organizing our mobile occupation

[Amy Price]

hey, y'all! Sending this in hopes that it might provide a starting place for conceptualizing how we begin reaching out in earnest.

Portland has organized their version of Mobile Occupation by dividing the city into 5 neighborhoods and going from their. The attachment is a detailed description of what they're doing, and they say it's working for them.

the below message will make more sense if you read it after the primer.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Shiva Markandeya <bhakt...@gmail.com>
Date: Fri, Dec 16, 2011 at 12:46 AM
Subject: Re: Assemblies to the Nat'l GA
To: Amy Price <heig...@gmail.com>

Hi Amy,

 about the size of portland occupiers, i am not sure. My guess would be quite a bit though. I cant go to every GA or SP Co cuz i work full time, but everytime i go on the wknd i would estimate at least 30 - 40 a comfortable 50 - 60 at max. Its been really cold recently and that makes the numbers lessen.

 I dont mean to pump up portlands participation in our assemblies. It may seem that everything is going well because the system of organizing the Neighborhood assemblies, i believe, is close to fool proof.. its such a good idea for us. However, we are still in the beginning phases and our hiccups are still very present. We are not at the level i would like for us to be. Let me explain:

 

We started with 5 parts. The SE part actually is doing very well. The first two meetings were under ten people. I think these ten people were all acting as organizers, making fliers, and getting the word out with a little canvassing, using web abilities, etc. Even though i had assigned only one POC, i think he was smart and got help from talented people to help him organize. And by the third meeting they had close to 100 people show up. I couldnt believe it.

 

The Beaverton part was forming while we wasnt noticing. I was looking for someone who lived in Beaverton who could be a POC but couldnt find anyone. I finally met one at a GA and gave him my contact. It turned out that there was a group already there and functioning well. Having no desire at all to "co opt" them, i offered to assist them with any resources trainings and support, but at a distance. I want to be careful not to interfere only offer support. And i invited one of them or all of them to come and participate in our Outreach cmttee meeting.

 

The Gresham part is kinda similar to Beaverton. I found someone who lived in Gresham who is also in a number of occupy cmttees and he agreed to be a POC. He  wanted to get his own friends together to begin an assembly. He eventually found two existing groups. A group of students and a group of elderlies. I think they all agreed to combine into the Occupy Gresham group. I am really proud of them and i just heard of this news today in our Outreach Meeting.

 

The other two assemblies are realy treading their tails in the trenches and is having trouble in getting their feet off the ground. There are a good hand full of people signed on to the google group but because we havent found a consistent place to meet, its hard to get the support. I was in a meeting today expressing the difficulty of having a full time job, having chores in this cmmttee, and trying to organize two neighborhood assemblies. I am acting as  POC for both witrh the hope of choosing someone from the group to take over after the activity increases.  My energy was too spread out and every time i tried to have an assembly something would fall through then the meeting becomes cancelled. I got tired of this and i decided to have an emergency canvassing day to try to get more support so that some one else could be the POC for both or at least one assembly., The canvassing is this Saturday. Well, at the meeting today, i had to welcome  strong advice about finding a solid place for meeting first. And now i am resolved to do exactly that and i expect for things to pick up after the holidays.

 

As i mentioned before, this is such a wonderful idea. I cannot get discouraged. There are too many people out there who would like to cope with the burden of their economically unfair lives and this is the perfect treatment.. Occupy activism.. untill their cure comes. So i have to continue and will.

 One awesome idea you should strongly consider, that is guaranteed to help all of the occupations in their organizing. And that is to collaborate with universities and colleges to have volunteer interns help all of the cmmittees who would like to have one. We are planning to work with schools to help students get credit for hands on community organizing as a volunteer. I cant wait for this to begin. The volunteers get grades for helping us organize. This is a project from our Occupy Education cmmttee.

 

Thanx for the inquiries,

 Shiva

On Wed, Dec 14, 2011 at 11:37 PM, Amy Price <heig...@gmail.com> wrote:

Shiva--

thank you so much for this. I just read it through and will send it to a work group to get things started.

