NOTES (Jackie)
Intros:
Eileen: DC – extremely successful and dangerous weekend
Karen – Seattle – not at s17, but was via phone and email, twitter, livestream – an attorney trying to help long distance
Iwanka – Philly – awesome and painful – saw a lot of people I care about hurt
Sheppard – Philly – there and eye-opening and amazing
Matt – Cleveland – thought it went reasonably well – the actual march itself could have been more directed
Rochelle – MD – glad Iwanka is on the line – we wanted to know – there were gender parities done in Philly in July – these were posted on the main website in the forum – and were approved by — Occupy Patriarchy, my website 50/50 – we hope everyone in Occupy will get this out to the entire world
Cheryl – Los angeles – had a good time, excited for the debrief
Daniel Lee – LA – good, about thirty of us there – would love to have more control of where the drums are
Larry – Philly – looking forward to figuring out what happened, which is what we do great together
Drew – everything went very well – the support back end could have used more help imo
Kelsey – Elmira Corning – a lot of fun, a lot of police, a lot more relaxed and festive than many events
Tammy – facilitating this calll; my adjective for s17 was hectic
Steve – wonderful to see everyone – natgat reunion,
Patty – LI – was there – a powerful feeling of community, meeting people form all over the world and having conversations; pretty traumatic also
Fred – N.Va – there – thought it was good overall – later want to give feedback on open access
Travis – Occupy Carlilse – pretty good – very well organized; other than the police went pretty well
Michael Daly – following from here – amen to Trinity church and the livestreamers over there
Chaz – Pittsburg – had everything – ups and downs, beautiful
Jackie – Occupy Buffalo/Interoccupy – my adjective is full; really glad to have gottent to Zucotti finally, especially for the Occupy Rosh Hashanah Sunday and the assembly Monday night
Nancy – SF, Code Pink, great time; hats off to organizers; shocking to see some of our women just get picked off and arrested – emotional; other than that
Alia – OTS on Sunday and s17 – exceptionally well planned – loved the art people had and the actions – police relatively well behaved actually
Jeremy – Flint, Mi – the weekend was both educational and life changing
Dan – NYC – WG – good time – upset but not surprised by our friends who were attacked by the police
Carolyn – in Alaska at my desk – can’t go to any actions – watch you from Alaska – there is a bear about 9 feet form my window we are watching and wanted to share that
Dick – didn’t attend – am with people – over all the map emotionally – good watching, sorry couldn’t go

Tammy – thanks for coming and for attending the call – thoughts for the call – time to share and thoughts about what went well and next steps
also want to gather some information for oranizers in NYC, spectragram questions – we will do that in a minute
photos and videos of s17 – we just created a space – the first link on the s17 IO Hub – great way to find out waht went on – we don’t all know all what happened
www.facebook.com/groups/s17media/

hearing that it was great and also emotional – hope to hear more from folks
want to go through this series of questions;

1. I used the occupy infrastructure to plan my trip – interoccupy calls, interoccupy or occupy newsletters/e-mails, s17 interoccupy hub, s17 website, social media.
use keypad to weigh in press 1 yes that’s how I planned – 2 kind of – down to 5 didn’t use at all
majority had 1s, 2 twos, a three and two 4s

2. Which one did you find the most useful? (1) interoccupy calls (2) interoccupy or occupy newsletters/e-mails (3) s17 interoccupy hub (4) s17 website (5) social media
to help us get a sense of what people actually used, press one if you used
1 IO calls
2 newsletters, emails, occupy emails
3 s17 IO hub
4 s17nyc website
5 social media

even split – newsletter and social media being the most

3. When I came into town I knew where to go, and what I was supposed to do
1, mostly i knew – to 5, didn’t know at all

4. I made new connections with people working on similar issues/campaigns
1, yes – 5 not at all
46% Yes

5. I felt like the organizers in NYC were organized and things ran smoothly
1- totally smooth, 5 totally confusing
46% saying 2
Sheppard – was really great – direct actions can be troublesome sometimes – especially with new people coming in – thought the trainings and councils were done very well
Patty – clear and easy to understand – Occupy has it’s own culture, so if someone shows up and asks, they are helped, but may be hard for non-occupiers

7. The OWS preparation prepared me for the action. I found the trainings, spokescouncil, and maps useful in preparation for the action. I felt trained and empowered to build my own action for the day.
1 – felt empowered, 5 – not at all
results?

Tammy – Matt – I was coming from PA to NY, with one other person – there isn’t an active Occupy here – we showed up – on the day of the action, it was hard to figure out what AG to plug in with
Kelsey – everything was really organized – the AGs – we did have problems – I wound up in a fairly large AG with Occupiers from Maine – what actually happened on the morning, we’d tried to break off to do what we planned – we wound up with 30-50 more people who weren’t familiar with AGs – mostly organized and structured
Cheryl – liked the training – could have been more trained – was going to be a lookout and wasn’t sure what to do; the map was brilliant

11. I was able to form a new affinity group during the weekend, and we were able to take action together as an affinity group on Monday.
1 – true and 5 not at all
even spread – 21% totally able to form an affinity; X not at all
Dan – picked 5 – already had a small affinity group – not sure if that was the right number to push; didn’t have anyone tag along with us
Chaz – wasn’t planning to form an AG – people sleeping outside Trinity – how we could get them food
Patty – same reason as Dan – we had our small group
Eileen – did change the next day – decided to be in a much larger group – thought well planned AG – effective

6. I came with a group vs. I came by myself 1, 5
37% alone, 18% with a group and the rest in between

9. I understood what would happen if I was arrested. I felt comfortable putting myself on the line in a new city.
1 – true, 5 not,
even spread – 17% did, 10% did not, and even in between

8. I understood what was happening during the day and how to plug in.
10. I found the celly text loop useful throughout the weekend
1- true, 5 not
28% yes, 21% middle – 1 person all of the rest

12. I thought it was valuable to have three days of activities instead of just the action on Monday.
1 – true, 5 not true
unanimous 1s – consensus

14. What part of Monday was most inspiring or did you think work best. Hour. Activity
1 Morning
2 Spokes
3 Afternoon
4 Big march
5 Popular assembly
Occupy Carlisle – found it interesting – the march from WSP to Zucotti – unfortunate that the police decided to crack down the most on that march
Alia – I liked the morning – the most stuff and the most fun
the noon Spokes second, the afternoon, was hard to know the thing to do and got long, the evening spokes was too many people – seems to me and all the ppl I talked to – everyone wanted to soapbox – we left early and the meeting was still going on – should have been rah rah rally – closing and unbinding – a little freaked out later watching lviestream and had to cut back
Karen – spokes – did not go to the anniv – was working with livestream, twitter, etc.; attorney – I felt the spokes was well orchestrated and done and bringing people in – part of me wished it happen before the Friday night march – part was in how people spoke to the police – well done – better than the ones that degenerated as they were when I was in NYC (during the occupation)
Iwanka – popular assembly – at the end at Liberty – fantastic way to bring it all back down to where OWS started from – made it meaningful – liked that we recaptured the space – a lot more people there who were not part of the movement than those who were
Tammy – in
18% like the morning, 22% spokes, 14% big march, ? popular asembly – nobody liked the afternoon

16. I want to plan a similar swirl action back in my town or city possibly for my own anniversary.
1 – true – 5 not
Results?

Collect contact information –

Tammy – people in tactical group here interested in helping people with the swirls actions
please e-mail me at tamarashap@gmail.com

[Not sure about how to respond on this and others that are phrased to only be relevant for not-from-NYC folks. -- Dan Shockley
Dan - I would abstain or go middle with a 3
OK. I abstained on some, but wanted to put actual input on others. Thought swirl was great.
me too]

Tammy -is there any other question that you would like to put out there, press one now
Daniel Lee – sort of a question, sort of a suggestion – overall for people who came early – to incorporate maybe not nap time, but a rest time – action action action particualry on Monday – which is not cool
Tammy – more of a suggestion
Carlisle – Occupy Dc – plans – 8 day event – anniv on Oct 1 – we were the longest standing encampment, we would like to have your endorsement, solidarity and possibly spread word on social media

Tammy – if you want to go ahead and help spread the word about that, I would go ahead and plan a call
Karen – my question, ironic, used to live in NY – I don’t think the housing issue got communciated well until the end,that ther ouwld be aplce for occupiers to stay in NY, knowing that we will not be camping in the inner city – I knew people were working on the housing issue, but that people coming in didn’t necessarily know; hotel seems counter to what we’re fighting; the food was well taken care of

Tammy – sounds like a lot of feedback, which is cool, so I’m going to put everyone’s hands down and follow the agenda as prepared
I want to hear what people feel went well, I know we’ve already gone through a lot of material, what could’ve gone better, and what could’ve gone better and what we can do next time
Nate – had a spectragram question
Tammy – sure why don’t you through it out and perhaps we’ll ask it later
Nate – for folks who did come with people, was it easy to stick with them or difficult to stick with them, but I was only there until 1:30 and then I was in jail
Tammy I will ask that question later
Cheryl – realy loved the spokes councils, my first experience, and from the response I heard from others, they went better;
I liked the training, but wish there was more training
I loved the strike debt booklet, awesome owner’s manual, and the form they had to release it; liked the strike debt team in general and spent a lot of time with them; loved the walking tour they gave in lower Manhattan on Sunday
liked that we were able to disrupt in the lobbies shutting down the intersections
loved the idea of going civilian; brilliant even if it didn’t work every time
like the think tank and they were talking about how to reach the 99%
really appreciate being able to speak out
the wellness center the next day – I got acupuncture
and mostly I enjoyed meeting people
Tammy – thank you Cheryl that was a lot amd inspiring
Fred – very much enjoyed the open spaces, the learning afternoons in WSP, FOley and acutally Zucotti had a lot of success after some adjustments – a nice componenet to the three days

Tammy – anything else that went well that we haven’t talked about?
then, let’s move on to what didn’t go well, and how we can do better next time

Kelsey – a little lost in the city – housing in bkyn – led to believe we would be told the address later, never really told, spent a few hours walking around – looking for people; did meet people – wasn’t until next morning I found the housing address; would be my only complaint – make it easier for people to find
Jackie – d.r. and also frozen notes -doing on anothe notepad and will put in later; on previous calls, it was said that for those who don’t like to sign up or register, there would be pieces of paper, maybe fortune cookie size handed out on site for folks needing housing; got requests at IO table and no one in OWS info seemed to know anything about that – people eventaully connected, I think we could do that better next time
Tammy – that is important that people know they are taken care of when they get here
Dan – disturbed about Sat night march from WSP, people from out of town might not have realized that this wasn’t the best idea of a march to go on (impromptu Sat nite march) and got a harsh lesson about how NYPD breaks the law and missed out on other events they wanted to attend
also Monday afternoon, trying to get to Wall St, even tho the cops had it walled off wasn’t good
Iwanka – one thing more helpful – if we could have cleaned up the park during the celebration piece – was sensitve to that after NatGat – i tried to clean up and many people were not sensitive to that – helpful in the future so that people don’t equate things we do for Occupy to create a lot of trash and we are not sensitve or don’t care
wished there was a welcome station –
Tammy – Monday or the whole weekend?
Iwanka – arriving before even Friday – there wasn’t a kiosk or something; those are the two things that stuck out in my mind to make things smooth

Michael – calling from Brooklyn – a welcome station would be great – social media is excellent, but a friendly face is great
the afternoon actions we found ourselves without a plan – stood around and people wound up being arrested – we wound up going to goldman later;
Tammy – preplanned actions?
Michael – we could have used the swirl to separate and broke up – the police saw this as easy pickings; seemed we were setting up for
Fred – found info sessions on open spaces to be good, on the first day at WSP there was some confusion about what was going on and where things were located – not to overlook organizing of info stations as well as direct actions
Nate – acutally response to prior speaker – great to have some kind of central comm tool besides celly tool that could have more info – any action going on – where to plug in – from the comms hub, could be excellent
Rochelle – didn’t know and didn’t see anything about boycott the election – Occupy Chicago and at DNC we had occupy the elections info – thank you for carrying the 50/50 sign and ask for people to carry on future marches – there is every reason to see that occupy is boycotting the elections and put up 50/50 signs
Cheryl – I think one thing that hasn’t been mentioned – the way the AGs were organized and put togother – and was told to get in an AG with others who hadn’t come with one – few were with me on the day of the action – on Sat , we were told same thing, out of that only one stayed with us on Monday – what could have helped was to hear what AGs were already formed, what they had come to consensus about, what they were centering around, – by Modnay night, none of the others were involved – could have been better – and like I said lookout triaining – would have liked more training on that and practicing going civilian more
Tammy – thanks and I will forward your email onto folks
Sarah – wanted to second
Kelsey
Karen – the celly loop went down for a good two hours on Monday morning – those of us who I was with said it went down – need more tech resources – possible we overloaded the system
Tammy – thank you very useful
Daniel Lee – was gonna say – partially my fault and some others who were farther away – some type of mechanism shoud be developed to insert people form out of town – OWS did a lot ahead of time, but there could have been better ways to plug in and lessen the burden of the OWS people – as a whole we could do more
Tammy – NatGat takeaway was do a better job of integrating volunteers and I guess we still need help with that
Kelsey – had volunteered at NatGat for info and was looking forward to doing that at s17 – someone refered me to Trinity and there wan’t one there – would like to see more involvement to participate
someone mentioned time to rest; we had to decide to go chill out, be part of spokes, popular asembly – had to make choices whether you wanted to be involved or go rest for a while – nice to spread things out over the weekend
Fred – just a note on the popular asembly on Monday night – a challenge – so many people there, great, estimate a couple of thousand – mic check is stressed out – many having a hard time hearing

