Comment thread the first - edited for silliness. Revolution or reform?

[Sarah Beuhler]

Sarah Beuhler:

Major Question:

Create a new system or reform this one? Aside from the existential
issues I see dividing everyone - like drugs and alcohol - this seems
to be the biggest divide. If we seek a brand new everything, including
adopting the communal model of governance, then everything is
different. If we just want to change 25% of what is basically a
working system, then we don't need to focus on a lot of stuff.

So. Revolution or incremental improvements? If we're divided on that,
we all might as well know right away.
Like · · Unfollow Post · 5 hours ago

Ben Feral Selinger Personally, I see it both ways. We have a lot of
successes and failures and I aim to address them. I'm working closely
with OV to address their current issues but ultimately we're also
building something from the ground up and top down to provide other
occupations/movements the templates and tools they need to hit the
ground running without running into all the issues OV is experiencing
or resolved.
5 hours ago · Like
Sarah Beuhler Oh hilarious - I meant in the world, man, you know, the
world.
5 hours ago · Like

Ben Feral Selinger Oh. New system. No question for me. I don't patch
code, I rewrite it.
4 hours ago · Like
Sarah Beuhler Viva the revolucion! sayeth Ben! What say the rest of
youse?
4 hours ago · Like

Lisa Nolan when we did disaster recovery plans, we always worked from
the premise that aliens had finally come to earth and destroyed the
building our company head office was located in. If we did not get the
first 3 mapped critical areas up and running within 72 hours the whole
corporation would be bankrupt and 20K people would be out of work.
This way we always started from the worst case and it was easier to
start over. Don't know if that helps or not.

about an hour ago · Like

Sarah Beuhler I'm not sure either but I really really like your
scenario. Although disaster recovery plan - that sounds pretty much
like what we're doing. Recovering from the disaster of neoliberalism.
about an hour ago · Like

Ally Robertson LOL...As long as the new 2.0 or what ever it is will be
focusing on the biggest issue of socio/economic change/reform and in
line with the original reason for OWS you have 100% of my faith and
dedication. I was feeling very overwhelmed with how OV was
transforming into so many other things. Fix the main issue and it will
all filter down to to help change the other issues. That to me is so
simple.
about an hour ago · Like · 1

Anthony Mayfield I'm with Ally.
Let's stay under the banner of Occupy
We ARE the Occupy Movement
Let's just have a code of conduct BEFORE we put up living structures
about an hour ago · Unlike · 1
Sarah Beuhler Code of conduct, agree about drugs and alcohol, agree to
keep one issue special interests doing their own thing...what else?
58 minutes ago · Like
Sarah Beuhler Agree on how to deal with media and communications
57 minutes ago · Like
Sarah Beuhler Agree that the consensus model works (or doesn't) and
even if sometimes we don't like what results from it we still honour
it
56 minutes ago · Like · 1
Sarah Beuhler What else has been bugging people?
54 minutes ago · Like
Sarah Beuhler Yeah Ally - exactly - root causes, not symptoms. That's
why I always want to have a temper tantrum when the pot activists get
up AGAIN.
51 minutes ago · Like

Ally Robertson I think consensus could work... but that it must
include the online community. It'sbeen observed many times that the
people attending the Livestream GA out number the actual physical
bodies down at the VAG GA. If we could put in place a dai...
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50 minutes ago · Like
Sarah Beuhler I can not imagine trying to get something through a GA
where that's a possibility. Yikes.
48 minutes ago · Like
Sarah Beuhler I hesitate because shouldn't we encourage people to
start their own things, have their own GAs? There's a lot of power in
GAs and having to speak to people respectfully and work things through
consensus. After observing the other facebook page I can't imagine
anything working even remotely.
46 minutes ago · Like

Lisa Nolan possibility a) if someone comes down to an occupy and
"registers" their user name. If that person can not make it to a GA,
then that person can vote online. This was people from another country
are not voting on a Vancouver issue. I almo...
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31 minutes ago · Like
Sarah Beuhler Secret...police?
30 minutes ago · Like
Sarah Beuhler What the everloving fuck...
29 minutes ago · Like

