march facilitation
Brett Williams
chant during marches. No one else is doing it. We should have a
clear participatory system. Here's just an example:
The person leading the current chant holds up as many fingers as they
want their chant repeated. For instance you could hold up your whole
hand to do a chant five times, or just a peace sign to say two
repetitions. Then you take away one finger each time the chant's
repeated, and then people who want to take the chanting next are
holding up their hands to be called on and the current chant leader
points to the person who calls the next chant, hopefully without
missing a beat!
So I have my hand up and someone points to me. I hold up two fingers
and say "WHOSE STREET?" to which everyone responds "OUR STREET!" I
then hold up just one finger and say "WHOSE STREET?" to which everyone
again replies "OUR STREET!" Then I point to someone else who has
their hand up, and we take their chant next.
That's a facilitation process for constant snappy transitions, which I
think we should practice because it would be lots of fun. Here's a
process for slower transitions, and especially for larger crowds:
Occupy Our Voices (AKA anyone who cares to participate, not like it's
exclusive or anything) gather together in a huddle to decide on the
next chant. We reach a consensus, and then we disperse to locations
throughout the crowd and lead everyone in the same chant at once.
Once the chant is started, we gather together again and start
discussing what to do next. We try not to trample on chants that
spontaneously arise elsewhere in the crowd! And our suggestions in
the huddles should always be like, "I heard someone say this new
chant, let's do that one," so we can always be sensitive and open to
participation by everyone.
A third process that I'll recommend I've been calling a "tapestry."
The idea is instead of a sharp transition between chants, we add
chants which can layer over one another. We can invent (and evolve
over time) various such tapestries. For instance we could start a
tapestry with "We Are The 99%", adding the sung layer I wrote, next
perhaps a soprano descant, and then I've tried fitting various other
standard chants over that and some fit better than others. OH, and
there's the layer "and so are YOU!" (with the "you" simultaneous with
the "we"!) which is spreading already around the globe. That tapestry
can be a worldwide project! And anyone can start some part of the
tapestry that they know and add it to the mix, or invent something new
to mix in, without needing to interrupt what's going on. This
strategy is probably not as good for sending a clear message, but it
could be beautiful which sends a different message.
Thanks OOV, you're beautiful!
<3,
mungojelly
p.s. Superduper just wrote a chant: "The people, united-- corporations
not invited!"
Puja Gupta
Katie Soule
Brett Williams
Yes let's debrief! I learned a lot from this action.
I'm glad the first action we supported was more of a Peace & Justice
Center action than an Occupy Burlington action. Let's make that a
pattern. We should be there when Occupy Burlington marches, sure, but
I'm really more excited to see how we can provide solidarity. We're
being conscious from the very beginning of being a support and at most
song leaders, not a choir. So we should be able to show up at events
and add energy to what THEY want to do, empower them. When people ask
Occupy Burlington to support their event, we should consider whether
we can be part of that support.
We did a little song training at the beginning by the Democracy
Memorial. That seemed like a good process. We had fun singing
together, and we were prepared later when we were at the site we were
protesting. We had some alterations suggested to the songs, even
though they were already printed, which was NOT good process at all.
It's great people want to participate and make suggestions-- but
difficult to integrate with preprinted lyric sheets.
The chanting during the march was very weak. Someone passed out a
paper with some chants on it, which was good, but the chants
themselves were not, frankly. But that's life; we tried our best; I
sat at that OOV meeting for a while trying to think of a good chant
with "corporation" or "Citizens United" in it and I didn't think of
one. So my criticism isn't that we didn't think of any good chants.
My criticism is that we just habitually felt like we had to march
along chanting, even though we didn't have the ideas or energy for
that, as if we didn't have different options! We could have marched
along having a conversation for instance or a speak-out, especially
since we had a bullhorn. It's a good thing we don't just think of
ourselves as a singing group or a singing and chanting group, so we'd
have to be making everyone sing and chant all the time. We should be
really sensitive to whether people feel like singing-- sometimes
people LOVE it and other times they don't want to. That march I
really feel didn't want to chant, but I think there's a million
creative ideas that would have woken them right up.
The speak-out in front of the court went really well. Thanks so much
to Kate for leading us in some human mic as well as bullhorning and
yelling. It's great that we can have a bullhorn sitting there unused
while we show our human power instead.
I enjoyed the bullhorn, though. It's powerful. We should consider
maybe strategies for giving transition clues, maybe even leading in
rhythms. A whistle could be helpful for that too. OK here's a formal
horizontal process for bullhorn facilitation: The person with the
whistle and the person with the bullhorn hang out together. Someone
who wants a chant called comes up to them and proposes it. If no one
objects (either the bullhorn person or the whistle person or someone
else hanging around, so at least three people participate in the
process and it's open to participation from everyone) then first the
whistle blower blows a long tone to signal a transition coming up,
then the rhythm of the chant that was agreed, and then the bullhorn
caller calls the chant through the bullhorn. The bullhorner and
whistler check & balance each other: The person with the whistle just
has the power to signal that it's time for a transition, but not to
very clearly demand what should be chanted next, but they do give a
hint of what's been decided, so that the bullhorner isn't able to use
the bullhorn to direct the march themselves personally because it's
clear from the match between the whistle and what they chant that they
got consent.
Consent is beautiful. Consent and consensus means that what we do
makes everyone feel really good. I think OOV helped the people at the
Occupy the Courts action feel good. And even more importantly I think
we got some good practice at helping to facilitate a march; by Spring
we'll be ridiculously awesome at it.
<3,
mungojelly
Katie Soule
Brett Williams
> OOV, we're still meeting at 5pm tonight? or 5:30, and at the Peace and
> Justice Center? It seems to have been a very long week between last Thursday
> and this, so just double-checking.
I'm planning to be there at 5. I'd love to sing with you again, & I'd
like to try to get a little material ready for the VT Yankee event on
Sunday.
<3,
mungojelly