Sarah – rememerbed what to say – had no idea about housing that theer was any housing whatsoever; don’t have much criticism, don’t have good jail support here
Jackie – there was a young man at the popular assembly who had just gotten out of jail who said that jail support in NYC sucked
Cheryl – housing – different experience to share – a month ago decided I wanted to go to the anniv – how could I afford to stay in a hotel – went to the housing email set up – put the word out – recovering form an injury can you help me – people started sending resources – i wound up finding a one bedrooom apt to rent for the 5 days – wouldn’t have happened without the organizers at OWS
Nate – jail support experince was really great – there was a friendly face from Philly in the courtroom and friendly faces outside when I got out – appreciated it – thanks
Occupoy Carlisle – jail support went really well – there until 3 in the morning on Sat – all the OWS insiders were there with food and water and they were there the entire time
Alia – jail support – I heard the kid who said he had just gotten out of jail and my understanding was not that the support sucked but that jail sucked
Tammy – thanks for the clarification
Dick – being an outsider coming from out of town, I would have felt good to plug in to supporting for a few hours – a positive sign to have
reminding people to take rest might have been good rather than a scheduling rest time
Kelsey – I actuallly stayed until Tuesday to do jail support – there was actually a lack of talk about it – not everyone is willing to get arrested and we should make the people who do that feel appreciated – also we got a lot of other people stopping by to find out what was up – positive thing to let people know we are a community and support our people
some of the other days, should be reminded more at future events
Sarah Harper – meant to give a dr, wasn’t sure of the button – wanted to clarify – a guy from the popular assembly – he had been afraid of what happened – found that the jail support was close to none – had a conversation with him – did he mean it was none or next to none, he meant next to none – he got out and people did have cigs, etc. for him
Tammy – want to respect eveyone’s time – will be taking all this feedback back to the in person debrief that will happen Monday here in NY – thank you for taking time to come to this call
we mentioned the swirling – if people want to take back to their own towns
will take a few more people for next steps and end the call in 5 minutes
Eileen – need to get your email
Tammy – tamarashap@gmail.com
Dan – people expressed interest in the debtfolder – you can follow debtfolder on twitter
Karen – thank you, thanks for doing this call – I’m in a different occupation – Occupy Seattle – I think we can get the swril thing going, but need to get common people plugged in – with the anniv coming
Kelsey – I just really enjoy having the larger spokes – do work with the lcoal occupy at home – enjoyed meeting people across the country – it would be good to have regional gatherings monthly, these events are very beneficial to bring people together
Larry – Tammy and Nate and a few other people know what I’m going to say – the comm structure was very cool, an infrastructure needs to be set-up – would people be interested in having a tool set up in kind of a package
Fred – briefly – info space – we did Occupy National Gathering Vision info group and will – got a lot of feedback
Kelsey – again mention the 50/50 signs – we have less in our government than the United Emirates – 66% of the voters are women
Cheryl – think where we should turn our energies – one year anniv of evictions – 99 outreach actions – block parties, teach-ins, etc reaching out to the 99% instead of disrupt the 1%; finding ways to communicate in healthy ways – a lot of our communciation has driven a lot of people away and brought us down – strategic planning overall and messaging – building a tool kit – like that concept – identity and teach how to use the tools; learning to tell our personal narrative is important too – we’ve influenced the mass narrative, and need to influence the personal
Jackie – direct response to person from Elmira/Corning – we had a regional gathering in June, and will be having more, slowed down for summer – check on the Interoccupy Hub OUR Conference, we will be picking back up, hopefully in Fall, who knows, maybe in Elmira – keep an eye out for that
Tammy – thank you for that – good note to end call on – goodnite

Notes 9/11:
Jeremy Royer – Flint, MI – thanks for calling in, explains who is fac, maestro, notes and keypad responses
J: Agenda – Tammy Outreach; Support, Ingrid; Action, Aaron; Education with Nina – Solidarity Steve or Tammy, end with Press

Check-Ins:
Meghan – NYC, Brooklyn, tune in to see what’s going on
Iwanka – Occupy Philly – don’t have pc access, but have phone access – helping to get people there and getting the message out; hope to see you all in NYC
Vivek from Philly – planning to go on Friday and will stay on; not sure what I’ll be doing but will help
Diane – Maine, Occupy Augusta – several groups coming, no grand total yet also with Veterans for Peace and peace team – wondering if any plans for or group
dr Aaron – planning actions, Veterans for Peace crew here has signed up for the People’s Wall Monday morning
Sheppard – O.Philly, with occ outreach, interface wg, more
Daniel Lee – O. LA and MTA – solidarity actions in Anaheim and SF – a lot of our plans on our anniv on Oct. 1 – we have about 10-15 coming in individually, and myself
Drew – NYC – making sure stuff in on the website and that it’s accurate; keep on keepin’ on
Reefo- Stephanie from Baltimore – coming Sat til Tuesday, bringing one person
Matt – NYC – helping organize the All in the Red action – interested in students and what folks around the country are doing
Claude – Alburquerque – interested in doing some educational outreach on a matter of a company I run seeking to do vegetable oil (fuel) accessible around the US; butting up against the oil industry. would like a conversation offline with education people, and also trying to plug in to Occupy DC
Ruby P. – O. Boston – we’re having two busloads going down plus whoever else is driving – on call to find out a few things – I’ll be back and forth with Ingrid about medics; two other pieces of info; where we plug in, let people know where doing that; radical marching bands in NY – doing outreach to the honk bands in Boston;six medics as well
Ris –
Sanaz – Sf – tuning in to learn more about what’s being planned in NY and what’s diff than online
Michael Buell – SD
Jackie – Occupy Buffalo, Interoccupy, Buffalo has at least 19 trying to come; a 12 person van, hopefully all can find a way; I will be there and be at the IO table and the Visioning table and around.
Nancy Mancias – SF Bay area – glad to hear that people are coming up for the anniv actions; Human Be In S14-16; Monday on the anniv an all day action occupying the banks around the city; I will be in NYC, Code Pink about 20 people from across the country
Dick Dewid – Occupy Raleigh – exciting activity planned for Sat – engage the public – arts festival – draw 10K people – asking a question and getting answers from the crowd – a gesture choir – people telling stories around what the public said
Zaq – Springfield Ohio – joining to see how I can help and what’s going on
Tess – NYC – I am mostly calling to get updates on legal beagle and autonomous groups – jail support – talk about all the trainings going on over the weekend
Clifford – from Buffalo, hi Jackie – living in Manchester England, Occupy England – bringing folks from England along; open to doing anything and everything to help – get there on the 13th.
Elizabeth Coss – here in Maine – travelling this summer – planning to connect with NYC friends – a lot of tweeting; planning to come on Friday – a way to link up
Michael Daly – busy with things, with media as well
Tammy – facilitating with Jeremy
Jackrabbit – Hi! TAing
Steve – Occupy Philly – working on the website with Drew – posting the solidarity actions around the country – just saw the one about Raleigh – anyone else, please post on the web; working with support and tomorrow will go to Philly to pick up the supplies from NAtGAt and bringing to NY
Ingrid – here to report back about housing
Aaron – talk about Action later
Nina – ways to plug into the convergence spaces, education and performance spaces over the weekend

Outreach – Tammy
phonebanking – exciting – if you want to help – sign up on the form we sent around and will send around again after this call
whoever is coming, please sign up on the registration form – will be able to communicate and give you updates
LIBOR unions have signed on and have agreed to do turnouts for the weekend which will mean a lot of people
also a pledge form for organizations to endorse – please share form with orgs.

Ingrid – Housing – we were donated a big sleeping space in Brooklyn – an email went out to anyone who signed up – if didn’t check off, didn’t get the email
will send out the exact address sometime tomorrow, impt info – no beds, floor sleep, pads; other options; need people to step up for sanitation, de-escalation – don’t be a jerk – more jobs.

other housing options – simultaneously trying to hook up people with 1 to 1 housing – form on the website – and we will post on Occupy Classifieds – right now shows a few offering and needing

fundraising announcement from Daniele from ARF – not going as well as we had hoped – will be pushing the hell out of our ask letters; cost of cleaning supplies, food, etc.
Volunteers – we could use for a lot of roles; kitchen housing; interested, please email

Tammy – support@s17nyc.org
Medics – connect – miriam.rocek@gmail.com
Parking – parking guide up on the website now – Participate/Join Us/Parking guide – especially if staying at the convergence spot in Brooklyn
Updates, send text to @s17nyc to 23559 to get on cel.ly loop
TEXT: “@S17NYC” TO 23559

Reefo – how do we hear about housing if not on the email list.
Ingrid -
Support@s17nyc.org
Steve – housing – some people interested in engaging in sleepful protest there is a facebook group
occupynyc-sleep cells

Clifford – on housing a couple of other questions – if we wanted to get on the housing list email support – the address will be sent out to where? sent to those on this call or just people who filled out the intake form -
Ingrid – couldn’t hear – exactly when and how info was going to be distributed if you want to fill out the form http://s17nyc.org/join-the-convergence/
Clifford – Outreach and volunteering – outreach – can’t call the states, will email people tonight – any talking points about?
Tammy – set up the form I have sent – directions to find the template emails as well
Clifford – 2nd question – alluded to things needed in the space – what I’m willing to take on kitchen, cleaning, tech support – in terms of equipment that you are short on – need brooms, heating, etc?
Ingrid – terms of things we need – a packing list for people who are staying – like if people brought their own towels; cleaning supplies – in the middle right now of an epic cleaning – probably not broom,
Clifford – not gonna bring own broom through customs
Jackie – will there be info about housing distributed on the ground for folks who don’t fill out form
Ingrid – yes part of Info table
Drew – suggest have some sort of one up from people who need housing info.
Steve -info table location identified yet?
Ingrid – info tabling will be happening at the sites – Sat. WSP, Sun. Foley Sq. Fri probably basing at Liberty Plaza as ppl will probably come there if they don’t know where to go
Tammy – any other questions relating to housing, volunteering, food – there will be two meals served a day
Mark – Occupy Seattle – Media WG – on call to get info to the folks here and also for our own solidarity action is if there are folks in Seattle who need housing info, is there a quick site to get that
Ingrid email: support@s17nyc.org or website: http://s17nyc.org/support/join-us-in-nyc/housing/
Noah – food – two meals being served a day, but last I heard up in Boston was that the food group in NYC is prepared to serve 1500 – wanting to know if 1500 was still the number, and wondering what folks in Boston should bring
Ingrid – yes 1500 was the number I heard.
Tammy – collect contact information; not want to connect press 1; have put links on participant dashboard for

Legal update from Tess -
a bunch of things to go over – working with mutantlegal – offshoot of what was the legal group
mutantlegal@riseup.net and twitter @mutantlegal
very present all weekend – table at townsquare each day – want to be sure every coming has a legal point person assigned – have that person get in contact with us so we have that rapport established
whole bunch of trainings over the weekend; not to be confused with action trainings – each of those has a 20 min legal component
4 hour long legal trainings – so even if you go to the action trainings, get to the big trainings as well
Training Schedule:
Wed, Thurs. 2 action trainings 6 and 6:30p at Zucotti; legal solidarity
Sat. 9-10a full training at the housing space
10a-1p full training at WSP
Sun. 9-10a full at housing space
10:30a-1p at Foley Sq.
everyone should have the jail support number 774-257-4697 (774-2JS4OWS)
please be prepared to have a legal point person – things will be easier for everybody
Zaq – times for Sat and Sun. please specify am and pm

Nancy – repeat the phone number slowly and without the letters 774-257-4697
jail support number is going to work – also call the NLG as soon as arrested
212-679-6018
jail support is an internal thing, to figure out who is where so we have
Jackie – can you explain again what mutant legal is, was an offshoot of; some people won’t fill out forms and don’t trust new names – say NLG is the legal contact for occupy
Tess – back in the days in the park when there was a evolving activist legal working group – coordinated a lot of the jail, bail, training, etc. as winter wore on that group fell apart and we have re-formed – not as a working group – there is no working group since there is no GA. do work closely with NLG – some work in the offices of NLG lawyers – the idea is basically as liaisons between the lawyers and the activists to make sure no one falls through the cracks
Refo – wants to be in sleepful protests; hasn’t had to have a personal point person or is that referring to people in the area being aware
Tess – the latter – not asking to know who a lawyer is , we want people to travel to with someone not arrestable so they can be the contact person – hold on to the information for you and coordinate with us; sleepful protest will be covered – not encouraging people to do that – just had a court case where people were found guilty
Steve – not directly related to sleepful protest – it was people at the stock exchange
Tess, true – point being that this weekend the cops are going to be hard on us – don’t want ppl to come friday and miss the whole weekend; can’t say not to do – lots of legal observers all weekend.
Noah – one hour trainings, are they for jail support or legal observers – what do you recommend the number of jail support to …
Tess – combo of security culture, jail support, legal solidarity; not a legal observer training – not equipped to do that
2nd question, honestly depends on how much people want to take on and willing to not get arrested; depends on that person’s capacity and where they will be; honestly if you can establish a good communication system with someone out of town, that will work too
Diane – mentioned about if someone is arrestable – because of the double mission I’m there for – we are committed and trained to place ourselves between occupiers and police;
Tess – that would make you highly arrestable – you and your group should have a point person who is not going to get arrested and has all your information
mutantlegal@riseup.net, or call on phone
Diane – doing planning with my group and will get back to you
Clifford – on that, hypothetically, if someone arrested – how long do nyc police usually hold protesters
Michael B. – what is happening – if police take the cell phones

Tess – the longest I’ve known is two days – 72 hrs longest they can
when processed there is an iris scan – discourage people from doing that – but that can delay your release – most people out by the next day on Mayday
as for the 2nd question don’t have the answer to that, but haven’t heard during arrests – during the evictions
all these questions can be sent to our email address – we can then consult the lawyers and answer authoritatively mutantlegal@riseup.net
@mutantlegal on twitter
Tammy – injunction on zucotti – we can go there

