further planning will take place at the Sept 10^th CC meeting at the UCC church (remember ALL are welcome at the CC meetings.)

We consensed that Jonathan would provide Susan with the list of OA contacts from the web site and she would send out a one time email (bcc) that would include an announcement about the OWS anniversary picket AND ask them if they would like to be on a low volume email list to receive updates about OA no more than once a week.  (It may be that people will need to opt in or opt out, but they will have the option to NOT be on this list.)

* Announcements

International Day of Peace. Spet 21 At Pak Square.  Also proclamations  at Commissioners meeting (30 Valley Street in downtown Asheville.) 9/4 and Council meeting 9/11.  Support at those meetings would be appreciated.  And language about financial impact of war was dropped from those proclamations, which is another reason to go to the meetings.

 

McKibbon Hotel issue.  McKibbon  group is proposing to develop the property across from the Basilica.  The Charlotte Diocese has an alternative proposal and there is a group that would like to have a park there.  On Sept 11 City Council is scheduled to have an up or down vote on allowing the McKibbon plan to go forward.  If this happens the other proposals would not be considered.   Come the Sept 11^th council meeting to voice your opinion.

Asheville Radical Mental Health Collective Support Group Meeting Tue 4:30-6:30 Sept 11 Downtown Market.

There will be a Screening of the new video Color Me Brown which features interviews with people of color in Asheville at 35 Below (the space under Asheville Community Theater Saturday 9/1/12 from 6-7.