notnotjournalism

Two meetings in the past two weeks discuss plans for a celebration and an invitation in the Spring…

January 27 Planning Meeting for a massive, celebratory city-wide gathering

One Hundred thirty people: Twenty break-out groups of six or seven people say this is what it should be:

Permits; fun; inclusive; “we” rather than “they”; convergences; speak-outs; how can we make people distinguish this action and feel this is theirs;

focus on communities and building coalition; thematically based groups from different neighborhoods meet; new assemblies formed;

everyone in the city knows that they’re invited;

stadium; build towards May Day; union involvement; changing culture and values; transforming society—physical and non-physical participation—different constituencies-labor, immigrant etc.; not just a General Assembly; art and music and expression; eat-in; potluck; share food; balance between quality and quantity;

Saturday or weekend; Jubilee; bargaining market; localized potlucks; training events (facilitation, non-violence, anti-racism); April 15 = tax day and the time when state & local budgets will become public; need for vision;

diversity in planning process; coherence, but not too focused in; mini-General Assemblies; combination of militant action and low-risk;

what message to bring to neighborhoods; need discussion of themes; Occupy World Fair; family oriented;

mobile think-tanks;

midnight marches,

candlelight vigils;

keep folks asking questions;

sector-oriented simultaneously in different places; want proclamation; each group have directions and goals; Battery Park (to see the Statue of Liberty);

diverse outreach; help of other working groups and communities; fair; concert; have information tables; social media; local and national; new organizations; Central Park;

pop-up occupations;

plant seeds in community gardens as symbols;

end event with occupation;

mega General Assembly;

organize for May Day on celebration day; Earth Day; this meeting is a spokes for the day;

plant trees in crazy places;

political; rebirth; growth; general strike or move you money; April Fool’s Day; Chicago is doing something big on March 15^th; it should be on the 17^th of whatever month to continue the anniversary celebration;

discussions of what brought us together; time frame, is it just a day, or a whole weekend; direct action that is an educating act; once a week event to build up; March 17^th is St. Patrick’s day; cops will be busy; poorest neighborhoods;

not self-referential themes; one day event is just a starting point; visionary; taking of a public space creatively;

occupy Central Park; open space for new people; empower people to be a part of this day; are we ready for a day? We’ve had some days;

public more than just observers; get that 10% of the population required to create social change; expand to what other people might be interested in; create safe space for the public to come;

immigrants afraid; ex-cons afraid to participate; have both celebration and a General Assembly; subway ride in; ongoing conversation; create system of communication;

teach-ins of “outer” General Assemblies giving training about how they do things;

arts; organizing; General Assembly process; leave space for discussion on the big day.

February 10 Planning Meeting

Task Forces: Outreach, Assembly Exploration/Structure, Facilitation, Arts & Culture, Logistics, Messaging/Media, Interface, Working People’s Caucus

Seventy or Eighty people: eight break out groups: (What are some concrete ideas for the day?)

After Zuccotti was evicted, there was an emergency General Assembly which meant new faces–this really prepared people for November 17^th, the day of action;

mobile parade to take attention away from Manhattan, something that moves through Queens/Bronx; boroughs have marches into one convergence point, a convergence of ideas and people;

create a place with a sense of the energy and conversation that was Zuccotti;

a festival;

a rally;

a focus of energy;

Sunset Park had a speak-out celebration which started with drumming and ended with food and a march; food makes people stay longer; break out should have the same weight as a speak out;

OWS is out of the media; if people are going to take risks, how do you create a presence which assures people that there are numbers and support; OWS is still here;

April 14 is a coming out party;

April 15 is about tax reform; tax issues will bring out a lot of people; could do April 14 and April 15 back-to-back, to get both festive and direct action initiatives;

get a number of people to refuse to pay their taxes; bringing up tax issues is problematic when attempting consensus—it will be divisive; April 15 people will be at home doing their taxes; the divisive issue could be a way of uniting a lot of different people over a similar but various issue; “the only things inevitable are death and taxes”—how can we create conversation around that; getting large numbers out to protest tax issues is long-term effective?;

how do we disrupt and actually become a problem;

invite discussion of tax reform on the fun day; find a group that can or is already organized for tax protest on April 15 and ask them to organize with us; what empowers us together to create a real world; don’t dodge the tax day; talk about role of money and resources;

branding = spring (Arab Spring?); who can be an occupier? It can be you—even if you don’t want to live in a tent; liquidate fear of striking and marching; how do you prepare people to deal with risky situations; pre-community outreach to people comfortable to participate on May Day;

Food! A potluck, or find organizations willing to donate food; you can have barbecue in Flushing Gardens or Sunset Park, but not in Central Park; food means positive media attention;

day should be large turn out to reignite OWS; April 15 is effective because it focuses on the taxation issues surrounding the 1% versus the 99%;

stay downtown to stay true to OWS; Battery Park;

set aside time and space for those who want to join into the movement; recruit and develop organizers on that day; celebrate the people of OWS who have worked so hard—a relief from burnout; time consideration—we did so much in five months, let’s celebrate; OWS 2.0;

this should be a movement building day and not a direct action day; the day should feed our existing general assemblies and working groups;

it might progress like this—feed into the decided site with actions and outreach while traveling, have a short rally, break out by neighborhood/borough/issue, report backs in the spokes model that can become an ongoing model, a “next coming” event, a big party;

this day should be distinct from May Day; energize our existing general assemblies; go to your general assembly or community and identify the issues that they want to bring to the big day; movement building not direct actions;

city-wide picnic; we should be in Washington Square Park in case of bad weather;

have an assembly to introduce people to the general assembly structure; hand out programs and maps on the day to show visitors what is going on; there should also be spontaneous pop-ups; specific colors for specific boroughs; re-create Zuccotti; there should be both planning and autonomous action; spirit of Zuccotti;

if you’re in an OWS working group, you should plug it into the corresponding task forces for this day;

a fair; broad scale; what is OWS?; reach out to different general assemblies and groups to get involved with this fair thing; working people and family friendly; there should be arts and entertainment;

April 15 OWS is back; theme of spring;

April 14!;

April 15 might restrict faith-based groups because it is a Sunday; the day should be big sexy and awesome but create movement structures as well; people should go into neighborhoods;

concert? big names?;

first neighborhood assemblies, then food, next issue-based groups/assemblies; there should be a welcoming group and an information group that wear identifying t-shirts;

messages may be “another world is possible”, local election involvement/voting, resisting alienation and restriction, civil right issues, training;

activities may be a carnival, tables, arts, a concert, de-centralized discussion, themed groups, spontaneous and planned speak outs using the people’s mic;

some concerns are bathrooms, permits, the proximity of the day approaching;

we should lie about Radiohead coming to the day;

performance elements must be democratic and not status-based; there should be no stage with officially sanctioned performance; instead there can be roving prosceniums and performers can call out to it to come to them if they want to perform something; the performance guild has a library of hundreds of ten minute plays;

focus on concrete issues and ongoing struggles, like foreclosure and stop-and-frisk;

faith-based groups and unions should be more involved; big fun and family oriented; a “no jobs fair”; there should be a service aspect with tutoring and teach-ins;

various groups are voting for endorsement of OWS but have no outlet;

thinking big and long-term in order to inform the day; use the power of OWS to incite people and create long-lasting structure (an example would be encouraging people to create more of their own neighborhood assemblies);

start simple and big, then break out into smaller and neighborhood groups; there should be a section of time/space devoted to issues.

Words by over two hundred people from all five boroughs of NYC

Transcribed and formatted by Kathleen Purcell