Education
Saturday
- 12:30 – 4 (thematic breakout groups)
- 4:30 – 6 (open space)
– space for tables – bring your own!
Sunday –
- 10am-1pm – Spectra Frack Pipeline Blast Zone March with the Occupy Guitarmy
- 12pm-7pm – Occupy Town Squares Open Space
- 1pm-6pm – Concert: “99 Revolutions”
- 6:30pm-7:30pm – Direct Action and Know Your Rights Trainings
- 7:30 pm: Occupy Rosh Hashanah Services
Full schedule can be found here: http://s17nyc.org/schedule/
submit workshops/teach ins – s17nyc.org/join-the-convergence/

Nina – working on weekend events building convergence spaces – let us know

http://s17nyc.org/join-the-convergence/

join us on the 15th, 16th, will have info table and you can sign up; WSP on Sat and in Foley Sq on Sun; can talk about Mon but, mostly Sat and Sun

Hubs – WSP on Sat. – re-creation of WG spaces at Liberty Plaza – some identification; people can converge with others on same interests
medical, press, media, art, come together in a visual way – banner, signs, table, legal be there as well – plenty of visual identification
can find people
convergence@s17nyc.org

another thing we are doing where we want to integrate people coming from other places
Sat. WSP Thematic Assemblies
12 meeting – if you want to facilitate the assemblies, get a hold of us
Sat a day of education
Sun mostly a day of celebration and performance; amplified stage area and a convergence space on the north side of Foley Sq. all day long, skill shares, workshops, tables, in-depth conversations, teach-ins
Monday
post action open space from 12-6 likely be in Liberty Sq, but maybe Foley depending how the day goes
email convergence@s17.org for info
Vivek – would like to know about getting into the housing on Friday
Tammy – email support@s17.org (also http://s17nyc.org/support/join-us-in-nyc/housing/)
Claude – logistical will someone be providing tables for out of towners?
Nina – don’t have a surplus of tables; encouraging people with extras to bring them; what we do suggest is to bring blankets and to make use of infrastructure in the park – tables benches – have an info table and IO will have a table – there will be space there
Lauren – did a campaign called occupy fights hunger – sent an email – willing to do a teachin/talk about – can we expect confirmation about this – if not interested, need to know what to do; will there be an opportunity to know in advance what people are doing/can do during the day
Nina – strange didn’t get that email – if you look at the schedule and get idea of what’s happening, you might want to plan your event… http://s17nyc.org/schedule/
space day of – a big blackboard and additional boards to put up your events – no need to plan, we welcome last minute participation
it looks like on the convergence site
Sun. a block of time just open – not as conducive to real info sharing – there will be an amplified concert – you can do anything, but there will be auditory competition

Tammy – Sat there are other events happening, occupy Rosh Hashanah
we’ve had more people join the call
Clifford – I’m arriving on the 13th – don’t see anything for those days – work needing done on the 13th, 14th?
Tammy – affinity group spokes council happening Friday – not sure where
Henry – sure there is an affinity group at Judson, not exclusive to affinity groups – for anyone wanting to plug into the….
panel at Gowanus Ballroom featuring some people from in and out of the movement – a smarty pants happy birthday party

Action
Wednesday, September 12th, 6:00pm, Liberty Plaza (aka Zuccotti Park)
Thursday, September 13th, 6:30pm, Liberty Plaza (aka Zuccotti Park)
Saturday, September 15th, 10:30am, Washington Square Park
Saturday, September 15th, 4:00pm, Washington Square Park
Sunday, September 16th, 10:30am, Foley Square
Sunday, September 16th, 6:00pm, Foley Square

Aaron -whole bunch of stuff – might get cut off; everything’s the result of a breakout group of a lot of groups – subject to change, not passed at spokes yet
Mon, s17 – mass at the 7 intersections closest to the NYSE; boundaries they
maps distributed at all the trainings – show where the intersections are – business casual or suit, blending in not drawing attention and show up at intersections – tentative quadrants
99%
education
ecological, environmental
debt
may wish to assign yourself to cluster and show up there or any you please
changes will be delivered via a the cel.ly loop and will be done by spotters on the ground; a lot of last minute info depending on police actions – checkpoints where police will be checking IDs to see if you work there
being requested that you mass at the intersections to support the people’s wall
show up at barricades, find where they are checking IDs; sit down – within time, a dispersal order – everyone who doesn’t want to get arrested can leave calmly and quickly, not interact with police and support the people who have decided to stay there; once begins we can break off to do the 99 revolutions

10 am re-converge at Bowling Green – Storm Wall Street – environmental action – everyone will decide together collectively
you’ve heard of trainings – a lot of times on the 15th and 16th lots of times when
one of the real tangible actions of this s17 is thousand and thousands of trained activists – one every day until weekend, and 2 on the weekends – recommend ppl attend two

Austin – thanks for getting on – as Aaron said shortly after we build the people’s wall around wall street – to call attention to the bad things
explode away from it to paint a picture of what we do want – lifting up the voices of thousands, all of whom have opinions – one no, many yeses – show the yeses in all it’s lyrical splendor
at any one time there will be 50-100 intersections throwing little parties, teach-ins; when it’s not possible to hold the intersections, set up parties around corps
JPMorgan Chase
Emblem Health – any corp you can think of has offices down there

affinity – means trust – small group who you know and trust and can make quick decisions with – get into groups; who is willing to be in the middle, take arrest, who makes signs, who is legal – can pop up in an intersection – will split up and meet at

4p WSP Sat.
6pm Sun to practice and run through and also to come up with what is roving intersection
my affinity group is bringing bubbles, confetti, kazoos
some are feeding people
built to amplify your voice
need to provide a portrait of what we want in the streets – and hopefully you will run into others doing likewise
action spokes council at 11am – may want to do a second wave of actions

agency of small groups of people to decide what they want to do
map soon on s17 schedule page – http://s17nyc.org/schedule/ – help you familiarize yourself with the target areas – will lead scouting trips go see your intersection, learn where it is
come and bring your creativity – see what it sounds like when we all sing together

Michael Daly – intending to twinkle and not raise hand – liking what I am hearing and wish I was in BG at 10am s17
Dick – old idea – the buddy system might work for people who are tentative, are from out of town
Alia – want to have a container for public performances during the convergence – not sure if that’s appropriate or not; during Mayday there were speeches in Union Sq and this wouldn’t be appropriate – so will there be space
Tammy – visual or sound?
Alia – both
Tammy – Foley Sq on Sun might be good for visuals, but there is competing sound
Alia – 99 Stages – wanted to suggest a container
Tammy – question, during the action itself is there a place for artistic performance
People staged – impromptu performances on the weekend
Austin – a couple at our troupe doing dance moves, a brass band – one b group is working on a dance step routine – a carnivalesque experience will make the day great – be safe – go to the trainings, the only thing to guarantee your safety is the trust you have with other people

Senaz – training session – recording the training to be made available in other places like SF?
Austin – we should livestream them – not sure if we have actually decided to do that yet – there will be livestreamers around
Noah – Boston – a few affinity groups planning a cluster and look forward to the trainings
Mark? – will do quick – journalist and media wg person – OWS facebook site – a really good
filterfreeradio.com – offer that as a doc to be distributed during this event – folks are looking for consensus – a list of the grievances – trying to distribute to see what ppl think
2. a vigil at Park – money taped over ppl’s mouths – statement on the money – definitely happy birthday to everyone in NYC – and for inspiring a movement here in Seattle for one year – we are struggling – fbi and police raids of activist’s homes
express solidarity with Occupy Seattle on s17 – if you want to send my email or post the website I would be sure you get that info
Nancy – share my brother’s solidarity with everyone in NYC
is there a list of livestreamers
Tammy will share in a second
Clifford – the activist training will be thurs at 6:30 PM at Liberty Plaza – solidarity from Manchester
many livestreamers at OWS – Timcast,
at occupywallst.

Aaron – people’s wall is open to everyone, not just New Yorkers that have been working on in
while we are critiquing and criticizing Wall St, we are showing the …
who among them would be willing to block wall street to create the space for the revolution

Lauren – session for people to do self critique of the movement – we are imploding in LA and wondering if people have figured the time in the schedules for strategy
Tammy – open spaces – put it up on the wall and make it happen
Zach – livestream question – we are joining occupy this year – springfield, ohio – we will be livestreaming dreamsomecloud on twitter – setting up an on the go – sending holiday cards – get your picture taken; excited to help others who are beginners like us – this year we are coming and joining

Michael B – address the sister from LA – link us together – like to talk to you about what you talked about

End of Agenda – can take a few more questions
want to thank Jackie and Jackrabbit and Jeremy
Carolyn – want to know where to find notes
Tammy – http://interoccupy.net/s17nyc/
Ruby – a brass band mentioned – who is it? that’s some of the info I need to get the Boston Brass bands
Tammy – Rude Mechanical Orchestra
Ruby – still don’t have dashboard – interoccupy.net, go to Hubs, to s17nyc http://interoccupy.net/s17nyc/
Shepard – lot of stuff to digest and some people will miss stuff – if I show up in WSP first thing Sat. morning I will be able to figure out everything?
Tammy – yes you will, but in terms of housing support@s17nyc.org
Michael – want to know if you had organized a letter that’s going out to all the other occupies so that we can read it at all our rallies
Tammy – find Call to Action on the Hub
Mark – tomorrow at noon PT there is a national occupy news press briefing – encourage anyone on the call who is doing organizing, or solidarity actions, join us at noon PT tomorrow – often journalists and occupymedia folks from all across the country http://interoccupy.net/blog/ai1ec_event/occupy-movement-wkly-press-brief-call/?instance_id=323430

US Media working group forming at 9PM ET today.
Dick – trainings? will they be portable – filming or teachers to advertise so we can invite to our locations for those who can’t come
Tammy – live streamed, not sure about invited – if you want to know who trainers are email support@s17.org
Carolyn Dixon – interoccupy.net,go to Hubs, go to s17nyc, then Minutes
Clifford – response to gentlemen – mentioned Media – a call tomorrow
Tammy – will go ahead and end the call – excited to see so many of you on the calls – see you all this weekend; please come and find me – at Interoccupy table, thematic assemblies and around

Intros (15 min)
Where are you calling from, plans in your city to date (estimate numbers coming to NYC, solidarity actions, etc)
Daniele -OWS – on the call for two reasons – one is to talk about ___ and to talk about outreach
Clifford – OWS – currently in Manchester, from Buffalo, NY coming to NYC on the 14th
Sam – calling from Occupy Dc – heard there were buses – just a rumour – we have 50 -70 ppl wanting to come up
Ray – Jersey, hoping to organize; here to listen
Sally G – O Bergen Co. – rally on 14th – hoping to pass out flyers
Rouge – Occupy DC – around 40-50 folks interested in coming and want to know how to get there
Daniel – Ocucpy LA and MTA – some flying and some going to solidarity actions in SF and in Anaheim; some solidarity action around foreclosures
Nancy Mancia – SF BAy Area – many things going on – 3 days – personally coming to ny
Jen – NYC – on to talk about legal stuff and some pointers for out of towners
Sean – another NYer – here to report back from the Support cluster about housing
Francesca – Philly – organize for universal publicly financed healthcare – have been getting info from ny and would like to get to NYC
Ingrid – NY office – phone being funny – may get disconnected
Valentine – we’re planning on doing a solidarity action, not decided yet – spokes council general assembly on the 9th occupylv.org
Fred – N. Va. – coming up himself for entire weekend; hoping to facilitate workshops on the 15th
Nelson -O Harrisburg – about 13 confirmed going; ppl from several counties in central pa – org a solidarity action and a way for our occupation to be housed
Jeremy – Occupy Flint – PA 72 and 74; not sure of specifics for s17 – so far only one who signed up
Carolyn Dizon – Alaska – some Occupys up there but not where she lives – can’t come put wants to stay in touch and know what’s going on
Jackie – Occupy Buffalo – will be your friendly notetaker tonight

Report backs and discussions from NYC subgroups
- Outreach (Tammy)
Reg form – please fill it out and get others to do so as well!

http://s17nyc.org/join-the-convergence/

Outreach collective phone banking, press 1, if you want to sign up – collects info and will email
There are outreach materials on the website – organize, outreach materials

http://s17nyc.org/organize/outreach-kit/

Labor groups are hopping on board, as well as community groups. Might be worthwhile to reach out to local labor/community for solidarity actions.

