Saturday, February 23, 2013

About the upcoming Public Safety Meeting

There has been discussion of Cecil Bothwell's resolution concerning civil liberties at Occupy Asheville meetings on Monday evenings. Exact wording of the resolution has not been shared. Some members have promoted the idea of people coming to the Public Safety Meeting to support this, which was rumored to be introduced in the January meeting and again in the February meeting. This is not going to happen in the February meeting, and the latest word is that the resolution will be introduced in the March meeting of the Public Safety committee. However, I would check an make sure that this will actually happen, if you are interested in this issue.

Monday, February 18, 2013

Suspension of Monday evening meetings

At tonight's meeting, we decided to suspend Monday evenings meetings of Occupy Asheville. We will resume if there is a new project to work on, or if there is interest.

We will still hold monthly General Assembly at 2 PM at Pritchard Park on the first Saturday of the month.

Thursday, February 7, 2013

Monday Meeting Notes Feb 4 2013

from Kathryn:

Present: John, James,Susan, Bev, Sonny, Richard and Kathryn (taking notes)
Richard brought a great deal of material which can be made available to others about the foreclosure situation in Buncombe County and the Metro area.  Although housing prices have held up in Asheville better than many other communities there was still at 12% decline in prices between first quarters of '09 and '12 in the four county region. In 2011 there were 1877 homeowners 90 days overdue and 2700 in foreclosure compared to 250 before the crash.  On 9/12 1.6% of prime loans were 90 days over and 2% were in foreclosure.  Although Asheville only has 2.3% of owner occupied subprime loans, 16% of this market is either in foreclosure or 90 days overdue.  Richard has spent time in the registrar of deeds office and found that looking for errors in the paperwork is tedious and not very rewarding.
 
Loan modification is done by the "servicer" of the loan, not the lender.  The programs for this have not been effective.  They can be contested by challenging filing inaccuracy.  Modifications are still available through 2013.  OnTrack can help with this.  However, sometimes it is not to the advantage of the servicer to modify (they get less interest, etc.) and it might be helpful to bring public attention to the situation.
 
Bev had talked with Bill Whelan at Pisgah Legal.  He or someone else from the organization would be willing to talk with us about what they know of the legal aspects.  Bev will get back with him and ask for someone to come speak with us. He did think it would be helpful to bring more public attention to the continuing difficulties ("tell the world of the injustice") and link people to resources.  However, there are mortgage relief scams everywhere and we must be careful not to get confused with them.
 
Kathryn agreed to rewrite John's letter to make it fit the criteria for possible publication as a letter to the editor.
 
Susan talked about the FOIA.  Each person has to do apply individually.  NVDA will discuss if they want to do it.  Sonny said that Naomi Wolf's book has information on how to do it.

Sunday, February 3, 2013

February GA minutes

Occupy Asheville General Assembly
February 2, 2013
Jonathan Facilitated
John S. and Jonathan took notes
GA:  Jonathan, Susan, Beverly, John S., Kasha, James and, Sonny.  A few others joined as the meeting continued.
General agreements read by Jonathan. 
Vision statement handed out by James L.  Started at National Gathering in Phila.  James suggested that people look over statement and get back to him for revision and thoughts. James wants to create an Asheville part to the national vision.  Drone warfare may need to be placed in the document. Coleman has interest in this. Discussion ensued.  Kasha wishes to see good flow of information. We decided to read the paragraph starting “No change will be long-lasting…” and talk about it. Kasha read the beginning of vision statement.   Sonny brought up the problems of holding a Constitutional Convention which could erase those parts of Constitution which are good.  Kasha pointed out that the Right is so well organized that they could take over a constitutional convention.  Sonny also raised a question about whether it made sense to propose elimination of the Senate.  Several people talked about the work by Move to Amend to address the issue of ‘money as speech’ and ‘corporate personhood.’  It was suggested that OA could support Move to Amend in this effort, but also that these issues are not the only or primary issues that OA is focused on. James responded we need to trust people and the democratic process and that the Senate is not at all representational.  Jonathan suggested (as facilitator) that if James’s goal is to develop a document that all of OA could endorse that we might use this time simply to identify parts of the document about which there was general agreement and parts that either needed more conversation or needed to be revised/dropped.
 
Proposal to give $100  to Western North Carolina Alliance to help subsidize transportation costs to Washington, DC for the Feb 17th “Forward on Climate” action.  WNCA is organizing a bus and this money would be to make help pay for some people’s seats on the bus.  (There are already cheaper seats available for students, but we’d like cheaper seats to be available to more people.)   Jim B is involved in organizing this bus. We are in agreement for $100.00
 
