Great news! Need RSVPs.

[Amy Price]

Occupy Houston and Good Jobs, Great Houston will be co-hosting organizer Lisa Fithian (http://organizingforpower.wordpress.com/) and her partner and co-presenter Juniper. They've workd with SEIU, Occupy Wall Street, Occupy Austin, and many other groups for 10 years together and over 25 years separately.

They're presenting what sounds like a fantastic workshop on a variety of topics, some of them geared specifically for Occupy. They're working up an exact agenda, but here's the gist:

Sat until lunch: strategic organizing and building power

Sat after lunch: direct action training

Sun until lunch: community organizing

Sun after lunch: group processes and how to function well

GJGH will provide space and lunch. (I'm getting hold of their exact address, but it's in the middle of town off of I-45.) We'll pass the hat to fund Lisa and Juniper's trip, but please don't let lack of money deter you from coming! Everyone is welcome. GJGH will be bringing about 15 folks to the Sat sessions, which means there is space in the room for 50 more, tops. Sunday is all for Occupy, so 50-65 folks from this end. They've asked for RSVPs.

Let's keep thru this Friday for recruiting interested folks from Occupy Houston, Galveston and Kingwood (does anyone else know any other local Occupys?) and if we have slots left over we can open it up to the lovely folks at HPJC and the Green Party and other interested doers of good.

Just add your name to the lists below if you can come! (put it in alpha order of your first name so we can keep track a little more easily, please!)

Sat:
Amy Price

Sun:
Amy Price

[Amy Price]

A good point was made that this'll make for lots of email traffic on these groups. To avoid this, you're welcome to reply to me directly.

Peace,
Amy
heig...@gmail.com

[Lady Peacenluv]

Amy do you have a reference link to the GA Minutes where OccupyHouston consensed to "co-host" this?

Here is an excellent post written by the presenters I just found, it was repub'd by Kevin Zeese, OccDC back in November.
http://october2011.org/blogs/kevin-zeese/should-occupy-movement-adopt-strategic-non-violence

The Occupy movement includes people from a broad diversity of backgrounds, life experiences and political philosophies. Some of us want to reform the system and some of us want to tear it down and replace it with something better. Our one great point of agreement is our call for transparency and accountability. We stand against the corrupt institutions that broker power behind closed doors. We call to account the financial manipulators that have bilked billions out of the poor and the middle classes.

Just as we call for accountability and transparency, we ourselves must be accountable and transparent.

...

KarenR

[Amy Price]

No link. This happened sort of organically. Reference minutes of 2nd strategy mtg. The mobile-occupation breakout session requested Sarah Slamen to present an organizing workshop. She said yes, it was set up, Scott Parkin was in town and Sarah gave up her slot to him since he was visiting, it turned from there into a series of folks who were willing to donate their expertise.

Would somebody be willing to make this official thru a GA?

Peace,
Amy

[Sarah Slamen]

No one has to approve this, people can choose to attend or not.

[Lady Peacenluv]

 "Occupy Houston and Good Jobs, Great Houston will be co-hosting " requires GA approval.  OH will promote the event on the website, FB Wall, twitter etc once its an official OccupyHouston co-hosted session as per GA, and details date / time are available. Send all those details to webre...@occupyhouston.org
Presenting the Proposal is the responsibility of the Work Group that is coordinating it.
Karen

[Amy Price]

Please don't promote on website/fb, at least not until next week, as attendance is limited and she has agreed to do this primarily to help OH with its needs, much as she has helped OWS and OA. GJGH stepped in to provide space and lunch and has limited their participation so that we can get as many occupiers included as want to come.

Peace,
Amy

[Sarah Slamen]

Selective enforcement/waste of time, yep sounds like Occupy Houston. Please, someone assuage a few people and propose this. Otherwise, don't look such an organized gift horse in the mouth. And since it doesn't need to be tweeted, facebooked, etc, I guess there's no need to propose right away :)

[Lady Peacenluv]

Noting your characteristic disdainful & sarcastic response, Sarah. GA is the essential core governance process for OH, as are a few other principles that have been disrespected and/or sidestepped along the way. Thats part of the reason a Workshop-Training Session like this one is so sorely needed.... for all OH participants & Occupiers, new and old, not just a select group.

This is a wonderful opportunity for all of us. I understand the Limited Seating (and food!) and much appreciate the generosity of GJGH in providing both.

Amy, what are the DATES for this? And how do interested people - who are not on the listservs - RSVP their intention to attend?

(Sorry I lost the REPLY ALL thing.)

Karen

[Amy Price]

Apologies for missing critical info, y'all: Dates are 11th and 12th of Feb.