Cliff – about the making calls – he’s across the ocean right now; can help with e-mails
Tammy – personal connections are important – if you sign up there is a section on e-mailing people who do not have phone numbers
Cliff – what was the methodology with this outreach? doing dissertation, focus on Occupy -
Tammy – respond to follow up e-mail, and I will find time to talk to you outside the call
Fred – outreach to affinity groups? being covered?
Tammy – organizations?
Fred – yes non-Occupy groups
Tammy – there is a section on the website where you can see who has signed on

- Support (Danielle or Ingrid)
Update on housing
Update on housing
Giant warehouse – South Park Slope?
Register on registration form if you want it
Need photo ID to get in, there will be security on premises
Bring your own sleeping gear (a mat, sleeping bag), bedding
Indoors
Short subway ride to the financial district
There is parking, not a big lot, parking info on the website – first come, first serve, may not be
available Monday, look on website
Daniele – Ingrid and Sean may have more specifics; we now have an indoor space to house hundreds of people with showers and bathrooms being lent to us – in Brooklyn; some procedural stuff to go with it
Mark – will it be on the site
Daniele – info for people who are coming
Ingrid – I feel like we’re tossing the hot potatoes, Sean will have more input; in our discussion last night, we are not releasing the location of the site to the general public; it will be e-mailed to folks who sign up
Sean – to answer is this info going to be publicly available, we have not and won’t post online until closer to s17
e-mail support@s17.org
12K sq foot space – we will be able to house anyone who wants to come; limited capacity for storing stuff during the actions; if no car not sure how many ppl will be over there during the day. we will put tog some kind of storage to put stuff in during the day; try to pack minimally.
looking for a roster for support roles – anyone who has worked in safe spaces, ____, legal it would be helpful

Clifford – 1. will there be cots or just bring sleeping bags 2. arriving on the 14th – will the place be open?
Sean – no cots or anything – maybe 30-50 sleeping bags – asking to bring towels and bedding – we gain access on friday the 14th in the evening and have to give up Tues. 18th in the a.m.
Clifford – for those not coming out of town and have legal documents like passports etc. will the storage space be secure at all times
Sean – for our coverage for sensitive things – we are – checkin and checkout 2-3 hours a.m. and p.m. – we will use an inventory system to make sure everyone gets their own stuff; there will be a place where stuff can be locked down during the day.
Tammy – Nelson has a comment
Nelson – I plan on volunteering cooking and sanitation shifts – can anybody speak on that?
Sean – cooking will start the Monday before – probably need a lot of support transporting and serving
Sanitation – everyone is sanitation and everyone is community watch – everyone help with that from the ground up
Daniele – as far as volunteering, please indicate it on the Registration form – the kitchen is in the same building as the housing and we do need…
Also need de-escalation team on the site at all times with diff ppl taking shifts and need folks to sign up to be part of that
Ingrid – this call is crazy (sound) – I yield I’ve been covered
Jeremy – yield – pressed 4 a bit ago
Daniel Lee –
Nelson – I plan on arriving on the 12th – as far as finding ppl to meet up with and volunteering – if I could talk to Sean, Ingrid or Daniele
Tammy support @s17nyc.org – please indicate onthe subject line
Ingrid – 90% sure I sent you an email today from support – double check with me and I can send again
Transportation – find your own
Tammy – let’s move on to next agenda item – any updates about Transportation
Ingrid – we decided last week that if we didn’t have a definitive agreement from the nurses union we would basically throw off that process – we wouldn’t have time left to arrange the buses- assumed it wouldn’t happen
I regret that that announcement has not made it past this call very well
DO NOT COUNT ON OWS SENDING BUSES TO YOUR TOWN – IT’S NOT HAPPENING AND WE REGRET IF WE GOT YOUR HOPES UP
Tammy – more trans info on the site
– Action Resource Fund – Affinity group that came out of mayday fundraising group -
fundraising body and fund distribution body
food
housing
transit in nyc
outreach
medical
our big fundraising campaign will launch in the next 24 hours in the yourinboxoccupy
http://actionresourcefund.org/ – direct people there to give donations to fund things in NYC
hoping on this call, people will seek out our ask email and distribute; resource fund – in kind donations
Clifford – fwd to friends in the UK – ok to donate in other currencies?
Ingrid – absolutely – the way it will be set up is straight credit card transaction – alliance for google? justice
Tammy – wil this link be on the site?
Ingrid –
Jackie – repeat where the campaign is launching? yourinboxoccupy
Daniele – arf@s17nyc.org – if your occupation is fundraising or has a fundraising list or just wants to chat

- Legal (Jen)

Jen – the mutant legal group are people who have been working on support, court support, and other stuff, trying to organize a lot of support for the whole weekend and s17; training on Saturday and continuing on Sun and Monday; folks should definitely get trained on Know your Rights stuff specific to NYC – how to not incriminate yourself in arrested
jail support
grand jury training ?
sleeping outside – a certain law in NYC – do not recommended it, but if ppl are hell bent we do have a training NYPD really gets people for sleeping on the streets
ask that ppl do training on their own cities before coming
we could send a video you could watch on the way
if coming in affinity groups or on buses, please designate one or more point people to get in touch with us
nlg very good about working with us
mutantlegal@riseup.net
@mutantlegal (on twitter) ?
let us know how many people are coming and a point person
we need people to do jail support for their numbers – we don’t have enough people here
if you want to organize a training specifically for your group, specific questions, we would be happy to send a trainer out to help you when you are in New York.
trying to get a legal page on the website – keep checking back on the website – will have more info the next call also
Clifford – currently chatting right now with one of the organizers in Buffalo, on whose behalf, I wanted to ask about the video – the legal training – where are you posting that
Jen – didn’t say we were going to post, but believe we have videos we can send
if you want to email us we can update you with the situation on videos
if you can keep up with twitter, we will be posting a lot on twitter
SallyG – had seen on the email list, there was a possibility of a legal training conference call coming up
Jen – would be awesome – doesn’t know about that
Tammy – does anyone know about that
Jen – great idea – we will set one up or another one up

- Action (Hambone)

- People’s wall (chrome://newtabhttp//s17nyc.org/peoples-wall/) –
7 a.m. Sept 17 Broadway and Wall St.
- Assemble at northern 3 intersections and then sit down, instructions on webpage for doing what you can not to Get arrested
Probably starting at Broadway and Wall St, info people at Liberty plaza
Wear suits or business clothing
- Battery Park is your only green space
- Register on the registration form – you’ll be kept up to date
- 15th and 16th – trainings – will be on the convergence schedule
- how folks traveling to NYC can plug in with affinity groups
Tammy will share about people’s wall – 7 am s17.org/schedule/s17 liberation – build the people’s wall has a bunch of info about the action itself –
plan above
probably entire financial district will be arrestable; suggested Battery Park only non-arrestable space nearby
trainings for this action on the 15th and 16th; that’s for the huge sit down on the 17th
affinity groups organizing a hurricane, spiral, twists, etc. more info on site in time
SallyG – when I was in Philly, there was a text loop to get updates – don’t know how to do that – get info on the fly
Tammy – cel.ly text on front page TEXT: “@S17NYC” TO 23559, we will be giving out info all day; if you don’t hve the capalbilities, it’s good to have a buddy who can get the info. hopefully many will get the info and can be mic checked as it comes out

- Education (Winter or Nina)
Saturday
- 12:30 – 4 (thematic breakout groups)
- 4:30 – 6 (open space)
- space for tables – bring your own!
Sunday – concert, space for tabling, room for spectacle events but workshops will be harder.
Sunday night – occupy rosh hashanah service at Zucotti Park
Full schedule can be found here: http://s17nyc.org/schedule/

Fred – I’m interested in an update about the workshops in Wash Sq on Sat on the 15th; anyone familiar with the set-up how formal; how to prepare;
Tammy – anyone with info? she can share that on Sat will be more of an education space – see above the times; there will be a place on site and hopefully a registration form soon; if you go to organizing your own action,——-
there will be space for tabling on Sat and Sun; good idea to set up a table have info, etc.
open space 12-7 on Sunday; also a concert going on so more hectic
Fred – helpful, appreciate, is there any place to submit workshop proposals, or for the thematic assemblies
tammy – if you have ideas, please e-mail
Sean – by the end of day today there should be the occupy town square form on the front page of s17nyc – if you want to plan for times, bet 1-4 on sat and 11-1 on Sundays.
Tammy – is that for thematic and open spaces
Sean – both happening at same time
Tammy – look for the OTS form ihe s17 website in the next day or so
Daniel Lee – was on the MOP call at same time as this call – it was my understanding that the thematic assemblies were at citizen’s united at 7p sat. parts of the town square on sun as well but
mon 12-6 recovery camp, and what are your 99 solutions 6-10 vet memorial park emma goldman park
Sean – we haven’t gotten Rev. Billy sign on yet so all of that is not positive yet; would be at the same time as the other assemblies
SallyG – working on visioning with Fred
Fred – we do have a follow up from Philly visioning and wondering best way to do it; will check the form on the website

Clifford – spokes council meeting – convergence space – don’t know if I should bring up but needs to be said – is there a contingency to (can’t hear well) – if the police should swarm
permitted actions on sat and sun, not for monday.

- Solidarity actions
Information on website (Steve)
Please add if he doesn’t – On the website s17nyc.org -> organize -> organize your own
action, there are links to submit solidarity actions as well as ideas and helpful resources for
solidarity actions if you don’t have anything planned yet. Please also submit solidarity actions under the same link. We want to have a running list of all solidarity actions happening that day.

http://s17nyc.org/organize/organize-your-own-action/

Tammy – also on the wiki keeping tack of solidarity actions and please add to the calendar; important to get national press around all the actions, also to let people know where to go who are elsewhere
webinar tomorrow night – FDL

? – which wiki is the solidarity action on
Tammy – IO hub – link to the wiki for s17 organizing; also listed under partcipate actions in your area on the s17.org site http://s17nyc.org/support/attend-an-action-in-your-area/
SallyG – with the comments about permits got me thinking – don’t know what I should do- should we get permits in Bergen county
Fred – emma goldman event on s17 in the evening – where is info available?
Valentine – Vegas hasn’t planned an action yet – we don’t do the permitted thing because we don’t feel we need permission – but if your town or city feel it needs one, it should get one
Daniel – same thing – in terms of DA if you want to do, good to reach out to social media – the cops will know about it; if it’s really a da don’t apply for a permit; if a solidarity action, perhaps a permit
Clifford – wouldn’t even put that much emphasis on the permit issue – thousands of municipalities with diff rules; talks about different types of actions
Tammy – to be clear, the permits are for convergence on sat and sun, not for the big actions on Monday
webinar tomorrow night tomorrow night on FDL – link to the webinar is posted in the participant dashboard
article: http://my.firedoglake.com/johnwob/2012/09/03/occupysupply-skill-share-s17-anniversary-action/
Register: https://www3.gotomeeting.com/register/859451142
Dick – relative to permits – being around for the past year has taught me a lesson – am doing actions in support of banks and financial institutions – am being supportive, even though this is sarcastic – i am not fighting anymore, I am appealing to their sensibilities – change the focus instead of fighting go opposite way completely.
Jeremy – did not like that last statement at all – voicing financial institutions controlling democracy is bullshit
Tammy – appreciate this discussion – impt to know what ppl are doing around the country
Sally G – we have done bank protests without permit before, was worried about what if it got too big
Valentine – we did a non-permitted action against BOA before – how do they know you are not a customer

Debt actions (Winter)

Tammy -that brings us to the end of our agenda, next week will be our last call before s17 – does anyone want to bottom line the next call?
Tammy – Jeremy, if you can take the Maestro training on Monday night, it will be easier to facilitate on Tues.

Meeting 9/3/2012
Facilitators: Mark and Caitlin
Minutes: Ingrid

Announcements:

InterOccupy Call 9/4/2012 7pm
Give agenda items to Jackrabbit
Would like folks to bring agenda items

Hot and Crusty Workers’ Occupation is totally amazing, we should go.
They need our support, we need to go there.
63rd St and 2nd Ave
“It’s really an inspiring place to be right now”
!!!

Chepe: “Occucopy has money set aside for #S17, if you have literature, stickers, or posters. We have $1000, but reminder that it will go fast. Email info@occucopy.org.”

Miriam: “I’m basically just here to assure you that there will be medics on #S17. Looking for an indoor location near the protest to set up a base.”

Marisa: “S17 Action Spokescouncil on Friday at 6pm. This week’s will be at 55 Water St (VV Memorial)” 5pm AG trainings and a legal training this week.

Lopi: Occupy the Pipeline celly loop: @fracked 23559. Not a ton of alerts.

September 10: Panel talks at Center for Architecture related to Zuccotti.

Amy: “Poeople’s Wall training Wednesday, September 12! 5pm.”

Marisa: Cafe de Cleyre.

Jerry: “From Occupy Astoria/LIC. 7pm tomorrow having a special forum on Stop and Frisk. 30-14 I DID NOT GET THE ADDRESS”

Ethan: “Pastor Leo has offered use of his kitchen and storage for this year, he has also offered space for people to stay.”

Labor Day parade–I missed a lot of this announcement. Ahhhhh.
10th, Monday: Rally and march at Union Square in support of striking Chicago teachers. Guys, this is a big fucking deal.

Drew: “On the S17NYC.org website there’s a whole bunch of media for use. I BEG you, if you create a flyer, please send it to us so we can have it online for other people to use. Also, I beg you to submit calendar events and, if things change, to make it super super fucking clear. I guarantee you there are people at 23rd St right now.”

Propaganda:

Bill: request for reporters to leave the room. General temperature check: mixed.

Marisa: Can we explain why we don’t want reporters here?

Aaron: we’ve had a disconnect between expectations externally and internally, and we’ve sought to reach external expectations.

Ethan: what are we afraid to say in front of the press?

Bickering, side conversations, disagreement.

Other Announcements:

Daniele: Action Resource Fund is fundraising for S17. We are launching Wednesday. Handing out budget worksheets. We would like budgets to be written by groups. Will need each cluster to determine a budget point person–someone they trust to collect receipts and reimburse.

Ethan: Do you want one big budget? Or several budgets?

Daniele: Want all the budgets to be collected and done as a group.

Jerry: Section 1021 of NDAA campaign, seeking support for campaign.

Reportbacks:

Action:
Messaging discussion primarily, a lot of talking about what we’re going to be talking about.

Support:
Reiterate importance of legal. Contact streetmilitant@gmail.com to schedule a know your rights training!
Becky would like to start planning around debriefing. We need this! Talk to Becky if you would like to work on this.

Outreach:
For getting flyers and stuff. Occucopy: M-F 10-7, Sa 11-5, by appointment all other times.
Things moving along with institutional left organizations.
Phonebanking information is on S17 website!
Talk to Andy if you want to do more flyering.

Convergence:
Schedule is almost finalized, circulating now. Hooray! (I’m not going to just type that whole thing, because that’s crazy talk.)

NOTES:
Call Facilitators: Jackrabbit
Maestro Board Manager(s): Tracy
Note Taker(s) : Jackie

Intros (15 min)
Where are you calling from, plans in your city to date (estimate numbers interested in coming if there was free transport, solidarity actions, etc)
Jack asks for backup note taker – Ingrid volunteered.

