Meeting Notes  31 Mar 12

Pulaski Park

Kevin O’Keefe

Present:  Sheila, Ted, Rich, Kevin, Paki, Peggy, Moggie, Amy, Pat, Renata

Facilitator: Paki

Stack: Sheila

Time: Pat

Sheila had laminated copies of an opening statement and hand signals.  The statement was read.

Discussion:

Interpersonal Conflict in Occupy Northampton:

• There have been a number of interpersonal conflicts in ONoho’s history.
• Meeting facilitators should try to limit actions in GA’s that cause or foster these conflicts.
• Some members have attended facilitation training, but this training didn’t address handling such conflicts in great detail.
• Everyone present at a GA should be responsible for identifying such conflict and interrupting the meeting to address it when it is happening.  Can use the “point of process” hand signal?  They should name the behavior that they think is disruptive to group well being.
• It was formally proposed that we should go over the introduction, hand signals, and the rules for how we carry out a consensus meeting at the beginning of every GA.   This proposal was approved.
• A quick discussion should also cover any additional points that attendees feel need to be addressed.
• We can store the graphic aids for this (hand signals, introduction) at In Spirit Common and pick them up before the meeting and bring them to the meeting.
• We should post this information on the Google Group (and facebook page?) so that people can become familiar with them.
• There was mention of a facilitation video online.  (Note:  Kevin has since posted the link to the OWS bus trip facilitation training video that is on Vimeo on the ONoho Google Group and ONoho facebook page)
• We should consider appointing a vibe checker for GA meetings.
• How do you handle disruptive people at meetings.  Should there be some method of voting them out.  Conflict Resolution Process.  Is there a precedent or method used by groups used as a formal process to resolve such conflict?
• As soon as possible, persons who are in conflict should sit with others who were at the GA and weren’t involved in the conflict to discuss the conflict.
• Rich didn’t feel that the help that was offered recently wasn’t helpful.
• A monthly communication meeting is held by OAmherst, though it is sparsely attended.  It was suggested that we do the same.  It was suggested that we attend the OAmherst meeting instead of having our own so that that would boost the number at that meeting and foster cooperation between the two Occupies.
• Some conflicts are two sided, but others are due to the actions of only one person.

Report from Forum with City Council

• Thanks to Amy for her efforts in getting this meeting organized.  People were pleased with the 5 breakout sessions that were held, but Amy was dissatisfied, and felt that the City Council had co-opted the meeting
• There were over 100 attendees, including the mayor and many city counselors.
• Lots of Occupy folks showed up who don’t usually attend GA meetings.
• How do we handle the next steps from this forum?
• Amy will contact the note takers from the 5 breakout groups to get their notes and work on the next steps to come from this forum.

Facilitator: Amie
Notes: George
Timekeeper: Kevin
Stack: Rich

Agenda:

• GA Meeting Place, tools etc (15 minutes)
• Three Strikes (5 minutes)
• GA/Process (30 minutes)
• Another City is Possible (10-15 minutes)
• Media/Website (10 minutes)
• Banking (2 minutes)
• Vt Yankee (10 minutes)
• Western Mass GA (10 minutes)

GA Meeting place tools

Kevin: 24th 4 to 8, 31th 1 to 4, next 2 weeks Saturdays taken. Proposed we move to Pulaski park in April, Switch in time is difficult. Announcements are hard, changes in time are difficult, March 31 move to park because of time, until time proposed is changed meet at 4. Weather is the biggest variable, what is backup plan, no backup plan, if it rains it rains, we met every day, rain means we don’t meet, there is no public meeting space in NoHo and it will be a subject of the city is possible meeting, we can always change this when space becomes available, is white board possible?, is there space?, inspirit common has been very accommodating, visual appeal to passer byers, tripod to place whiteboard, put sign on it, etc.