Occupy Houston is pretty small. I'm curious: how big is Occupy Portland? Like, before you started going into the neighborhoods, about how many would you expect for a typical GA?

Also, you mentioned two things:

1) that this was based on a model in Spain. Can you send me info?
2) that you experienced some hiccups during the initial stages. What were they, and how are you overcoming them?

Peace,
Amy
Peace,
Amy

On Tue, Dec 13, 2011 at 5:41 AM, Shiva Markandeya <bhakt...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi Everyone,
  Here is an introduction to the Occupy Neighborhood Assemblies. This is a model that does not need to be held to strictly but should be very flexible, being able to fit any situation and that flexibility depends on your autonomy and discretion. I am hoping that at the very least this intro may spur on greater ideas. (..if that happens, be sure to get that idea back to me  ;-) )  and sorry for taking awhile with this, too.. Its a long one so get comfy... Enjoy!

1. Introduction to the Neighborhood Assemblies

OWS is a breath of fresh air and we now have an unique opportunity to influence our global community to become more economically humane. Thanks to this movement, we the middle class and poor of this nation,  do not have to sit by the way side while the beauty of democracy is overshadowed by incompetent  political leaders and cooperate foolishness. There's no need to continue to struggle as we have been for the last three decades. We don't have to live like second class citizens as the top income earning 1% try to suppress our right to vote, have affordable education, get universal  health care and living assistance from the government, such as welfare and  unemployment benefits. Its incredible how we have tolerated these conditions for so many years seemingly without a peep from the People. Well, thanks to the commencement of a People's movement called Occupy Wall Street, we can now exercise our breathing muscles. We can use our collective power in a broad and constructive way to fight for the advancement of sustainable justice everywhere. There is no better time in all of history to get ourselves together, to unify our minds and souls under a common purpose and to bring the Spirit of Occupy Wall Street to the ones most effected by discrepancies of unhealthy and guileful capitalism- who are our very own neighborhoods and communities.
  This is an introduction to the Occupy Neighborhood Assemblies. I will explain the purpose of this initiative and then proceed to describe how we in Portland are implementing it with as much detail as i can. The beauty of this model is in the fact that this tool flexible applied to any city and is open to interpretation and modification according to your city and communal needs.

Occupy Portland and Our Chapter 2 Issue

 
  In October Our occupation appeared at Chapman Park. There, great organizing was initiated and i personally thought that we would stay there for at least a year or so. Unfortunately, the cops came at a very inopportune time, and we resisted them as long as we could. It finally resulted in the complete eviction of the camp.
  Because we are the 99%, we automatically are affiliated with, and welcomed the people without homes, young runaways, street tribes and other fringed groups. When these groups held presence in our encampment, we saw that these groups brought with them the social concerns that the city would  usually ignore like drugs and alcohol, homelessness, and tribe or street violence. We were sensitive to their needs but was also distraught and confused on how to directly address their concerns and it turned out that our Occupy encampment's image discouraged a broad support of our movement. Our encampment turned away many potential supporters. Along with our continued work with addressing our social dilemmas, we also wanted to regain the support of the people. And we wanted them to participate in activism. So the idea of bringing the Occupy movement to the neighborhoods was born. We thought it was extremely necessary, considering that everyone who heard of the idea, particularly those who were not inclined to visit the encampment, were eager to see this happen.
  The passing of our first occupying encampment suggests that we have entered into chapter two where a great deal of organization, serious determination, focus and, particularly communal participation, is sorely needed. And so we created a model of Neighborhood outreach similar to an already existing community group in Spain. (if you would like to hear the details of this organized community group from Spain, let me know and i can get the link to you.)
As we enter the next chapter, these neighborhood Assemblies will be the key to a monumental advancement in our success.  People always want to help. And with the commencement of these Assemblies, people still can.  Making Occupy Portland local is more than just a good idea, it is how we must continue. And this is an introduction to your neighborhood assembly.