Check-Ins
Ingrid – nyc – housing and can’t hear

Jackie – Occupy Buffalo – Interoccupy

Hambone – Henry, NYC, bunch of plans around here

Br. Robert – Occupy Buffalo – observing and coordinating – just waiting on trans arrangements from Buffalo and WNY

Daniel Lee – Occupy Los Angeles – still working out our solidarity action; a lot of us plan to go to SF for e day event; also some to Las Vegas, also to nyc

Elizabeth – nyc – Bronx – no definite plans

Nancy – SF Bay Area – excited to hear about people from LA coming up; 14, 15 16 skill sharing Human Be In Golden Gate park; s17 bank actions occupyactionsf.org; have about 50 ppl committed to come to ny

Jessica –

Maureen, Occupy NY – a lot planned for 15, 16, 17 in NY

Tammy – OWS –

Lisa – Occupy Philly -

Steve C. – Occupy Philly – working with Ingrid on Support issues

Ruby – Occupy Boston – we have two groups working on geting folks there; we allocated a whole bunch of money to get folks there; not sure of solidarity actions, we’re so close, we may all be coming there; to pass info back to Boston also to get info about medic and street theatre

Eliz Mendez – Occupy Las Vegas – trying to get more info

Fred – Northern Va. – planning to come and reaffirm what I mentioned last time a request to have a workshop on the TPP – Hub; possible workshop on visioning work from natgat

Josh – healthcare for the 99% in nyc – we’d be happy to bottom line anything having to do with healthcare and we have
twinkles

Chris –
Michael Daley – Honolulu – been on the calls the last couple of weeks; interested in what’s happening; group supporting Occupy Monsanto because of GMOs in Hawaii; is working on designs – twinkles

Jeremy – Flint MI – because I have more debt than income. thought ows was the coolest thing in the world – they were trying to recall — in MI

Michael M. – Brooklyn – will be all over the place with my video camera on the 15-17 big supporter

Morena –

? – in france coming back next week – plan to be in nyc for the s17 – hoping to reconnect and talk Maine friends into coming to nyc

Chris – Occupy Seattle – have 50-55 people to come; wants to find out about the buses

Hambone-dr-POI – not able to confirm the nurses buses yet – too close to the date, advising people get their own transport together – may wind up with a nice surprise or not

Report backs and discussions from NYC subgroups

- Outreach (Tammy)
Reg form – please fill it out and get others to do so as well!
Outreach phone banking will be ready tomorrow
Everyone who has shared contacts or is on the outreach list will receive an e-mail with a form to
sign up to phone bank
Will need to register on the occupy contact list, then follow the step by step instructions in the
response e-mail
It might look intimidating, but it is super easy once you try it
Will allow us all to do outreach, keep track of what we do, and document it for others doing
outreach as well
There are outreach materials on the website – organize, outreach materials
Labor groups are hopping on board, as well as community groups. Might be worthwhile to reach out to local labor/community for solidarity actions.

1.Registration website is ready – go to website/ Join Us in NYC – really important that everyone signs up and really important

2. phone banking contact list we have – everyone will get an e-mail tomorrow who has ever been on these calls or on the contact list – will ask you
crm system – intimidating at first, but the step by step system will walk you through it.; will allow us all to work off the same list and see what others have done
also doing a phone banking script; there will be a confirm email you can send to the people you have talked to; also an email for those you don’t reach; also use that email for those that don’t have a phone number listed – the more people we have on hand, the more the better;
3. bunch of outreach material on the website now; print out various info there and pass around your community

Fred – any newsletters issued or a plan on updates for the weekend. haven’t received a newsletter yet.
Tammy -there have been a bunch of newsletters from IO
updates – go to s17.org – a whole bunch of info just put up recently – should have all the info you need.

also on the website you can submit solidarity actions and Ingrid will talk more about that

Steve – a form on the website which asks people to report their actions – about a dozen have done that – as soon as they do, it gets posted on the wiki and can be seen on the website; a lot of occs are planning their own anniv after the 17th please report them too

Hambone – negotiations with a lot of prominent orgs, big unions, other groups; a lot of this org work starting to percolate, endorsements coming – also an endorsement form available on IO I think –

- Solidarity actions
Information on website (Steve)

http://s17nyc.org/organize/organize-your-own-action/

Debt actions
Winter – first debt burning the week before – going to set up at least one IO call next Wed about 9p and coordinate with people around the country who are doing debt actions on the 17th.

Solidarity actions in NYC (Ingrid)
what do you want NYC to do in solidarity with your anniversaries?

Ingrid – basically wanted to bring up that after Sept. 17th, people are having their own anniversaries, and what do we want to; several Oct 15 and a lot in between – if we are trying to get people excited about our anniversaries, we should get excited about theirs – what would you like to see for solidarity actions to recognize your community

Michael Daley – support Ingrid think that’s great and will support media
de-Occupy Honolulu same time as Apec summit was in Honolulu – ours is the longest occupy still standing – 30 raids – if we can get some recognition from nyc all the better; rolling birthdays
twinkles

- Action (Hambone)
- updated action plan and how folks traveling to NYC can plug in with affinity groups

Henry in NY – a number of things the morning of – may be some actions that the s17 coord committee is supporting over the weekend
5pm Friday – it’s on facebook

Monday morning 7 am gather around ny stock exchange hoping to get to the 7 intersections that have traditionally ….the road
the rsvp form is how we are hoping to plug people in; we will email people to let them know where to meet – get off subway and walk as a civilian, not a march to their intersection
as many as twelve until cops move the perimeter out

speak outs, performances, play moving throughout; talking about issues traditonal to occupy from inside and outside of town 7-8:30p – if a dispersal order is issued by the police, then that will be communicated to the crowd and there can be a mass civil disobedience or you can leave; police liaisons will let us know; going to try and ask everyone to sit down; those who are committed to being arrested can be in the front, folks can leave; usual escalation happens slowly, time to move to leave, so from there

8:30 either at that point or concurrently there will be a number of actions in a spiral pattern around wall street – affinity groups, other groups people

move’s out from the people’s wall, corp bank hqs – try to bring a lot of the fin district

non arrestable action – the one actions that everybody is going to try to bring their ppl to – in support of each other, then the secondary targets; then either a regrouping in front to the fed courthouse 12 blocks away

community group trying to get order lifted against zucotti park
occupation at Zucotti park around noon

hooked into cel.ly loop to receive updates

twinkles lots.

Jessica – poi – mass action – getting people together – i watched live through ustream – an abridgment is the term for …

Hambone – using mic check in terms of
mcs throughout the whole event – dispersal or 830 whichever comes first – people who are going to be arrested will do a lot of mic check interviews about getting arrested

Michael – when you sign up through the form is that the same as signing up for the txt loop? how you are communicating on the day?

Hambone -using txt – great to sign up as part of text blasts as part of rsvp now – understanding that ushers will be signing people up over the weekend for

Michael – in putting together the poster, want to put the vital info on it too and get it on the site – am working with tammy which is good news; perhaps henry might have info that needs to go on that poster to

Hambone – have Tammy get you in touch with services and they can get you up to date

Tracy – there is also another s17 call going on right now; so there may be people from services on that call, may be why we don’t have anyone from services on

Ruby – medic and street theatre – needs to stay very close in with the plans that henry is talking about; first of all, as far as medics, need to be able to help with the situations on the day; for the street theatre – we are planning on sat and sun, out on the street, not nec in the park; what are the possibilities for on monday – we had thought………………..britt and puppets – who else is doing performances – we might be interested in getting otg with them; tapping into them? for henry

henry – doesn’t really have info or know who does right this second.

Jackrabbit – keep intouch Ruby and more will be coming out

- Support (Ingrid)
Update on housing and transportation

Ingrid – one already done – the nurses union and buses – not a guarantee encouraging ppl to get there on their own
housing continues to be a shitstorm; last ditch church apps that haven’t been hit ; not doing well; put yet another form from IO for submitting more detailed housing info if you can host people in your home;
also going to coordinate sleepful protests during the weekend – meeting thurs on 6th and liberty to find out more about how we will do that
food – we are doing great – we have vehicles, storage, an abundance of food
nothing new to report back from medic except that we would like to know who is coming from other occs
owsmedics@gmail.com
did email 99% for helatcare

Jessica – Amtrak – if you have 20 or more people from one destination , they will give you 20% discount
ways to work with local unions for transportation

Jeremy flint michigan – sleepful protests in nyc – are we shooting ourselves in the foot by doing that

Ingrid – there are a number of sleepful protests that are going on in nyc right now that are excited about having more ppl involved that weekend

Winter – agree and don’t want to see that many people put at risk at Liberty park

Steve – 845 third avenue outside the british embassy – in solidarity with julian assange – twinkles

Lisa – follow up with that in terms of whether to occupy something rather than Zucotti park – a lot of articles came out about private/public space in NYC
expect same attention being giving to the banks in that matter – brings the attention to where it should be

Josh from healthcare for the 99% – Ingrid contact me again at owshealtcare@gmail.com – wil do our best to put you in contact and help however we can.

Michael Daley – support any action that happens in NYC where the issue of privatization and erosion of public property occurs – where property gets taken away like the parks and sidewalks and gets transferred to the ownership of corporations – the sidewalk and public parks are fundamental to people — they are property
metaphor for everything else that’s wrong – just wanted to add that to what’s been said – I don’t know the issues completely – don’t know why we are calling it Zucotti Park – am in support of calling it Liberty Park what it was in the public domain.

- Education
Winter – will talk about all the convergence stuff and to welcoming people from out of town

this is the events we are creating – there’s a ton a stuff happening

Saturday – popup occupation 11-7 wash sq park – occupy town sq not permitted but have done in the past – have been doing for months
basic schedule – a little more centralized
11-1 pm free lunch orientation; open spaces
1- welcome remarks, soapbox, thematic assemblies; vague visioning session – a big park can do whatever ppl want in the space
from x-7
an occupy faith service, ……, dance party that night in that part and vicinity
looking for ppl to suggest themes; if coming with a group, doing an assembly or plugging in
visioning assembly can be one big assembly

concert in foley sq – outreach to big names; none confirmed yet – get collective acts to break down the stage and make it more interactive – if anyone knows groups who want

occupy 11-7p in the park adjacent to that – anyone can have teach-ins
rosh hashanah service in liberty sq

mon – convergence – hopefully 12-6 some reconnaissance safe space; report back s on action – battery park probabluy
6p- 10p at 55 water st. last convergence space – emma goldman space; open space; talk about issues
Full schedule can be found here: http://s17nyc.org/schedule/

Fred – let’s just use an example so I can better understand and report back – the TPP – groups who are b=prepared to come up and lead that, and how does that fit into the sat scheudle

Henry – email convergence@s17nyc.org – we will try to connect people with
4-7 section anyone could do workshops – go up to board and write in what you are doing at x time under x flag
but do email so we have

Nancy – just choose the time on sat and let you know when we would like to do a workshop

yes that is ok, but you could come at the last minute and fill in the board; the advantage ahead of time is to know what workshops are happening and to plug you int with other groups in the thematic assemblies

Fred – visioning part of it – involved with the visioning group from the natgat – could be a workshop but also could be part of the visioning process you are talking about

Winter – have not planned the visioning session yet – would like to plan with people from all over the country –
one thing talked about is maybe doing the thematic assemblies and then what solutions
rather than just work that has been done

Jack is posting the schedule link
Occupy Rosh Hashanah service on Sunday night

Henry – a bang in party sat night – the owner of the gowanus ballroom wants to pull out all the stops – pelase get a hold of me

open mic for 20-30 minutes unfacilitated at the end of the call

Ruby – in terms of getting in touch….where to get in touch about ?

Michael – under About/Contact there is a drop down menu about what your subject is about – convergence, hurricane, etc. – seems like a good way to get your msg through

Lisa – it is the outreach email: s17-Outreach@lists.occupy.net – might need to be approved if you are not on the list, but will be approved

Mark interested in facil or co-facil next week.

Tracy – I would be willing to assist with facilitation whenever needed.

JackRabbit – thank you willing volunteers. great conversation. Going to open up the mics; can sign off or call will be open for another 20 minutes or so. have a great

S17 Meeting: 8/27/2012

Lily: “I think we’re going to try to get started. Hi everyone, welcome to the meeting — so, me and Courtney are facilitating today, and we haven’t done this before, so this it’ll be nice. What I think we’ll do is we’ll run through the agenda, and then before we get on with anything, we’ll have an announcement.”

“So, just briefly, to run through the agenda:

1. Introductions
2. Accountability Structures
3. Announcement for planning for central action
4. Reportbacks
5. Breakouts
6. Further announcements.”

: “I would like consideration of a slogan and demand about Stop and Frisk. It was brought up last week, and it wasn’t really discussed. I’m wondering if I can bring it up — I don’t know if such discussion is closed or not, but if not, I’d like to bring it up and discuss it.”

Someone suggests putting it on the end, although he says “when we put stuff on the end, it often ends up getting lopped off.” Asks to be put in before announcements, after breakouts. OK, will be brought up for 5 minutes after Breakouts – positive temperature check.

Andy: “Thre’s been a bunch of work that’s gone on about exactly what you’re talking about since Monday, and I think Convergence breakout would be a great place to land for you. Better than the whole group.”

: “OK, I’ll join that group, although I’m part of Outreach. But I think it deserves a topic of discussion.”

Jay from a blood center is going to talk a little bit about bone marrow donations.

Jay: “This is the crowd — this is the energy I like to hear. Basically, today, this is something separate from your agenda for today, but it’s helpful. Today, we’re trying to find bone marrow transplants for people who have leukemia. Today, we’re going to have people register by filling out a consent form and getting some swabs” to collect DNA. The DNA information “goes into our database to see if there are potential matches for patients with leukemia.” Was working with Angie, and Billy — he has received a bone marrow transplant but may need more. “We’re hoping today people will read the info, understand what it entails, and join the registry.” Wants to dispel rumors: “the previous way was a bone marrow harvest, going to back of the hips and aspirate liquid marrow in your bones. The marrow in your body is a receptacle that attracts cells in your bloodstream. Hips were biggest joints, biggest targets.” The new way is “through a blood donation,” where they “give you an injection of a synthetic drug” to get more marrow in your blood. “This increases the process’ speed — for 5 days, nurse will give you medication, and then right before the transplant you donate blood into a machine” that separates stem cell marrow from the blood. “It’s less-invasive, newer, the most common practice being used now. They still use aspiration for” certain circumstances, but “when you donate through your blood, we can get enough marrow that it’s compatible to someone of your stature and weight.” “The only thing with this is being a match is 1 in 20,000;” unlikely you’ll ever be called to do it.