Proposal to buy whiteboard, approved and Amie will to thank consensus
Proposal we move GA to Pulaski park starting March 31st at 4pm, unanimous consensus

Three Strikes

Paki reports 2 busses from Springfield, at least 1 car from Amherst, mostly people of color, 2 from NoHo, great rally and the issues were brought home, issues discussed are amazing and three strikes is major issue. Legislature aides where there and they listened to people from districts. Wen to Peter Cocuts office, not there, but aid was. He voted for issue and Stan Rosenberg is sick but doing well and took info. Ellen Story said if you worked with my collogues you’d want to kill them, thank god for progressives , Rep from Orange voted against it and is good. No Ben Swan

The house bill is long and detailed and very punitive and the senate bill is brief with no mandatory sentencing and no 3 strikes and the governor wants to pass a bill without 3 strikes and no mandatory sentencing. Ellen Story thinks best thing is for it to die in reconciliation. Not much other occupy presence but Paki & Joe had noho banner.

Thanks to Paki and Joe for representing OccupyNoHo.

GA Process

We talked about the current draft and listened to info from google group and we can always work on modifications in the future. It is more important to get something in place and work on updates latter. Blocks are an important issue and we can address at future working groups. We’d like to include the hand signals that Pat and Moogie already created.

Formal vote taken and we had unanimous consensus

Another City is Possible Forum

Came out of OccupyTrip GA mic check on city council. Meeting is Monday at JFK and there may be car pooling available with info posted on our website and facebook and NoHo Cable TV will be there recording the forum. Is there an agenda? No one here knows the agenda and not found online. Amie recalls, who is there and why, outline issues, financing of police station, corporate development, and other concerns and then break out into break out groups. General questions: what works regarding econ. Devel. What would you change. A couple of people are facilitating the break out groups with report backs. Another forum date will be set and a possible mechanism will decided to get info out. Working group meeting talked about where to go after Monday’s meeting. What do we want to get out of it? Do we want to set up another meeting with City Council? Concerns about where this group is, where it has been and where it is going? Tone is that we have woken up and we can’t trust our city government to represent us properly. It will be interesting to see what the mayor and committee’s already have a process in place and it will be interesting to see their response. It will be interesting to see who shows up ad what they say. Representative government sucks! We should be wary of who shows up as the police station passed 60/60. We did need a new police station but it was the financing that sucked. Big bank offered lowest rates, is city government lazy? We could do it better if more people participated.

Media/Communication

Website is ready be opened and we have an initial plan of moving people over from google groups. There might be people who can’t use this technology and don’t know how to use it. There will always be people that can’t access online technology so we have to decide if we want this, nothing or something in between.

Proposal: Create accounts for all users of NoHo google group sending them an invitation to join the website, but not turn off google groups yet. Each individual working group can choose to take advantage of the group features.

Formal vote taken and we had unanimous consensus

Banking/Financial Working Group

Question about this working group and who is on it. FSB offers accounts where we can have an account that people can write out checks to OccupyNorthampton. People should go to GA to be on checking account and they should be here to write out checks and that we have money, etc. Rich is on working group, not sure who else is.

Vt Yankee

Big Demo on Thursday and there is no occupyNoHo affinity group to join there. It would be nice to have the banner there, meeting at 11am in Brattleboro. The GA voted to support this effort in previous GA. Will there be a group of people from NoHo? Non-violence training is needed

Western Mass GA (10 minutes)

Process, next meeting and list server is under discussion. There is a need for a hosting occupyLocation. George will advocate for OccupyFranklinCounty to host next meeting as he is a member there also. Breakout groups were all at once and the next meeting breakout group was not well attended and didn’t include the original planners from NoHo. Can we use Smith College? It would be nice to have open space and the city committee working group is going ask for this. Why not Pulaski Park in the summer?

Article on NPR.Org

It would be good for occupiers to read this too as, it seems, many are losing their momentum and there also seems to be a splintering going on as we drift away for the original, and brilliant IMHO, simple theme of getting money out of our political system and giving our future back to the people.  Anything less than 99% is just the same old same old too me!