The Occupy Portland Outreach committee stresses the need for communal participation and the collective gathering of people in the maturing of this revolution and is undertaking a number of projects to encourage activism here at home. One of them is the Occupy PDX Canvassers or Street Teams Project which is tasked with the responsibility to reach out to Portland communities to gain support, educate, and educe feedback in the form of information obtaining surveys in order to enlighten and encourage the residences. This side of outreach is very important to the success of neighborhood assemblies and will be discuss later in this introduction. The second major project of the Outreach committee is to cultivate local activism in a variety of Portland neighborhoods which is essentially, bringing the spirit of Occupy Portland to you. Just like OWS has spread out all over the nation and globe, so will these assemblies be like clones of your city's Occupy movement multiplied and localized. Within a little time, like a fungus, these local activism hubs will be expanded throughout our city energizing and promoting the message of OWS. The movement will be tangible and belonging to the people like never before.

Assembly Description

 
  These assemblies are split into 5 primary parts of the city: SE, NE, Beaverton, Gresham, and NW and SW neighborhoods combined to make WestPDX. They are expected to grow and multiply forming new and dispersed assemblies because of the wide spread desire in this city to become more involved. With an initial agenda offered by the Outreach committee, these groups will conduct their own meetings and organize themselves to execute a full range of activities concerning the Occupy Movement. These activities are as follows, and is never limited to:

• organizing marches
• occupying neigbhorhood parks
  
• protesting and occupying banks
• having open forums and discussions on 99% issues
• cultivating activism amongst neighbors, friends and local businesses
  
• having guest speakers, panels and teach-ins
• skills, jobs, workshops, training and networking
• Housing and foreclosure workshops
• potlucks
• fundraisers
• organizing and developing community leaders
• block parties
• forming canvassing hubs or centers
• direct actions and group confrontations
  
• supporting other assemblies
• sending letters of solidarity to global occupations
  

The Occupy Neibhborhood Assemblies will keep in line with the Spirit of Occupy Wall street in the form of autonomy. This quality is such a novelty that the masses, perhaps, dont understand completely how to just jump in and initiate or assist in a project without cautiuosly asking permission first. Our society is accustomed to looking at all the action at a distance away, in the bleachers, or being an eye witness to an event sometimes tossing out the desire to participate because of the intimidating obsticle of a towering wall of hierarchy or the  burden of bureaucracy. We have been taught well.  We need to break out of this mind frame and promote ownership of this process having the freedom to act sensibly without asking permission because we as human beings are our own agents as individuals, and now, as  neighborhood Assemblies. We have the right to speak up, gather together and protest. And this is the major point of this particular project.

Inter-Committee Cooperation and the Assemblies

   The Outreach committee will act as an assembly Headquarters and will assist and be in complete solidarity with each of these neighborhoods and will continue to provide resources, trainings, and networking between them. We also hope to engage an inter-committee coordination where we can recieve resources and other assistance from the major organizing committees of occupy Portland, and we could give a plethera of outreach oriented support for them. For example, we would like for the Facilitator Committee to come a train the members of the assemblies to facilitate meetings in turn or when another is absent or on break. We'd like to have the Action committee assist and guide us though the best actions we could take to wisely and safely accomplish specific protests and rallies and marches. We hope to get the Media Committee involved by livestreaming the trainings, direct actions, or group interviews to publicize our inspiring actions or to communicate to other occupations. We can also partner up with PR Committee, Diagnostics Committee, Volunteer Committee, information and all the others for varied reasons and projects.
    We can outreach the communities and gather large teams of volunteers with talents and skills to possibly join our committees in helping the movement organize better. We could quickly pass out important information like nation wide marches and strikes or just  to invite the masses to other events sponsered by the central organizing committees. There is nothing that we cant do and the sky is truly the limit. We even expect to reward the assemblies and especially the very active individuals by granting them with a certificate of activism by our very own OccupyPdx University created by the Education Committee in addition to the reward of an accomplished and maturing and involvement of Occupy.