Any questions? What’s the new age range? “It’s from 18 to 60 til October 1st — 18 to 44.” Younger cells are healthier for patients, and 90 percent of time the transplant comes from same age group it works better.

“A few asked if you need to have health insurance to do this — no, the patient’s insurance covers everything you go through.” Being signed-up doesn’t commit you to anything.

Q: “Who has access to your DNA?” A: “From what I understand, we don’t share your info with any agencies.” Confidentiality in forms. “The only times I’ve ever known they’ve used info that way” was after 9/11 when families wanted help identifying bodies. “Regarding any conspiracy or anything like that, nothing like that ever transpired.”

Hambone clarifies this is to see if any of us are a match for Billy Livesy because “he only has a couple of weeks to live” otherwise. Oh no…

OK, moving on.

Andy: “This meeting’s already getting off to a pretty amazing start — we’re killing it. Let’s get Billy a transplant. I’m going to hand around the community agreement that some may or may not have seen — just a little background, it’s the document that’s kind of the end of an incredible amount of anti-oppression work that went on through the PoC caucus, the queer caucus, safer spaces, WOW — it’s a mammoth amount of work, that document being consensed upon in a spokescouncil 4 or 5 months ago. Don’t read it now, but please bring it home and take a look — it’s what we have in regards to accountability.”

“I gave this 5 minutes because I’m pretty sure that these large days of action are one of the few times you see the core group getting together. Where the document you see ends is any sort of implementation process. That means that if someone is being oppressive in the way that it’s defined in your document, we don’t have an implementation process to deal with that –a nd we’ll need it as we get bigger.”

“It’s not an unheard-of process; they exist in collectives and collective housing, etc, all the time. IT’s not a big deal — it’s mediation between people, and we’re really looking to improve that process.”

“So, where it goes from here is: last night, I sent out a survey to each of the lists for this S17 group. It’s a survey monkey which is this in a… going to pass this around… a digital form. And I’d love it if you filled out the digital form and not this form, but I figured that in the interest of getting” input from those not digitally-inclined he’d give it out here. “We’re going to figure out how to get everyone one. The way that the listservs work, if you go to Interoccupy.net/S17, you’ll see that there are 6 or 7 organizing listservs,some small, some large. If you have more questions about that process, go to Tech, who is here at this meeting and will be one of the breakouts.”

“So this survey kind of hinges on a couple principles: 1, accountability exists, but not very well, in huge groups like this, and exists better in small groups of friends, campaigns, working groups, caucuses, etc. So this survey aims to find out where those groups are that you operate in in OWS. Not this big group. We find it very hard to maintain in large, enormous groups like this, and much easier to maintain within smaller groups. So we’re trying to map the kinds of social forms that exist in OWS. So, who have you been organizing with in the last year? Who are your friends you’ve been active with? What neighborhoods have you been organizing in?”

“So, that’s what the survey is: a quick, what do you think accountability is? And then, do you have an organizing group? Some may not, and that’s totally OK. The next thing is, if you do have a group, it asks you to describe it — what parts of the group have provided accountability? An example I explained is that when I, throughout the organizing I’ve done this year, have been called out for being racist or sexist when organizing, I’ve had friends who came to me and helped me bring my analysis to a level where I didm’ do that anymore. They’re friends who came to me in a loving way and developed my analysis about oppression — which is a much better way than having an officer over there watching this big meeting for anyone who’s fucking up.”

“And if you do have a group, we’re encouraging you to forward the survey to this group, saying that I’ve listed you and we also want you to fill this out.”

He’ll put up the link to the survey monkey on the board. “It’s got another long intro that will explain this again to you if this wasn’t clear, because this is really fucking rushed. That’s OK, that’s the way we operate, I guess. Go to survey, read the explanation, and maybe it’ll become more clear. That’s that — we’ll have a report back once we have harvested this info, and seen what the social forms within Occupy are.”

Lily notes, “are there any journalists in the room?” Reminds them that everything is on background.

Linda: “I’m from Sweden; I work for the Swedish daily — International Daily — and I’m going to write a story about the anniversary of OWS. Is it OK if I take pictures like while you’re sitting here?” Some folks have issues… so, we won’t do it.

And Megan from the AP. And Gerard Sims from the Villager.

And Allison Kilkenny, the Nation.

Gerry Ashton, Huffington Post.

Ok, now a “long-form announcement about the NYSE action.”

NYSE Action:

Aaron: “So, the basic idea is we didn’t want to take a lot of time out of the breakout to intro the NYSE action. So, on Wednesday, in Liberty Plaza, at 5pm, we’ll have an open forum to talk about planning, filling in roles, and establish the framework for what people are going to do on the morning of S17.”

“The idea is that we’re going to show up in each of the 7 intersections around the NYSE and then fill that with a number of different roles and messaging for how things are going to break. We’ll run through it, practice it, and then brainstorm individually what to put in those containers. It’ll be a one-time-only thing, and then planning for these types of actions will continue in the Friday AG spokes.”

“Everyone is invited — there’ll be arrest able and non-arrestable ways to plug into the action. As we’ve said with the spiral action, the safety level of S17 won’t be defined by geography. Foley Square or Battery will probably be more green — otherwise, your safety will be defined by how you choose to respond to NYPD orders,” and we’ll let you know what to expect from them.

?: “Will there be ways for people with conflicts to plug into this?”

Aaron says yes, this is just to plan, but keep coming to these meetings, the action breakouts, and the affinity spokes.

Tammy:” how is this different from the other…”

Aaron: “The spiral plan involves motion between intersections on S17; it’ll be a common convergence for all the people involved.”
Hambone wants to add: “there’s a list of specific roles that we’re trying to recruit for this action, so that’s one of the main reasons we’re inviting people to come and get with us Wednesday at 5. We need emcees for each intersection, we need people to signup to do a brush up on police liaison work, we need help signing people up for flash mobs to help people get plugged in.”

Occupy Boston: “We’re from Occupy Boston, and just trying to figure out how people from other places would link in or sign up.”

S17 list, and Friday night S17 Affinity Group Spokescouncil phone call.

?: Clarify whether or not an individual can decide their own level of safety, or if a group will decide?

Aaron: “I think this gets to a related distinction, which is maybe a related conversation, but the idea that there are zones that will make others unsafe — this action is a controlled civil disobedience, so the people doing it won’t put people around them at risk by nature of what they’re doing — sitting down. It will be an individual decision.”

Lily notes that time is up. Someone wants to know if there is a list of roles for the action yet. Hambone: “Keep your ear to the ground.”

Lily notes that the next thing is a proposal to introduce Stop and Frisk.

: “The reason I brought this up was because I was involved in the Stop and Frisk rally in June, which brought out 5 to 10,000 people including Unions. There’s a big impression in the media that Occupy is primarily white — it’s not true; it’s not a movement of privilege, which I’ve learned from talking to a lot of people. I think by raising the issue of stop and frisk, we will really connect with all of the people that were marching past Bloomberg’s house — they had a big impact on the city, and it’ll mobilize people in the unions, which we need to reach out to to get them involved in S17 in a more than perfunctory way. And if we sat down with some of these union leaders — SEIU, and some others, I forget — we can sit down with them, and get them, I believe, to make a commitment to not only be there, but belp put out the word in the community through whatever avenue it takes — even a mass mailing to their own members. It’ll help motivate people — saying “99%” is most of us, and that’s great, but you’ve got to address issues of oppression. I guess that’s about it.” “To all the communities here in New York, we’d like to give them a reason to get downtown for more than something they may not have been involved in.”

George: “POI: just to speak to that specifically, two things — I was going to say the right thing,but I’ll say the wrong thing first — that we need to have that conversation shows that we’re not an entirely reflective movement in the first place. But on the 16th, leading up to the event, we do have stop and frisk as one of the main pillars of the narrative and the themes, and Rebel Diaz and myself will be addressing that through our performance pieces on the 16th, but I think they’ve also redesigned the fliers to indicate some of the racial and sex components of oppression.”

Ethan: “If you noticed something that needs to be done, isn’t it sort of on you to move that forward? I know what my skill set is, and that’s not it, but if you identify a problem, isn’t there a way that you might be able to address that?”

: “Sure, that’s what I’m doing right now, we’ll see what happens. If it’s going to be on Sunday and big event revolving around it, that’s fantastic. I haven’t heard that yet, and maybe that’s my fault. But I’d like to have S17 have, as part of the demand of the day, opposition to stop and frisk.”

Freddy : “Usually, the unions have their own labor day march…September 8th?”

: “Some of us with Occu-Evolve are organizing a march on Labor Day itself; one week later is the Labor Day march. I’m talking about S17 itself though.”

Susan “has a question about why I came.” “Why I came is that I heard a rumor that there’d be a mass demonstration, like on May Day , and that some group or another had met with the unions and gotten a commitment of 10,000 people. Now, I, for various reasons, want to tell different people if this is true or not. So I’ve come to find out if it’s true.”

Jackie notes: “it’s all in process, and no such commitment has been made yet. There’s some interest, but it’s all in process. We will be flyering the labor day parade on September 8th.”

Lily: “Thanks very much, we’re moving onto breakout groups now. We usually have them on convergence, outreach, action, services, and support.”

He wants to make a proposal, but someone notes that we’re not hearing proposals in this larger group, and reminds us all of the “WAIT” and “Step up, step back” community agreements.

Nina: “Convergence breakout is, the weekend before is the Town Square in WSP, the Foley Square concert and town square, and then Monday 12-6 and assembly at 6pm at 55 Water.” Lots of things: spaces to bring people together for education, spectacle, and yeah.

Andy: “Also, if you’re from an outside org, for instance, and you want to bring a table and plug into OTS, or an issue that isn’t being represented as well as you’d like in this body, the convergence group is a great place to come and plug into a totally open framework that was created just to lift up whatever you represent.”

Tammy: “Outreach will be over here in this corner, and we’re talking about three kinds of outreach: national outreach, outreach to organization and street teams, and outreach.” Services will meet with them.

Action: “The action team will be discussing mostly the morning of September 17th til about noon: there’s a series of actions, the blockade, and then the hurricane, and following that there’s a number of other things that will be happening and we’ll be talking about messaging, coordination, and logistics supporting these actions.”

Support: “All of the stuff that keeps us running! Food, health, all of the people who are going to come here, housing, transportation –all of the not-sexy stuff. I shouldn’t have said that, sorry.” “It’s the best group,” someone else yells out.

Paul, re: action: “I think Outreach and Action actually has to have a conversation at some point about institutions, because for example, there’s outreach happening to institutions who want to take on specific actions in the morning.”

Someone notes that there’s been precedent for people moving from one group to another for a meeting to help connect groups.

OK, going into breakouts.

OK, coming back for report backs. Tammy suggests we should talk about whether to move the meeting from next Monday to Tuesday for Labor Day… Stan’s Poi is that he booked Judson Memorial for next Monday.

Temperature check on moving it is mixed… “what about keeping it Monday?” Also mixed.

Aaron suggests “maybe a way to phrase the question is, who here will definitely not be able to make it next Monday?”

7 couldn’t make either Monday or Tuesday, the other 50-odd can do either, so we’ll stay scheduled for Monday night at Judson Memorial Church on WSP.

Tammy, Outreach: “OK, first, every Tuesday at 7pm is the Interocc call w/ ppl around the country. When reporting back, please include an agenda item for that call. Anything people around the country might want to know or where a discussion or decision could be had.” “Also, anyone who wants to phone bank nationally for people across the country, look for the email on the S17 discussion or outreach lists — just respond, fill out the form, you’ll get all the info. The more people the better.” “3, I’m liaising between group planning Rosh Hashanah service on Sunday; do people think Zuccotti will be blocked off Sunday night? Red Square?” Zuccotti yes, Red Square no, maybe. “It would be useful to get some police liaisons from this group from folks who don’t want to participate, or anyone who can do de-escalation and help us maintain the space so folks doing the service don’t have to do that.” Please see Tammy for any of those things.

Hambone, reporting back on convo w/ organization allies. “There’s some coalition-building going on; they’re excited about doing lots of turnout for Sunday afternoon and Monday morning; they can try to get out constituencies for environmental folks and organized labor to come to the conference, and we can land with emphasis on DA training and do that from the stage and hopefully get them to support us on the ground Monday morning for the DA /CD stuff. They’re also talking about pushing the injunction to stop Zuccotti from being barricaded on S17; maybe a big action / occupation at noon on S17. Also talk about the people’s wall at the stock exchange and them supporting the actions in the pinwheel as well. They’re talking about having a press conference at Zuccotti Park at noon, so we need to figure out how to integrate the action agreements and our nonpartisanship and all that in how that plays out.” Asks Andy if he has anything to add.

Andy: “In general, just going to push the full schedule for both Sunday and Monday — 11am through the day Sunday to 7am through the day Monday.”

Hambone: “And there’s one last action proposal we don’t have to get into.” Lily asks if he is reporting back from action, but it’s from “organizational allies; some people call it the institutional left.”

Other report backs….

Yates, Convergence: “The weekend framework is nicely in place for Saturday, Occupy Town Square, and then Sunday the concert, and we’re needing to coordinate between concert folks and Occupy Rosh Hashanah. We also spent some time talking about Monday afternoon, all the new info Henry introduced is important; we’d talked about Battery Park being the post-action area, but if the injunction works and Zuccotti is available, that’d be preferable.” Notes that there is a conflict between two assemblies scheduled for 6 and 7pm on Monday, that will need to be hashed out. “There was lots of sentiment expressed about combining them but that needs to be talked about more. And Occupy Faith is talking about a welcoming meeting for the faith leaders arriving on Sunday. So we need to figure out where to place that.”