Present:  John, Annie, Peggy, Rich, George, Amy, Paki
Facilitator:  Annie, Stack: George, Minutes: Kevin

Discussed:
Western MA GA Report (Kevin):   See enclosed below
Financial Report (Rich):
•        Sheila received another check
•        Expenses still coming in, no requests for payment this past week.
•        Northampton Coop Bank won’t honor checks made out to Occupy
Northampton only those made out to Rich or Seth as their names are on
the account, because Occupy doesn’t have an EIN number.  Rich
expressed concerns about having a “leader” in order to get an EIN.
Discussed checking into what other Occupy groups like Amherst have
done, and approaching Florence Savings Bank to see what they might be
able to do.
Group proposed and approved a financial accountability working group
which will investigate these issues.
Peggy asked to discuss the issues of transparency concerning the
events surrounding the march during the Occubus visit.
•        Her concerns were that Occupy Northampton (ON) GA had approved the
march route and places to demonstrate, based upon research and work
done by an ON working group, and that the locations and route got
changed (including adding Verizon and Servicenet, and failing to go to
Dunkin Donuts).
•        It isn’t clear who made these changes. Annie wondered if the
locations were decided at the GA in Pulaski Park.
•        The Northampton Police were well controlled and organized, and ON
didn’t seem to be.  Concerns were expressed that unions may have been
allowed to use ON for their own agenda, and that ON GA needs to learn
lessons not to let things like this happen in the future.
•        She expressed approval for the General Assembly that had been held.

Peggy brought up the subject of 21st Century Black Slavery in prisons
and the prison industrial complex an wanted this to be discussed as a
larger issue (not just the Mass. Three Strikes legislation).
•        Rich mentioned that ON GA has a criminal justice working group and
that he and Martin Jones are in that group, and mentioned that the
Occupy Amherst has contacted him about ON doing something with them on
this subject.
•        Peggy was encouraged to judge the working group.
•        Rich mentioned discussions with Martin about the Three Strikes law
and about having Lois Ehrens speak.

George mentioned the rules for use of the Frances Crowe Room and that
we should not advertise the room as MEF but use “Frances Crowe Room”
so that people don’t call and bother MEF about our meetings.

Paki came in late and informed the group about her recent trip to
Bahrain as a witness and participant at the anniversary demonstrations
there.
•        Paki had been detained and deported by the government of Bahrain.
•        She mentioned that Reuters was the only international press present.
•        She mentioned that John Toomey has been consulting for Bahrain on
crowd control, and that the US government has been supporting Bahrain,
and that munitions used in Bahrain are manufactured in the US.
Doctors in Bahrain are being arrested for providing medical care to
protestors.
•        Sixty six people have been killed in Bahrain so far.
•        Jim McGovern is supporting legislation to stop arms support of
Bahrain.
•        There is about $53 million in US support that is on hold.
Paki mentioned the website “wittnessbahrain.org”.
•        Rich asked if there was anything that ON could do, and Paki said
that she would let the GA know.

The GA worked on sending out thank you posters to individuals and
groups who helped during the bus trip.

Below is a list of what was believed to be the working groups (WG)
blist.  There may be some ommisions or errors.
•        Media Relations WG
•        Dunkin Donuts WG
•        GA Working WG
•        Website WG
•        Encampment WG
•        City Council WG
•        Public Space WG

George mentioned the Occupy Amherst GA meeting on Sunday at 2 pm and
encouraged folks to visit.

George mentioned that the ON website has features that support
individual WG sections, but that that this feature hasn’t been
configured yet.
•        There are ability to configure group membership as public, private,
and invitation only.  John asked about whether group status could be
changed and George confirmed that it could.
•        Paki discussed listing working groups on the website.  George
mentioned the ability to have member pages and group pages.
•        Kevin asked questions about how to join.

It was mentioned that there is a list of working groups (WG) on the
Occupy Northampton Google Group site.
•        George felt that Google groups aren’t a good place for a working
group list, and that not everyone has a computer.
•        Also, with the current Google group people may get many unwanted
emails when people post to the Google Group.

Amy asked if there was a centralized event list of all WMASS Occupy
events.  Rich mentioned that there wasn’t one yet.  Kevin mentioned
bringing this suggestion to the WMASS Occupy GA meeting in March.