Anybody interested in attending, on listserves or not--and if you have thoughts about how to get the word out to occupiers who aren't on the listserves, please go for it--just email me personally, like everybody else is doing.

Peace,
Amy





 

[Sarah Slamen]

Can someone please forward me the meeting minutes where the GA allowed Occupy Houston Political Action group and Occupy Houston Freedom Fighters to use its name for official organizing capacity and to meet with city officials? Also, can someone please forward me the minutes where OH voted that all food, drink, and money donations would be open to the use of consistent non participants? Also, can someone send me the GA minutes where...I could keep going and going. Again, Amy asks that it not be listed yet so no biggie yet.

On Tue, Jan 31, 2012 at 1:47 PM, dreamingkat <dream...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Tue, Jan 31, 2012 at 12:11, Sarah Slamen <sarah....@gmail.com> wrote:
> No one has to approve this, people can choose to attend or not.

Internet Workgroup policy requires that for the event to be on the
website, facebook, or twitter, it must be either an approved Occupy
Houston event, or a work group event.

It cannot be an an approved OH event (including co-hosting it) unless
it's gone through GA.

If you would like it to be announced as an event by Good Jobs, Great
Houston that OH Outreach is inviting people to, then I can get that on
the website today.  But we cannot say that Occupy Houston is
co-hosting it unless it goes through a GA.

[Lady Peacenluv]

Please do not send me private messages within this e-thread like this one below.
Karen

Sarah Slamen	1:41 PM (16 minutes ago)
to me

Keep telling yourself all of that, I enjoyed the list of at least 4 things that happen/have happened OH without GA consensus that people in gchat came up with after they saw your message. Take offense to my tone all you want, you're the one who issued a backhanded paragraph about transparency to Amy for a nice workshop being put on for free that doesn't exclude anyone. Waaaaah, waaaaaah. Occupy Houston. Cry on!

[Sarah Slamen]

Haha, you took a conversation public, one that I didn't want to clutter thread with, to prove what exactly? Wait, you can comment on my tone and I can't? I see. Please feel free to post that over and over. Waaaaaaaaaah (transparently!)

[Amy Price]

The point Sarah makes--that many things OH does grow out of "sanctioned" events/meetings but are not themselves officially sanctioned, and that it's a bit hard to tell the difference sometimes--is a valid one. As mentioned earlier, that's exactly how this workshop series happened.

I think it points to a need to make structure more important than process, because if you rely on process you'll tend to get bogged down in minutia or even become completely dysfunctional. We've got the former--this workshop thing, which a) folks will be on board with generally, b) uses no finite resources of OH, and c) will not produce anything binding for OH or any occupier, is getting bogged down in minutia--and the later. I mean, which GA does this get pitched to, the one that is scheduled every morning but frequently doesn't happen, or the one that's scheduled every evening but frequently doesn't happen? That's dysfunctional.

Given the discussion, here's my suggestion: somebody volunteer to put this in front of the GA. If it passes, great. If it doesn't, GJGH can put their name on it solo, which by all rights they probably should anyway because they're providing everything necessary to make the workshop happen other than the contact with the presenter, the only thing that came from an occupier. (The only reason they didn't take all of the credit in the first place is, I'm sure, because it is to OH's CREDIT to present a useful workshop like this, and they have no problem sharing the glory.) If somebody goes to the GA and there is no GA, or if nobody pitches it by Thurs night, I guess at that point we can take our name off of it.

Peace,
Amy

On Tue, Jan 31, 2012 at 1:51 PM, Sarah Slamen <sarah....@gmail.com> wrote:

[Sarah Slamen]

" I mean, which GA does this get pitched to, the one that is scheduled every morning but frequently doesn't happen, or the one that's scheduled every evening but frequently doesn't happen? That's dysfunctional."

Excellent, excellent, points, so glad you have the time and patience for the purposefully obstinate. On second thought, why is anything that came out that 2nd strategy meeting being allowed??? We better just put the brakes on it all. LOL

[Sarah Slamen]

RSVP me before lunch (11-1:30) on Sunday and after 3:30pm on Sunday. Thanks, Amy.

On Tue, Jan 31, 2012 at 2:38 PM, Hugh Jones <hugh.jo...@gmail.com> wrote:

[Amy Price]

Hey, y'all!

If anybody knows whether the "co-host" issue has been passed thru the GA, please let me know by 10PM tonight (Thurs). If not, we'll post the workshop on fb and calendar as a GJGH event to which we're just invited.

Plenty of room left, btw.

Peace,
Amy

On Tue, Jan 31, 2012 at 10:35 AM, Amy Price <heig...@gmail.com> wrote:

[Amy Price]

Just found out that GAs are now Wed and Sunday only, so please disregard previous request.

Peace,
Amy