Hambone notes he forgot that “Occupy Faith is maybe the most successful organized ally group; once again, a ton of faith leaders are coming from around the country to get busted on Monday morning.” Somewhere between 40 and 70.

Lily: “Next reportback?”

Support, Matt: “It’s the 27th and it’s time to face facts that the convos we’ve been having with churches, unions, restaurants, about housing and transportation and food, are constantly on hold, so we have to say we don’t know for sure. If you’re going to be here, maybe find your own way; we’ll be doing lots of sleepful protest. So there’ll be conversations ongoing, but it will probably be one or two people in apartments, food not bombs will be here but they don’t have resources or storage — for a large part, it’s going to be a DIY weekend, and we need to start thinking about ti that way for people from out of town because we are not delivering on food, housing, and transportation, and that’s a fact.”

Aaron: “Two announcements about action: again, Wednesday, 5pm, there won’t be a meeting, it’ll be outdoors, people practicing the outdoor blockade action, and then Friday the Affinity group spokescouncil at 6pm in Foley Square.”

Dicey clarifies the AG spokescouncil is not just for affinity groups, everyone should come, 6pm in Foley.

Further announcements?

Sumumba: “OccuEvolve meets Friday at Liberty at 6:30; may try to push it back to be part of AG spokes at Foley.” Will be occupying the Subway to do outreach, and work with assemblies in the city to get the word out.

Stan notes there are flyers — please take them!

Next, Stop Police Brutality youth rally to protest Ramarley Graham and all the victims of police brutality.

September 13th, Bronx Criminal Court, 161st St — trial of shooter of Ramarley Graham. 4pm sharp.

Saturday, the 15th, Occupy Faith will be doing something in WSP “to give information about what they’re calling a ‘people’s investigation’, a truth commission process OccupyFaith has been developing, and if someone has been involved in something like this, collecting stories from people harmed by the financial crisis, foreclosure or debt, would love to put you in touch with the investigation — it’s a long process, envisioning working on it for 7-10 years.”

Next: “I want to keep us in mind — I know after May Day, it kind of fell off; I want to bring a proposal at the next meeting that we go forward at the end of Oct with an Occupy Food/ Harvest festival, and keep doing it every couple months so that we can segue all the way to next year. Great outreach to the community, and I’ll propose we do one in Sunset Park. Will bring that next week.”

Occupy Guitarmy “is doing an inter-borough march in days leading up to S17. If you’re from an outer borough, contact Goldie, Daphne, or Mike, so we can coordinate days or times to march to you with a celebratory event and then move onto next borough.” Want to coordinate “rather than imposing some sort of Guitarmy mandate in your area.”

“I don’t have all the details, but there’s a caravan for peace” about victims of the drug war. Going through southwest, texas, alabama, shooting up to chicago and arriving in NYC on the 6th. And on the 7th around noon they want to meet with Occupiers in Zuccotti.”

Next: “I was just going to ask that as people leave, if they stock the chairs and pick up the trash, that’d be great.”

NOTES:
Call Facilitators: Tammy
Maestro Board Manager(s): Tracy
Note Taker(s) : Jackie

Check Ins:

James – NY Occupy Brooklyn TV looking forward to covering the three days working with media, video, etc.
Brother Robert – Buffalo, Occupy Buff, from LI, based in Manhattan, ministry, community resources, helping incarcerated
Ben Zucker – Brooklyn, Occupy DC – btw 20-40 coming to s17
Occupy Watertown – DRad -20-40 ppl
Daniel Lee – LA – about 100 ppl who want to come depends on buses, trains, I’m definitely coming
Nancy – SF Bay area – a doz going, possibly more; locally Sept.14-16 Human BeIn – Golden Gate park; on 17th occupy banks all day and converge later (see Human Be In humanbein.org)
Jessica Graham – Occupy Spokane – yes, we are planning a solidarity for the 15th locally and working with the north bus, hoping to get 50 ppl there by bus
Sean – NY – have report backs from convergences group
Kelsey Johnson – Occupy Elmira/Corning Upstate – GA there – Solidarity Action – only one planning on being in NY on the 17th. others interested
Maura Stevens – Ithaca, NY – trying to figure out how to plug in and be a presence; local things also
Lisa _ Occ Philly and now Brooklyn
Steve – Occupy Philly – rounding up the troops coming to NY; word from Occupy Harrisburg, solid headcount of 30 ppl
Ruby – Boston – a couple of groups working on getting a couple of buses of folks from Boston and NE, should have a good showing; on call to see about street medics and theatre
Tracy – TA – working with Occupy Chicago to get folks to s17
Stan – NY – helping organize the buses around the country s17.org to ask questions
Ingrid – NY – here to talk about medic stuff and other support needs and issues
Fred – N. VA. – question – solidarity in DC area? TPP info also? any tie-in to s17?
Chris – Hello, Occupy Seattle -working with Jessica to coordinate the NW with buses, on call for media; do have solidarity on Sept. 28,29,30 all political prisoners, the Nato 5 – check out on fb
Jackie – Occupy Buffalo, taking notes
Drew – NYC – website and wiki; trying to make sure everything stays documented
Becca Mansky – OWS – PR team, environmental action
Lee Prior – Occupy Pensacola – don’t know if any of ours are going to be going up but are planning a solidarity action here, and will contact other occupies in the panhandle to join in
Dan – NYC – OWS – NLG planning, help as a participant to give other NLG folks understanding
Andy – how to plug people into the Monday actions and what’s happening at the concert
Sergio – coming down; 10 diehard coming down; trying to organize in Buffalo for a bus
Dana Baliecki – OWS
Dan – solidarity actions in DC – Occupy Pastry? on Oct. 1

Tammy asks who doesn’t want to share info – none; collects

PR discussion (30 min)
Dana – Rebecca will chime in too – both having tech diff. Questions come up in terms of PR, messaging, media strategy – how to deal with media as our 1 yr comes around – definitely open up to questions so folks get what is pertinent to them. a bit of info that will be coming out in the next few days, and then some tips
already receiving a good amount of inquiries – we know it’s a media moment to take advantage of – for sure a time where again the world will be looking out through media at what Occupy has accomplished this year
getting responses already from reporters – everything from what about ‘Occupy is dead’ to an enthusiastic bloomberg reporter who wanted to know what Occupy has contributed in the last year
most sense to give reporters info – hand them info so they are not telling the story without – have made a video and the site http://whatthefuckhasoccupydone.com/ is great for finding what Occupy has done
local stories absolutely relevant; check occupywallst.org …victories.. S17 Victories

working on a press release that Occupies can use, add own info, use in outreach, use for media in your community; brief talking points – we will have too but just wanted to hear what concerns there are on the call tonight –
quickly, in terms of messaging the conversation having over and over again is to KEEP IT SIMPLE – there are a lot of issues that Occupy encompasses; whatever issue is relevant in your community (lists several) stop and frisk, mop, ability to assemble freely – the important part is to consistently tie it back to the corruption in our communtiies by corporate greed – all our grievances are connected – we are the 99%: some in nyc may be having burnout about 99% but we must realize that many in the country… identify with that – some are just coming into awareness of the 99% and corporate greed – good to still use

what hasn’t changed over the last year – many reporters here: editor said write one year Occupy roundup – please talk about what has been accomplished, what’s going on
please point back to the corporate greed issue – no banksters held accountable and no one is in jail, not much been done in the last year in ………
rebecca anything else to add?
organically – we wouldn’t make one demand – allow diff ppl form diff places to….. and see what rises to the top – some things did – student debt and housing foreclosures rose to the top here, not as a single issue but as a theme – clarify the nyc decisions about focusing on debt – in terms of the broader question about the very notion of debt itself and the **********
locally as you talk to the press, if there’s a way to bring the focus back to the larger theme; having conversation in local community about how your actions have built a narrative

questions/comments about how folks are planning in their local communities?
Ruby – Boston – of having victories not only to hand to the press, but internally it’s important to know that we have victories; debt – national debt, what a farce that is and how that connects with everything; more than greed, integral part of the machine; greed means it would be nice if the bankers weren’t so greedy, but to be clear about that being part of the system, not a matter of being nice or not
Jeremy – Flint, MI verify press address
press@occupywallst.org
Carolyn – comment about corp greed – reading about how the whole system – corporations making good people do bad things; law that says shareholder value is a legal requirement. ben & jerry had to ..….when they sold because that is in the bottom line;
Priscilla – local victory occupiedmedia.com we have a whole — roundup of actions and results of those actions – go to those for victories for local and also to get ideas for actions
http://occupiedmedia.com/ http://occupiedmedia.us/

Jeremey- when it comes to PR always important to point out the problems, but can be depressing, also important to have a nice mix of positive actions as far as what people can feel good about

Dana – kind of similar to that – last point – and we will share resources as far as how to give interviews, etc. practical on the ground tips – a lot of different ways to talk about what is happening in this country , local and on the planet. outline problem – this what could be diff – this is why we’re here today – as you’re thinking about how you are going to be talking about why you are out on the street – use this media moment – what’s the possible solution to the reasons why Occupy Wall St exists – take your pick of the long list, this why it’s important, not just the protest part, but this is the work being done

Priscilla – speak to what Dan just said be very clear about your msg – notice in NY, each subsequent action there are less and less signs – one of the best things last year was the wonderful signs that people made to express why they are here – everyone should collect boxes, sharpies, make sure ppl have materials to make signs
Becca – in addition to proper signage; choosing one message visually and in answers to the press that’s why this internal discussion about what the one point should be;
tendency of the left to harp on problem after problem, also about – not just about look at us we’re in debt – cutting edge – take things to the next level in identifying the problem and next steps – compare to labor movement when they dared to say hey something wrong with the way we work********
debt to the press not just about what we are suffering, but effort to push the discussion forward and think about debt – talk about the world we want to see – culture of credit not culture of debt; solidarity economy, co-ops – the mundial co-op in Spain is weathering the fiscal crisis better than a lot of others handling it
Tammy – many new people on this call — make sure they get the materials
local press interested in your own anniversary; think of that and the message you want to give

Report backs and discussions from NYC subgroups sign up for lists for various subgroups at the IO hub itneroccupy.net/s17nyc/ – various sign up lists to keep up to date
- Support (Ingrid)
Update on transportation – what do people think about donating $5?
Need for medics, housing and food storage/prep
Please e-mail to support@s17nyc.org

transportation
Tammy- buses around the country, Stan
Stan – currently speaking with national nurses united for buses to and from for the… – have not confirmed but are wanting to know how many buses we will need so when they do make the decision they will be informed – during initial conversation they were skeptical to send buses all around the nation – cost 100K to bring to NATO but many weren’t full
propose to nurses: people who register to go to NYC would pledge to donate $5 to the buses or the driver or something as a willingness to show they are committed to really come to NYC

T – ppl would give $5 as a show of good faith

Chris – Occupy NW – can say pretty reasonably that everyone here would contribute $5 – and what’s the time frame – get to NYC on Saturday – depending on any arrests, the buses would be able to be back to where you are located on Tues or Wed the latest

Steve – West Coast some great distances, the bus probably wouldn’t be most comfortable – another solution is to rent vans – a big expense for the buses is driver; rent a van, ppl can share driving, flexibility to leave at last moment and arrive…week; we did known company reasonable costs for a five day trip

Watertown – northern NY – trying to set up about the rendezvous point – trouble with communications how can that get accomplished

Priscilla – do i get this straight – you still need people to email and say they want buses – there’s a list of the 15 biggest twitter handles – should we link the buses question to twitter –
T – registration form in general – trans questions on it http://s17nyc.org/support/pledge/
Ruby – assumes Stan has been in touch with our trans group in Boston – Ruby will make sure to be in contact
Stan – t4swillia3@gmail.com – personal e-mail or to support@s17nyc.org
Chris – i’m back from NW area – how long a bus trip across the country
Jackie – want Stan to know suggestion that we have a bus from Buffalo to Rochester Syracuse converge along northern tier NY with Watertown to Binghamton; also 10% off on Amtrak – if Steve wants to give me info, I will do
Steve – have the info; did for the Nat Gat – will do tonight
Maura – procedural problem – trouble getting into the participant dashboard
Ingrid – reiterate for any efforts made to push the message about buses be clear that this is not confirmed; been responding to the e-mails – hard – many under impression that there is already buses in place – be sure that e-mails and messages make that clear
Sean – an amount of time to cross the country 50-56 hours depending on the route
Priscilla- a rideshare tool will be on the http://occupywallst.org/rides/ operational on Friday – link to the hub and s17 after it is live
Tammy – e-mail support about the question about where the transportation form is.
Jessica – pressed 1 and not sure why it didn’t come up
Tammy –
Jessica – transportation – Chris and I are from the west coast; wondering if there is a way we can figure something out for future events as well – requires much time
Sergio – basic question – who is the contact person for the buses again -
Stan – email him – t4swillia3@gmail.com or support@s17nyc.org.
worthwhile to look for funding to do on your own in case the nurses union buses do not come through
Steve – a big issue for the national gathering was parking – parking in the major cities can be exorbitant – driving should be the last resort – idea for Stan – question nurses about possible reimbursement for vans
dr. Sean – NYC local and parking is impossible in Manhattan – plenty of places to park in Brooklyn and Queens investigating – will get a list up
Nancy – Jessica on the west west coast – there is something planned in SF Bay, we should connect
Jessica – we are in Washington area; perhaps work something out
? – wanted to shout out to ppl driving in from out of town is not to dismiss NJ; Hoboken , PATH train look for places near PATH

Tammy – temp check about asking people to donate $5 to show nurses a show of good faith
15 ppl agree , 2 disagree 2 stood aside, another 11 or twelve who didn’t vote

Need for medics, housing and food storage/prep
Ingrid – Medic issue – please get in touch so we know how many we can expect to have and get plugged in with our medics – put MEDIC in subject line to support@s17nyc.org

Medic meet-up Friday 5p Tompkins sq. park – medic training

storage and press sites – food donations – where the food is going to live and where it will be cooked and how delivered is more sticky – if ppl are driving, and would be willing to help with the kitchen, please let us know – generally need volunteers for ppl who want to work during the weekend, having names now would make our work more easy

housing – soft, and a few waiting to hear back from them – right now options are #Occupy Classifieds http://classifieds.occupy.net/ and Host An Occupier
http://housing.nycga.net/host-an-occupier/; also local occupations in NYC – hosting out of towners specific ask to them
Br. Robert – quick response about housing – couchsurfing.com (http://www.couchsurfing.org/) – a lot of firends in NYC know about OWS -planning for them, also plugging into monasteries, spiritual community; will be plugging in through Occupy Buffalo and send word
Ruby – Medic stuff – that’s what i’m assessing right now for the medic crew in Boston – need to send to Ingrid at support in terms of Medic; also we would like to know what the situation is for medics in NYC- what are we going into – how organized are you; should I email offline
Ingrid – medics like to scatter to the wind after big actions; there is no organization at this time; trying to contact
Tammy – Ingrid and Stan – just got email about medic and travel – will forward to you
Tammy – housing note – floyd bennett field campsite
Priscilla – medics, have you reached out to Doctors for the 99 percent or 99% .. Coalition?
? is there a local food not bombs?
? food a really great time to get together with someone like city harvest – definitely have the kitchen space
Ingrid – don’t know if they are talking to food not bombs

- Action
- updated action plan and how folks traveling to NYC can plug in with affinity groups
- Are people from other cities coming with affinity groups?