Let us seriously engage our communities, neighborhoods and the world to participate in the labors of our own democracy. We have the final say so. Our collective power is mightier than cooperate greed and the fanatical idealists who think they can oppress the poor and working class. The majority does rule. There is no time like this present time to rally the people behind such an urgent cause. Occupy WallStreet has fallen into our laps. The seed of change is planted in this generation, and we cant let it die. We have the responsibility and the right to govern ourselves and if we can get as many people as we can to board this train, the momentum  will trample over the injustices of our nation. We can return to common sense and sincere humanism fighting for logical policies and rational legislation that also restrict the practices of the immoralists among us. We can and will. The advent of this sacred movement is proof that we can. Lets get to work!, and lets make our own local Occupy Neighborhood Assemblies!

2. How to Organize a an Assembly

--
I would like to express my inadequateness in organization. I have never organized anything so large and detailed before in my life even though i was in the military. Leadership and organizing are not my forte, however, OWS will not be like anything we've seen in the past regarding these qualities. I have seen with my own eyes a variety of people working on projects, leading meetings and marches doing all kinds of volunteering without prior experience, and thats including myself, and it somehow works. The reason this works is because of the urgent necessity of a healthy and broad participation that is encouraged in this movement. This is OUR democracy and if you have a deep desire to see this nation's wrongs corrected, or  i you want for every human to have a equal worth,  or want for the people to take ownership of our own affairs and or if you have the fire in your heart to make a difference in your community which will eventually effect communities around the world, then you, no matter what your status or prior experience, belong to OWS. There is so much work to be done that everyone can take on one or more tasks.

We Have High Expectations

  Another thing i will mention is that our Neighborhood assemblies are still in its early organizing phase and although we all expect to achieve grand accomplishments and success, we are having some struggles getting off the ground. Despite the difficulties, our hope in this project is still flying high. Tell me which civil rights initiative was perfect in the beginning. In organizing something as great and practical as this, there is bound to be some setbacks present or on the way. The only way to fight the discouragement is to stay open to new ideas and advice, become flexible and willing to adjust to new dilemmas and to keep your focus on serving the people who are currently mistreated by our government and unethical capitalists who abuse the system for their selfish gain which in turn abuses the defenseless, 99%. If we drop the ball and give up then we allow these bastards to continue to oppress our brothers, sisters, friends, the poor, the working, the homeless and most vulnerable, even our human family. WE cannot let this continue, so lets keep the hope for the ones who currently have none.

Step One

  The first step in organizing these assemblies is to use what you already know or already have. There should be a bunch of people who live in the different parts of your city who are currently involved in occupy activities. Collect the names of all who are interested and rally them together. This does not need to be a secret rallying so tell as many people along the process of organizing, rally all who are interested and keep their contact info. Gain as much support as you can even in the very beginning of the organizing.

Central Organizing Team

   If you have an Outreach team or Committee already existing, announce this project to their meeting and ask for help  and im sure they will give you all the support you need. If there is no Outreach group, this might be the perfect opportunity to begin one because this is a strong recruiting mission. Or you may get support from another committee that is already existing that is involved in communication work such as PR, Media, or Info teams or committees. This is important because having a strong link of communication with a central organizing team, whcih acts as something like a headquarters for you assemblies,  will help organize the success a whole lot better.

Point of Contact

   Next is choosing at least two Point of Contacts, POCs, from those who have committed themselves to helping for each of the assemblies you plan to create. a POC is a mediator between the outreach or central organizing cmttee and the assemblies. This involves at least two major duties. One is to act as an organizer who sees after the affairs and cares for the agenda for the assembly. And the other duty is to report back to the outreach or central organizing cmttee all of the successes, difficulties, attendance and general progress. Communication should go both ways and both ends should be informed of marches rallies, nat'l actions, emergency info, etc. The POCs should attend the central organizing meetings to achieve solid information flow. When the group grows in size and attendance, more POCs can be added to make a small team in order to disperse the tasks and lighten some of the burdens.
   Next is to make a google group or to find any other type of website that people could join so that a list of members could be kept together. We have used google groups and after people join they will recieve all of the news of upcoming events and meetings that are being planned. There are other web organizing sites that are more advanced and you may use any of them as long as they can keep the contacts of the members together, and that they are able to recieve your event postings. Another site is nextdoor.org which is specificlly made for neighborhood gatherings, and salsa.com which is for more detailed group organizing. We are about to use one of these after we come to a consensus about which one to switch to.

