response to Noah's intro letter

[Aria Littlhous]

......
N I want to announce
one or two facilitated discussions where people can come to speak
their mind about what issues brought them to this movement, what they
think its purpose is, and what our core values are.

A: Great idea & the more discussions the better. I volunteer to lead
one. Wish I could have stayed to support the proposal, but I my nose
was too cold.

N: We need to continually announce what we are working on and what our
methods are (see below) at EVERY OPPORTUNITY, certainly every GA. I'm
afraid there is still much confusion about what distinguishes our
approach from that of SPP and the individuals who wrote documents on
their own.......

A: It sounds good, but I have some doubts about writing by committee.
It's great to cull everyone's ideas, that's what I tried to do in the
Roadmap, but when it comes to writing, there's a reason they asked
Thomas Jefferson to wield the pen. I also don't believe that just
because something was written by one person it can't represent
accurately the ideas of a large group of people.

Tell me, if you read two Message Statements, and didn't know which was
written by an individual and which was written by a group, and agreed
that the one written by an individual was better: would you take that
opinion back when you realized that you'd chosen the less politically
correct, but better written document?

That's said, I'm willing to hang with the process, at least until it's
obvious that a camel is in them making, at which point I would ditch
out.

N:I have asked John from the library to announce at today's morning GA
that the ideas group is still actively collecting input both online
and on the paper in the library.

A: Can we put a deadline on this process, please?

N: I invite all of you reading this to consider
yourselves part of the ideas working group and to come up on stage to
make announcements as a group.

A: I'd love to meet people real-time. As it is now, i just show up
when I can and wander around trying to get people to talk to me.

N: That said, SPP is clearly not on the same page, as they are moving
forward with a
proposal that was drafted by a small group of people in an exclusive
way.

A: I think I appear to be a part of SPP, though I've never met them in
person, I do gab on all (!?!) the on line rooms, so I know I've been
talking to them and have seen various statements, maybe one that seems
to be coming from them...though I just heard from Anna, real time,
that they don't exist!!! And as I've said above, I don't believe that
just because one or two people wrote it that's it's not any good. And
that, I gather, makes me the outlier.

And so, I'd propose that when the consensus process begins that during
at least the first round, the Message Statements be presented "blind"
with no authors names attached!!!! This will make authors feel that
they have a fair shot at being heard and encourage people to really
think about what's being said, no who's saying it or why.

N: The GA wants to hear from us, to know what we're doing. We need to
agree upon a way to combine all the data in order to present it back
to the GA at the time of our proposal. I propose......

A: I'm not completely sure what I think of the process described
above. Right now, I think I would be more in favor of circulating a
fill-in-the -blank form (Background, Mission Statement, Values, Goals,
Objectives, Legislation, Methods, Other) with word limits and a
deadline on when it has to be in; widely advertized and sent doubly to
anyone who already submitted. Maybe an open house with lap tops and
assistants for people not comfortable with computers. Kind of starting
the process over with a big "Ready, Set, Go!" and then "Stop, Time's
Up." And of course, as usual, anyone who doesn't want to do it that
way, can opt out/we can present their ideas as "Other".

N: We might consider working out a way to to tally supporting
statements
for particular ideas.

A: I guess I do imagine it as a kind of essay contest (???).

N: Instead,
we should focus on reflecting the range of the concerns. I'm happy if
we can identify the topics which most of us feel strongly about and
the main areas of shared #CONCERN and leave the hardcore statistical
analysis to the research group.

N: This presentation to the GA of our data will require a projector.

A: I have some juicer ideas for a projector.

N: It should include the list of all the different inputs, and an
estimation
of the number of people our data represents. It should be made clear
that we have actively reached out to oppressed or underrepresented
groups for their input and provide some type of evidence of this.
Once we have our tags organized, it will then be our task to create
sentences that connect these concerns and values into a unified
coherent statement.

A: I see the camel coming.

N: so
that the document is not a reporting of the results of a process, but
an inspirational and unified call to action. This could also happen in
a pre-GA discussion so that we can gather ideas and include as many
people as possible. As soon as we have a draft it should be posted in
the Library on huge paper so people can make their changes to the
wording.

Maybe we could present either two or three documents with roughly the
same information...one group written, one individually written, both
short, and then the back up data, etc, in a separate document???


From my discussions with all of you, and whats been said at Gas uip

I filled my tank yesterday.

till now, I think our Statement of Purpose (feel free to propose other
ideas for the name of this document) should be very brief, ideally
taking less than 30 seconds to read. It should be a dual purpose
document as discussed above. As so many people have said in GAs, this
document should not claim to represent the the whole 99%. We should,
however, reach out to individual occupiers and supporters from
underrepresented groups to ensure that the voices of the
underrepresented are part of our discussion. OccupytheHood on Friday
will provide a great opportunity to get some of these voices included.
I will be there collecting these voices and I would love some help.

Dry vibes to you.

I would like to follow up this proposal with
another stating that Ideas and SPP (hopefully as part of a fully
integrated working group) schedule and organize open discussions on
the non-GA nights where we can begin discussing strategies, positions
and perhaps developing some specific proposals. I would like to submit
the analysis being done by ideas as the basis for organizing these
discussions. We could rotate through the main areas of #CONCERN, one
or two per night so that people could come to the discussions they
care most about and begin to exchange ideas in a large group, non-GA
format.

Great idea.

Thanks for doing this.