Occupy Asheville General Assembly 11/3/12

Occupy Asheville General Assembly November 3 2012

Kathryn facilitated; Jonathan took notes.

Read General Agreements.

Move Your Money ReCap: We appreciated all the folks that followed through on tasks discussed at the last GA in order to make the event today happen. Particularly Kathryn wanted to thank Self Help Credit Union for showing up. Jonathan expressed interest in learning more about some of the institutional Move Your Money campaigns that Steve is involved in. Tom noted that State Unemployment Insurance gets routed through Wells Fargo. Meggen mentioned that folks with Occupy Hendersonville have continued to do leafleting in front of banks, she asked if folks were willing to try to do this on more of a monthly basis.

Dinner for Ben Scales: Steve has been in contact with Rosseta about a dinner honoring Ben Scales. She is willing to host a dinner at the restaurant. Steve was looking at January. Steve will be in touch with Rosetta who would like to work with a small group to plan the dinner. This group could also talk about whether the dinner itself is a fundraiser. We discussed when to give Ben the money that we already agreed to give him. We agreed that once a date has been set for the dinner we could send him an invitation with the money order for the money we already allocated to him. Contact Lindsey if your interested in working on this.

Occupy Sandy Relief. Lindsey said there is a formal Occupy Sandy effort going on in the New York area plus Amy and someone out of New Orleans are headed up to NYC with relief supplies. They’ll be leaving Asheville on Monday and are accepting relief supplies to take up. We discussed who /where was the most appropriate place to make donations. Mark brought up whether it made more sense to give money to an organization like the Red Cross. Others felt excited about supporting efforts related to OWS. We felt like this is an opportunity to support a different form of direct action that is related to OWS and that it is kind of exciting to support an occupy related effort that is trying to apply some of what folks learned through the encampments, general assemblies etc up there to Sandy relief. It was asked if we even had the ability to give through a pay pal account at this point. Also we wondered if Kasha or James had heard about Sandy relief through interoccupy. We discussed splitting a donation between giving some funds to Amy for the trip up and donating some money to an OWS affiliated effort. Kathryn also raised the question of whether or not this kind of decision could/should be made at GA.

Proposal: Given that we recently received more than 100 from Elders for a Just Society for direct support (originally intended for the encampment), and we no longer have an encampment to support that we give $50 to local folks (Amy) going up to NYC and $100 to an OWS affiliated effort that can be determined at the Occupy Weekly meeting, after any input from Kasha and James re: what is being said on interOccupy. We came to consensus on this proposal.

Walmart: Organization United for Respect (OUR) Walmart has been coordinating small groups of striking Walmart workers across the country. They are calling for a national day of action on Friday the 23^rd of November. We take part in an informational picket at the Hendersonville Rd Walmart at 2pm on the 23^rd. Jonathan will contact some of the folks organizing at Sitel and just touch base with them, as Sitel is located w/n the same shopping center as Walmart. Because we know were only allowed on the right of way along the road, we’ll need to have signs so that people can see us driving in.

Decision Making: The Coordinating Council in recognition that it is not really able to operate as originally conceived, i.e. a body of delegates from entities w/n Occupy Asheville, has decided continue meeting once a week on Monday evenings but now aw “Weekly Occupy.” This meeting is open to all and everyone has a voice (so decision making is not limited to delegates from Occupy Asheville working groups, affinity groups, and caucuses.) The Weekly Occupy group would like to continue to be a decision making body for Occupy Asheville and thinks it would be an important to have a week between when a proposal is made and when it is consensed upon, so that other folks in OA will have a chance to weigh in and even show up at the Weekly Occupy meeting. Jonathan expressed a concern that the Coordinating Council was originally agreed to by a series of OA General Assemblies and that the power to dissolve the CC rested with the GA and upon dissolution of the CC the assumption was that the GA would become the decision making body for OA. He suggested there was no reason we couldn’t decide that there would be a weekly GA on a Monday and the Weekly Occupy meeting could be a GA. Kathryn explained that there was some concern that an indoor weekly meeting doesn’t have the same “feel” as an outdoor assembly, and so maybe it would not be appropriate to call it a GA. Mark suggested that maybe what we are looking for is one decision making process that could be utilized by two bodies which are horizontal not in hierarchy over each other. Jon expressed his strong feeling that there is value in folks coming together once a week. Kathryn said she really finds it valuable to have a decision making body meeting away from the distractions that come with an outdoor assembly. Jonathan proposed the following as a working process:

The Weekly Occupy meeting and the monthly OA General Assembly would both have the power to make decisions as Occupy Asheville, each decision would need to be proposed* at one meeting or assembly and then consensed upon at a second meeting or assembly. This would mean for example that a proposal could be made at a Weekly Occupy meeting one Monday and then be agreed to at the next Monday Weekly Occupy meeting OR a proposal could be made at a Weekly Occupy meeting and then consensed upon at a monthly GA OR a proposal could be made at a GA and then agreed to at the following Monday Weekly Occupy meeting.

The group agreed to this as a working process. Jonathan then proposed that the above proposal be formally brought before the December GA, for approval as the new decision making process for OA.

Occupy National Gathering Visioning: After the Occupy Caravan and National Gathering in Philadelphia, visioning done at the National Gathering was narrowed down to 21 points. At the last CC meeting James brought the 21 points for consideration by Occupy Asheville. There were a few concerns about how to move forward with considering these 21 points. One concern was that we went through our own visioning process and that should not be forgotten or abandoned. Another was that we need to have a clear understanding of the difference between visions and goals. Mark, Tom, and Kathryn pointed out that we were at the point of developing action plans and goals for the visioning that OA had started. It was pointed out that a goal needs to have actions leading to it, as opposed to a vision or aspiration, which might be an idea without actions leading to it. Also there was concern that just presenting the 21 visions without first allowing OA participants to digest the information makes it hard for people to have an informed conversation and that dealing with all 21 visions at once may be overwhelming. Meggen is working on putting the list of 21 visions up on the OA blog in a way that makes it clear that these are visions from the National Gathering, not necessarily visions that OA has adopted, but visions that we are interested in thinking about and discussing. We also talked about our interest in hearing about the visions that came out of the National Gathering. Jonathan made the following proposal:

With the understanding that OA is midway through a visioning process and that learning about and discussing the 21 visions that came out of the National Gathering does not come with the assumption that we will make a particular decision to adopt them, OA should take about 20 minutes at each of the next several meetings and General Assemblies to hear about and discuss two or three of these visions at a time.

The group agreed to this proposal for moving forward to responding to the 21 points that came out of the National Gathering visioning process.

Announcements:

The Asheville Homeless Network is opening an office room #4 at the Downtown Market on S. French Broad.

Sonny announced that there will be a performance at UNCA on November 7^th at 7:30 remembering the 1912 Lawrence textile “bread and roses” strike. Free for UNCA folks $10 for everyone else.