Western Mass GA Meeting Notes
16 Feb 2012 7 – 9:30
First Churches, Northampton

About 15 participants.  Facilitated by Jamie.  Minutes by Lani.
Participants from Occupy UMASS, Amherst, Northampton, HCC, Holyoke,
GCC
Key points:
-Agreed that Western Mass should have meetings once per month, should
be mass attendance, and should move locations around Western Mass.
-Next meeting at UMASS March 10th 1 – 4 pm, location TBA (Keith of
Occupy UMASS to arrange)
-Occupy UMASS and Occupy Amherst to act as organizers, arrange
facilitation
-email list generated and given to James.  James to email all
-James to create Google group for Occupy Western Mass
-The 600 names from last meeting during OWS bus trip in Northampton
being entered into database.  The contacts on that list will be
invited to join Google group and to March 10th meeting at UMASS.
-Agenda for March 10th meeting will be similar to OWS bus trip GA
meeting.  Suggest that area occupies put forward suggested topics at
meeting, as well as take individual meetings.  Should include
suggesting an action target.

Mentioned
-Would like future meetings outdoors during good weather so that
passers by will become interested to grow movement.
-Important that Western Mass GA be moved around, and not too
Northampton-centric.
-Possibly start committee of correspondents to facilitate inter-occupy
in Western Mass.  To discuss on March 10th?
-One person wanted personal interaction, not just a meeting about
meetings.  Same person raised issues about hand signals when not
everyone have full use of hands, didn’t like “occupy” as a name.
-We briefly discussed why each of us were interested in occupy.
-Occupy UMASS having a march at UMASS on March 1st
-Occupy Amherst Feb. 19th, 10:00 a.m. @ the Unitarian Universalist
Society of Amherst (121 No. Pleasant St.)  Sermon title:  Being on the
Side of the Poor, delivered by Michaelann Bewsee .  Ms Bewsee is one
of 4 women who started Arise For Social Justice in Springfield more
than 27 years ago.   A special collection for “Arise” will be
gathered.  Following this program, at 12:00, Malcolm Chu from No one
Leaves in Springfield will lead a discussion on predatory lenders and
foreclosures
-Rich from Occupy Northampton mentioned that after paying bills there
may be money left over from OSW bus event in Northampton that Occupy
Northampton would like to go to Occupy Western Mass to grow the
movement.

I’ve created a ‘hack’ on the old website hosted at liquid squid and to which occupyNorthampton.com points that redirects requests to that page to our website at Dot Org… where it belongs.  The Dot Com website, I have been told, is paid for about 6 months and will soon expire and this mess will be yet another part of our illustrious history.

The new website features:

• Roles based membership. Users can be subscriber, author, editor, admin, etc.  Default is author.
• Events Calendar
• Each Member has home page
• WordPress blogging for each member
• Activity Stream for global, personal and group activity with RSS feed and email notification
• Working Groups can be Private, public or hidden with threaded forums and document sharing
• Some pages are not visible to public.  Currently Working Groups and Members page are private
• Automatic system backups

February 1st, First Churches

Occupy Wall Street Road Trip Facilitation Training from Northampton Community Television on Vimeo.

Non-Violence and Consensus
By Wally Nelson

This is a reading that Sharon opened the Facilitation Training with.

Non-violence is the constant awareness of the dignity and humanity of oneself and others. It seeks truth and justice. It renounces violence both in method and attitude. Non-violence is a courageous acceptance of active love and goodwill as the instrument with which to overcome evil and transform both oneself and others. It is the willingness to undergo suffering rather than inflict it. It excludes retaliation and flight.

When we speak of consensus, we are not referring to the literal meaning of the word. Literally, consensus is understood as a noun we use when a group comes to a unanimous decision. Consensus as we use it implies much more than the final state of being in agreement. It is a way of relating to each other in a non-violent, respectful and caring fashion. It is more than an end result; it is a process. And in the process of consensus, it is not unanimity we seek but unity in which we can all contribute in our own way. Hallock Hoffman in The Civilization of the Dialogue explains: “Unity . . . is more complex. It does not necessarily reflect total agreement on the issue under discussion. It incorporates a perception of the relationship of the members to each other and to the issue.”