Occupy Brooklyn General Assembly

Occupy Brooklyn General Assembly
1-5-12 at Dutch Reformed Church of Flatbush.

Loose agenda

• Report Backs
• Proposal: Brooklyn General Assembly Collective Agreement
• Discuss/Re-imagine structure and purpose of GA
• Incorporate working group work time.
• Movement building tools as well as decision making body.
• Housing action brainstorm (tabled)
• Announcements
• Brooklyn-wide assembly Jan 10th

Report Backs

• Direct Action OWS: Events posted on nycga.net. January is filling up. Following lead of west coast occupations. Possible May Day general strike.
• Williamsburg GA: Charter school issue: Roberto Clemete school being phased out. Collaboration between Brooklyn GA and Williamsburg possible.
• Flatbush Occupy Your Block: Researching green space. Housing – looking to connect with local organizations. Been working with the pastors/Occupy Faith- soup kitchen and community meals on Saturdays. Will be doing one of the sat meals a month.
• Organizing for Occupation (O4O) in Flatbush: possible neighborhood based workshop on housng.
• Housing WG: Looking to have a bigger collaborative housing event. Stay tuned to website for meeting to plan broader event.
• End Corporate Personhood (OWS): Looking to repeal Citizens United Supreme Court Decision. OWS GA reached consensus in supporting local bills that oppose CU.
  • Fri 1/20: occupy the courts, federal court house.
  • Public performances in front of corporations mocking the concept that they’re persons. Contact Melina at: melinaphotosnyc@gmail.com
• Teach in at Freebrook Academy in Bed-Stuy: reaching out to students at Paul Robeson High School and find out what they want to learn; do teach-in and exchanges with youth.
• MLK Day Actions:
  • Sunday 15th Candle Light Vigil at Riverside Church in Harlem (490 Riverside Drive) at 7pm
  • Monday 16th
    • Reclaim MLK: A Journey of Liberation from the African Burial Ground. March begins at 290 Broadway 9-11 am
    • Occupy 4 Jobs: Union Square 1-5pm
• Jan. 10 Brooklyn-wide framework meeting: GO!
• Occupy Crown Heights wants to start: Contact Kara or Leo
• Portland: They blockaded their port. Workers very supportive. Rank and file and union leaders have asked west coast ports to join in solidarity of blocking an EGT import happening sometime in the next few weeks.
• Healthcare for the 99: Peoples’ Power Breakfast and Speak-out. Jan. 11 at 7am at the Marriot (333 Adams St.) Hospital closings: For-profit companies could come in and take over hospitals for the first time.
  • Want to build street actions in Brooklyn.
  • Want to collaborate with anyone interested in any and all aspects of healthcare.
  • If we need doctors for any event, contact Danny Lugassy at toxdanny@gmail.com.
• Food/Cooking (OWS): making a worker owned cooperative.
  • If we need food or want to plug in contact:  Philshipman@gmail.com
• Locations WG: looking for ideas of places to meet, preferably downtown and near subways. Help out!
• Newspaper WG: check website for articles.
• Education working group:
  • PS 19
  • Parent education policy flyering on Thursdays and Fridays
  • Saturdays in Nassau at franklin and old country road OccupyLI.org
• 702 Vermont St. They’re doing well, little to no police presence. Gloria and the local Green Party have and are collecting warm clothes for them. Socks especially needed.
• City-wide Assembly: Use OWS’s ability to mobilize people as a way to feed back out into neighborhood assemblies and strengthen movement.
• Check the twitter and site for upcoming event info!
• Satellite Radio station for OWS on MLK day and possibly longer.
• Blair working on tenants rights in her building.
• Facilitation WG: has Monday evening conference calls(call-in info on website).
  • Still want to hold training. Contact group to show interest so they can schedule something that works for those interested.

Proposal

• Collective Agreement:

• Purpose: To be generally inclusive but also provide agreement and apparatus for excluding of disruptive and destructive people.
  • Clarifying questions:
  • Who would enforce/throw out disrupters?  Mediators or facilitators who would refrain from physical violence, hopefully just preventing them from entering.
  • Who are informants? Not trying to be paranoid but aware of history of law enforcement plants. Google Fred Hampton.
  • Mediation team? Sounds great!
  • Where do you want to post this? The website and have it posted, ready to hand out.
  • This is a living document.
  • “Infinite/Infantile”
• Concerns:
  • First part similar to OWS Principles of Solidarity. Principles are aspirations as opposed to rules. Second part to much like rules
  • New people who don’t know could be excluded.
  • Sounds more like an organizations rules not a general assembly.
  • May OWS more than Brooklyn right now. If disruptors are present it may be more effective to figure out then and there what the best way to deal with them is. Statement could be more positive “IS” statements.
  • It would be more comfortable with organic Brooklyn made statement than modifying an OWS skeleton statement.
• Friendly Amendments:
  • Read at the beginning of every meeting.
  • Work with the group to come up with an agreement that better reflects the status, vision, and process of Brooklyn GA.
  • Table this now until a broader visioning activity. In the mean time, people could be honing it to better reflect BKGA.

No concensus as is.

• Kara’s proposal

• Spend whole GA  of community building:
  • talking about people’s needs and ethics navigation.
  • Consensus not reached.

• Discussion of GA structure/vision

• Redundancy and weight of bureaucracy is weighing people down. Statement is putting cart before the horse.
• Values, systems and culture are important and everywhere, in past and present movements, including GA’s.
• The GA could be more action oriented to build and bring in people and reactivate WGs.
• People should take more ownership over the ideas
• GA’s could be half breakouts of Working Groups.
• The information hub aspect of this GA is helpful and positive.
• Discussion space is important.
• Bicycle wheel: Central body coordinates but the working groups and neighborhoods do the work.
• Keep coordinating and collaborating.
• OWS is struggling to plan and self-identify just as much as we are, and OWS GA’s not necessarily much larger. Neighborhoods are important, but if we give up too easily and only focus on neighborhoods, then we are just a number of community organizations, not a movement. If things are not happening which you would like to see happen, you have to do it and put in the work to get others involved, because if you don’t, no one will.