Ally Robertson Its a strange world we live in.
28 minutes ago · Like

Sarah Beuhler Whatever happens, if i'm involved in it, I want some of
my old teachers from UBC to come and give talks on revolutionary
history and a history of Stalinism, in particular
28 minutes ago · Like

Sarah Beuhler Because, damn, Stalin had control of the membership
because nobody wanted to hang out with him - so he started sending
them messages and then overthrew the legitimate leadership.
27 minutes ago · Like

Lisa Nolan oh the secret police was a proposal some gentleman tried to
bring forward. A group of people who would not be accountable to the
GA, who would use force against the police when the time came. The
group would use computers and all sorts of techy bits to do counter-
survalence on the police/fire department, police etc. I threatened
online to stop volunteering and completely leave if that proposal was
not blocked. Luckily people started walking away so quorum was lost.
24 minutes ago · Like

Sarah Beuhler Oh. Well, I'm pretty sure that exists already, frankly.
But it makes me tired to contemplate it.
23 minutes ago · Like

Michael Baker Some people still have ideas that, in front of the
spirit of this movement, seem very silly...

That said, is this (faction/section/offshoot) of OV adopting anything
from the current GA's past passed proposals? I only ask because I
think my proposal that I passed last night is a pretty important
stance for us to have as a movement...
21 minutes ago · Like

Ben Feral Selinger ‎1. GA votes are used for the wrong things right
now. Let's remember that most of what OV's GA votes on is all about
how to stay alive on the VAG site. As an occupation, we should be
voting on which marches to create/endorse/organize, which political
issues we want to tackle, blah blah blah.
2. Online voting - It can be done safely and effectively and I'll
address this at length soon. Long short, you come to our physical
site, we take your name or DL or whatever, we give you a vote code
which is locked to your name/DL. You have the power to vote at GA.
3. GA's are run incorrectly. We're giving people loaded weapons
without first teaching them how to use them safely. We need to
reconstruct the GA so that votes don't happen without public debate. I
think we should bring back the public debate as this is an AMAZING
educational tool. We'd need a team of fact checkers operating on the
sidelines to point out if someone is full of shit. Anything you say at
the debate should be documented in your proposal. You must list
citations and evidence.
4. We shouldn't have 10 votes a day, every day. There's something
wrong if we have to vote that many times. Clearly people won't have
had enough time to consider the evidence in support of or against any
particular proposal.
5. Votes should NEVER be held immediately after the announcement of a
proposal unless it is an emergency situation. If you want to bring
something to GA for a vote, you should be able to provide educational
resources to support your proposal at least a week or two in advance,
schedule open forums and public debates which those who oppose your
proposal may openly object. Those in opposition may very well correct
you on some crucial part of your argument, thus saving a lot of GA
time.


Ben Feral Selinger Well, it CAN but often shouldn't. I am confident in
the general publics ignorance on most subjects. Hell, I'm confident
"I" shouldn't be voting on many subjects without being given a week to
at least casually research it. Ultimately though, I want intelligent
and dedicated individuals or groups to bring a wealth of knowledge to
the table to a public debate as I very often find this to be very
informative. Usually a single round of debate for a simple issue is
sufficient, but there are many topics on which I would strongly
support 10-100 rounds of debate before anything comes to a public
vote.
17 minutes ago · Like

Ben Feral Selinger And yes Sarah Beuhler, I've of course thought this
through a little. I've worked on large, distributed projects where it
was crucial to get some key component right the first time, before
spending millions of dollars or risking human lives.

It astounds me that anyone thinks it's a good idea to walk onto the
stage and just throw a proposal at people, on a subject to which they
are ignorant, and ask for them to vote. I'd even entertain a new crowd
signal in addition to jazz hands/thumbs down/block, for "wtf are you
talking about? This is the first I've even heard of this issue.
Where's the mutha fuckin' data?" signal.

12 minutes ago · Unlike · 1
Sarah Beuhler HAHA. Please, please show me what that would look like -
I'm seeing a shrug with upraised palms on either side of the body? A
very Jewish gesture.


Ben Feral Selinger Guys and gals, it's time for a group dinner and
drinks.
4 minutes ago · Like


Sarah Beuhler Disaster recovery from Neoliberalism: Take 1
about a minute ago · Like
Lisa Nolan ‎;-)
a few seconds ago · Like