Jonathan noted that it is unclear what process we are working under.  (Several people at the GA mentioned items originating at the Coordinating Council (CC) and needing to go out to working groups (WGs) for approval.)  We have the historic Coordinating Council process where WGs, affinity groups, caucuses, etc bring proposals to the CC and then those proposals are discussed by the groups and brought back to the CC.  On the other hand at the Nov. GA those who were gathered there came to agreement that decisions could be made by two consecutive meetings of OA, that is something could be approved at the GA and then again at a weekly Occupy meeting,  or at two weekly Occupy meetings or what have you.  But as far as he knew this new process was never adopted.  Susan said that the CC wanted GA to make a decision about the money for the F17 action.  Jonathan clarified that under either process the GA had agreed to the disbursement of $100 to WNCA for the F17 Climate Action.
Kasha proposes working group for doing an event to keep Occupy visible and utilize some of the resources (financial and otherwise) to keep momentum going.  New group formed with Kasha point woman.  Jonathan, as facilitator, pointed out that anyone of us can form a new group, and that doing so does not require approval from the GA.  Kasha asked just for a show of support and several people gave up twinkles. 
 
John reported that Donny F. (who was involved in OA in Fall of 2011) raised starting a tent city at the Federal Bldg.  In a go round several people expressed concern that another tent city would be counterproductive.  Bill expressed a concern that 24 hr 365 day presence would be unsustainable and that the media would inevitably dwell on decreasing numbers. Jonathan stated that publicly NOT supporting an encampment does not make sense, and in fact would go against our general agreements.  We don’t get to say what others do or don’t do.  In fact, if the encampment turned out to be wildly successful we would probably all feel pretty silly if we had dismissed it.  However, to figure out how we might get involved with it and support it, we would need those interested in starting an encampment to be part of our conversation.  The reality is we have resources (financial) that are out of line with our current level of activity, and it might really make sense for us to support an encampment, but folks interesting in starting and encampment would need to come talk with us.  Susan said, at this time it doesn’t seem like something we could get involved with.  John stated that Occupy is a verb not a noun and that resurrection of a tent city could be a powerful tactic.  James L. suggests that at some point maybe it would make sense, but that we would need to deal with the homelessness issue.  Bev raised the concern that if the encampment is called Occupy Asheville, then it concerns us.  Kasha reported that from inter-occupy calls she has learned that “occupation” has been a powerful tactic as part of anti-foreclosure campaigns.  Jonathan suggested that John call Donny and inform him that at the GA there was some concern about whether or not another encampment would make sense, but felt like if Occupy Asheville was going to get involved with or support an encampment those wanting to start the encampment would need be in conversation with OA, we would welcome them to come to a GA or Occupy Weekly Meeting.
 
                Foreclosure issues.  Bev spoke to Pisgah Legal about issue. They feel should make sure we really understand the issue before putting out a general call for people with foreclosure issues to get in contact with us, we might be overwhelmed with contact from people we weren’t prepared to help.  He suggest that we should start a website that could be a clearing house for information about foreclosures and as a place for people to tell their stories.   James and Kasha reported that they’ve been participating in inter-occupy calls about foreclosure defense.  James got email advice from someone with inter-Occupy which he’ll share.  Kasha said that many people on the call reported that putting public pressure on banks before foreclosure proceedings begin is a successful tactic.  She said that folks haven’t been able to forestall foreclosure for years just by forcing banks to come forward with proper documentation.   She also said she’d gotten mixed information about legal assistance.  John reported that through Asheville Homeless Network, he made contact with someone facing foreclosure but that her case is really messy.  He commented on how hard it is to find a “clean case” that is a case that is not complicated with other issues.  He also talked with a women with a law firm that specializes in foreclousers.  He asked the group for their approval for him to contact her.  Kasha pointed out that the “CC” has already decided to make foreclosures a big focus on OA, but that it would be good to have the GA weigh in.  Jonathan said that he thought a lot of people facing foreclosures feel isolated and that it would be nice to bring people together in such away that they could build solidarity with each other.  He also mentioned that in the past Rich had had ideas of some kinds of direct support that we might be able to offer and that holding an event where we offered direct support might be a good way to build some initial relationships. Jonathan said that he felt OK about John calling the lawyer as a form of research or relationship building, but not to offer up OA resources in service of a particular law firm’s strategy (note I say this because we might end up having differing views about strategy and goals than what someone pursing a legal approach might have.) Sonny recommended that John go with another person from OA to talk to this lawyer; Bev agreed to be that other person.  John reminded us that he had written a press release and that we have not sent it out yet.  Jonathan (as facilitator) asked if we could agree as the GA that foreclousers should be a major focus of OA.  There was not complete consensus on this, but there were no stand asides or blocks.  There was also general agreement that John could contact this law firm for more information.
 
Other reports and Announcements:
Last month we held an event to appreciate Ben Scales.  We raised additional money there and it was great to see each other and celebrate.
February 15th is the Anniversary of the historic mobilization against the War in Iraq.  The largest anti-war mobilization ever.
Jonathan had miss-reported that Rain Forest Action was doing a training about BoA and MTR at Sage Coffee House on Thur.  This is actually happening at Sage CafĂ© at Warren Wilson and is for the Warren Wilson community.  (Still ripe opportunities for making the connections between BoA’s mortgage policies and MTR.)