Agenda or Canvassing

   And now you are ready to do some ground work. and i would add that here, depending on the numbers you may have gained already, you may begin with an agenda or program for the assembly just to begin with. Or, if you'd like, you may forfeit implementing an agenda immediately and gather your current supporters to form canvassing teams to invite more people to become a member in your assembly. Or you may want to do both simultaneously depending on how many people you have.
  We are discovering that it has been more difficult without a bunch of people coming, so we will take a bolder step and focus on canvassing for two of our weak assemblies. We have an assembly in SE Portland who is flying high with attendees. The first meeting had 8 attendees, the second had 5, then the 3rd had close to 100 attendees. That first 8 were dedicated members excited about this idea and they  used their skills and resources to get people to know about it. Fliers and canvassing really helped them greatly.

.. Xtra thoughts

 I really cant say too much more. I trust that at this point you would have enough people to manifest wonderful ideas to color your assembly the way you all would want it to be. As long as there is a good process of consensus, you have the autonomy to achieve every desire. None of the steps listed above need to be implemented if you feel that your situation or community is different, and, you may want to mimic a GA or Spokes Counsel style of meeting if you so choose.
 Venues: At the beginning, which is what we are currently in,  are using a variety of places to meet, all indoors right now bcuz is so cold and Portland tends to never stop raining. It is ideal to have a permanent meeting place but temporary places shouldnt be to hard to find either. These assemblies are made for community building and should be in a comfortable and relaxed setting, ideally. We are using cafes, university lounges and cafeterias and of course the homes of the people we know. You may want to use the library, college campuses, elementary, and high school classroom, and the Seiu and other unions let us use their buildings and spaces as much as we want, too. The one thing about the venue is that it should be in or close to the neighborhood.
  Another good idea is, when you are ready to have programs, to have a seperate agenda meeting where the POC's get together with anyone else who is interested in planning out an agenda before the assembly. This will eliminate the potential confusion that could arise. Its good to have in your meetings a small section of agenda proposals at the end of the assembly so that people could submit their own ideas.  They could also submit them on the website previously created especially for this group. Those proposals can be be synthesized in the POCs agenda meeting and then be executed in two or three weeks. Good record keeping of the meetings with a sign in sheet will never do you wrong either.
   One idea i strongly recommend when your assembly is a good size and healthy, is to have a group become a spoke at the Spokes Counsel if you have one, or represent your assembly at the GA so that your community can be a part of the consensus making. Or you dont have to wait for a perfect size either if you want to build good habits early.
   One good way to do canvassing is to ask for a supporting social or civil rights organization to give you trainings on how to approach and talk to residences in thier homes. (Just be sure to ask for the technique of canvassing to be taught and not the issues of the organization.)

  I am not an expert on these things. We all are doing the best we can with what we have and i will be happy to clear up anything you may not understand. Im eager to figue things out with you. If would just call, email or even text me, i will do my best to answer questions or find the answer for you, it would be my pleasure.

  Thankyou for your open minds in accepting this and willingness to serve your communities and neighborhoods with liberating activism of this revolution! Much love!


  In Solidarity!

-Shiva Markandeya
  Outreach Committee
  bhakt...@gmail.com
  503 477 3512

ps sorry for mispellings and other woo woos..

--
-Shiva Markandeya
 

[Mary Wior]

This looks like a great idea - especially for a city as physically
sprawling as Houston. However, I wouldn't call this an example of a
mobile occupation, as none of the groups are moving around. I do think
this is a better idea than a mobile occupation.

What do ya'll think?