Tammy – time to talk about how actions are developing

Sean – brief report is we have a conceptual framework that makes it easier to talk about
effectively – a hurricane
calm at center
sea wall
surrounding hurricane
what you get at each place

red action – sit down civil disobedience at stock exchange – will try to get folks

greener space – people’s picket – hoping to involve institutional
surrounding the entirety of Wall St so anyone who wants to get to work that day has to pass

surrounding hurricane – affinites group action – highly autonomous – organized around affinity groups or any group that wants to coalesce claim 30 intersections and move from place to place; 30-50 ppl at each intersection effectively disrupting traffic and the flow of traffic that day – all the problems come down to something this sector is doing (Wall St) express yourself however you see fit and decide how you will fit it

Andy – cool great report back Sean — name of distributed actions renamed 99 Revolutions A Minute; track of DA Sat and Sun to get people…………
if the word affinity group turns you off, there will be a whole lot of organizing space; totally fine if you don’t have an affinity group – we will have a structure set up; extremely important moment that we put our bodies on Wall St that morning
Tammy – if you will be coming with an affinity group from your city, please press 2 now.
Jeremy – question re: the action – is there a website for filling out a form person or pledging a commitment to the hurricane?

no sound – facilitator muted?
3-5 minutes tech difficulty – no sound for notetaker – called back in
…….
? – that’s going to be coming through occupy town sq – will hunt down the link and post on the dashboard

- Education
Mass convergence for Saturday about people marrying corporations (something folks are interested in?
possible solidarity action?
– 1-4 thematic assemblies – some themes?
– 4-7. Open space for workshops/teach ins/whatever Saturday and Sunday. Will be a sign up form coming shortly

Tammy – can also e-mail convergence – convergence@s17nyc.org

Drew – on the website on the sidebar is a registration button and contact us
or email s17nyc.org/contact will e-mail the repsective group for contact
Tammy – the puppet show is working on something for s17
The Convergence – Sat and Sunday a bunch of things happening – anyone on call to talk about convergence?

Sean overview and speciifc
looking at all the time Sat and Sun – a calendar for Sat, Sun and Monday – Monday not nailed down yet – by next call should have
Sat – Occupy Town Square – will post link
11-7 at Washington Sq park, meals served as well, twice a day all three days
12-2 being beginning of the day – educational theme – what are your 99 demand – look at and talk about problems together
2-4 participate and sharing place – puppets, music aimed for there;
looking to have a vigil at approx…

Sun – changing to Tom Paine park – 100 Center St City Hall – a stage with a permit for amplified sound between 1-6p
planning on having a concert, going to be having Occupy Town Square -opportunity for tabling and various other resources – ballet on the barricades; ballerina on the bull; Sun less formal day; afterward at 7p Occupy Rosh Hashanah service

money out of politics – conference, convergence at a space nearby perhaps Pace U; also being worked on for Sat. having a cheerful civil disobedience large numbers to stand up and be counted in favor of still having a democracy
Tammy – a few addt’l piece of info – folks from the…
Occupy Town Square – kinetic assemblies as well as open
sign up form for teach-ins; education – if you signed up on the website you will be contacted
request made at meeting yesterday – people interested in thematic assemblies; get a sense on this call about what themes people may be interest in.
Fred – a couple of topics – the TPP, on a call with the group yesterday, merges with many issues
economy for the 99%; will look for more ways to plug that in
Tammy – get a hold of me: tammy@interoccupy.net about the TPP thing
Fred – yes, there’s a lot of secrecy involved with TPP, behind closed doors,etc.
Jeremy – Trans Pacific Partnership

?? – main theme debt – money out of politics – confusing to me
mobile theatre at moving from intersections this is on Sat and Sun
what’s the possibilities of people in the park or being more mobile outside of Sat and Sun – I think we want to do it outside where folks are
Sean – going to be a pair of separate events not at the Occupy Town Square – both are going to be about MOP issues; there is going to be very specifically some concept of debt – intend to invite everyone and all topics
Tammy – all roads lead to wall st -focusing on debt, but all actions welcome

- Need D.A. trainings/trainers
? – main component of the weekend is DA training if you know or are interested in training please contact

Jeremy – a lot of activities – is it ok to not sign up when we arrive -
Tammy – no need to sign up ahead of time to participate but it would be interesting for us to know who is coming in to do teach-ins, etc.
Drew – registering online is just for our sake, for organizing
convergence folks: s17nyc.org/contact
form with dropdown menu and it will go out to one of the groups –
Tammy – is posting a link to the facebook event for Occupy Town Square event

- Services (Ravi)
- s17nyc.org is set up and ready to go. We need content, volunteers, and any other help. Interested parties
should email services@s17nyc.org
- Invite to occupies will go out this week, along with registration form. Please get folks to fill out the form so we can get accurate estimates!

Report Back:
Drew – the only thing is we’re doing a lot of talking about information and the fastest way to get information online is to visit http://interoccupy.net/s17nyc/ and submit updates and minutes, and also go to the wiki tab on that page and if you put down to the source, it will take you to the wiki section on wiki.occupy.net it will take you to where you can drop info in that is useful – don’t worry about messing it up, and we will make sure it gets to the website, facebook, InterOccupy. if you can’t figure out, just email s17nyc.org/contact

? we launched postcards…
if everyone who is on the call can write a postcard or have those who can’t be here fill out a postcard
what kind of on the ground work is going on in NYC as far as handing people something in their hand

Outreach – Tammy
Outreach plan, how do folks feel about this?
Three types of outreach – this plan is just for nat’l and regional outreach
1. National and regional outreach to national occupy folks
2. Outreach to institutions and organizations in NYC and elsewhere
3. Street outreach/canvassing/pub crawls/etc in NYC itself
Assign follow up calls to those who want to help. I think it would be rad if we could do this regionally, meaning folks from various regions call people who live close to them. This way they can make better connections with those close by and perhaps discuss travel plans. Below are some ideas about how to do this, but please add some. I’m looking for some guidance especially from you tech folks.
Ask if it is ok to collect contact information (Tammy)

Tammy – Street outreach is going on. There’s three kinds of outreach listed, national and regional, institutional and street outreach.
National – Lisa – it’s still in working form, but basically if you go under outreach materials on the wiki, under the solidarity action kit for other occupies, there is a lot of info everything from
nationally all the suggestions that have come up – not all confirmed yet – once they are, we will get them all on – right now put on any type of resource from actions now, before, and globally.
tool kits and resources – all the three topics that Tammy was saying are within the outreach hub
tips for local, nat’l and street outreach http://wiki.occupy.net/wiki/S17_Outreach_Materials
if you don’t see yours down, please submit
Tammy – just to clarify, are you going to have a list of all the solidarity actions around the country
Lisa – yes eventually included all of them; yes
Occupy Honolulu and the action they are doing…. right now depends on the amount of people
Lisa – yes Monsanto action
Tammy – wiki – Interoccupy hub, and solidarity action kit – want to encourage everyone to submit your solidarity actions – good for us but also to give to the press http://s17nyc.org/organize/submit-solidarity-action/

Drew – I’ll help make that link a little more clear – want to remind everyone – yellow edit bar – just go in and add stuff yourself – help Lisa out – doing an awesome job

Ben – have there been any international solidarity actions confirmed or calls been made?
Tammy – hub on Interoccupy, call going out for Oct 13 for an int’l day of action, London, Spain, France and other folks – a bigger day of action globally
on the wiki there is a bunch of posters that can be printed
meeting yesterday in NY, they were talking about street outreach
a lot of outreach to organizations and institutions locally and nationally
we will send an email out to both the s17 outreach list and the list of contacts on this call
connect to people – phone banking – a script of sorts to reach out and talk to others
if that’s something you want to help with press 1 now – phone bank solidarity actions and ……

Tammy – who would like to co-facilitate this call next week – always looking for help – anything else you want to say press one now
thanks for a really productive call – a large call – excited to hear about organizing around the country – be back same time same place next week

Open Mics. Goodbyes.

S17 MEETING 8-20-12

Winter: “Hi everyone! I’m Winter.”

Nina: “And I’m Nina.”

winter: “We’d like to facilitate this meeting, if it’s all right with everyone.” Looks good.

“We’re meeting here to plan for S17; we’re turning 1 year old. It’s kind of exciting. Let’s start out with really quick introductions; your name, gender pronoun, and anything you want to disclose — like you’re a reporter, or rep an organization, or something.”

Ingrid: “Or you’re police.”

Intros: Yates, Stephen, Audrey, Charles, Hillal, Andy, Atta, Jackrabbit, Marty, Aaron, Harry, Bill, Ethan, Matt, Aaron, Ravi, Sean, Cameron, Susan, Ray, Sakhi — HuffPo, Jerry, Nick, Tammy, Christopher, Melissa, Katrina, Mark, Annabelle, Ingrid, Marisa, Dicey, David, Joseph, Jeremy, Kara, Neil, Stan, Courtney, Mike, Richtie, Jason, Adam, Doug, Ron, Jackie, Bill, Linnea, Leina, Linda (OWS Alternative Banking), Luke, Ted, Ann, Matt* (Reporter), nick (Village Voice), Miriam, a few more.

Winter asks folks who don’t want to be quoted to raise hands but Nick Pinto notes that there is an established ground rule that everything is on background. “The ground rules are that if I want to quote you, I have to come to you afterwards and get your permission.”

Marisa: “Yeah, and just that whatever is said at these meetings is background — so you can’t directly quote people, but they can talk about the experience of being here.”

Winter was going to start with meeting agreements, but can’t remember — so just “be good humans, be kind to each other, step up step back, you know the deal.”

Jerry: “Most of you may already know Captain Ray LEwis, retired from the Philly PD, was early on with Occupy. Ray Lewis and I are doing what we can to do a better outreach to the police community, to stop them thinking of us as enemies and them as enemies.” “We’d love to deliver a birthday cake to a very prominent precinct — so the question there is how can we do it safely.” Ray will say more.

Ray: “Thanks Jerry. First of all, I came down here in uniform to basically be used by the the Occupy movement. I didn’t come down here with a lot of ideas — I want to do this, that; it was basically, here I am, use your creative energy, tell me how you want to use me, so I’m open to just about anything. I was just given some information this week about the celebrations on the weekend — Washington Square Park and Foley Square. I can attend both days if you’d like, and any specific thing you’d like me to do those days, please let me know.” Otherwise, he’ll have his famous sign about understanding OWS and watching Inside Job. “Anybody who watches that has got to understand one part of what this movement is about — the corruption of politicians and the banks. So put your heads together and if you want to utilize me, please feel free to approach me.”

Winter: “So, just quickly going over the agenda, we have a quick proposal from Outreach about the time of this meeting; a quick presentation from PR; some report backs from the clusters. We’ll go over what the schedule looks like for the three day, and then go over some of the individual points of that — Monday 12-6, and the concert Sunday. And then we’ll do breakouts.” Hopefully 2-2.5 hours.

Winter: “So, the first items on the agenda is a proposal, which is always fun.”

1. Outreach, proposal to change the meeting time.

Someone in the back: “I have to say, I feel very uncomfortable with a policeman in here in our meeting, and after the police have beaten and thrown our people in jail, I would like to have — “

Winter recognizes a point of process. “This is an open room; the agenda is open, anyone can come to the facilitator to bring an agenda item.” It’s an open meeting at this point.

Outreach: “So, the proposal is to move the official meeting time to 6:30 so we can do a training from 5-6:30 for people interested in doing outreach, and specifically recruitment and mobilization for the 17th.”

Stan notes we have the space until 10pm every Monday night, so hopefully that won’t interfere with the meeting.

Winter: “So the proposal is to move this meeting to 6:30; the point of information is we have this room until 10pm.”

Clarifying questions:

Charles: “Is there any information about the location change that may or may not be happening?”

Aaron: “We were offered 33 West 14th Street on Mondays at this time.”

Marisa’s POP: “We were talking about a time change here in this space, and I’d like to treat that as a proposal before getting into others.”

OK, more CQs:

Ethan: “So, if we consent to this, even this meeting didn’t start until 6:25. So if we consent to a 6:30 start time can we try to adhere to that?” Throwing that out to everybody. David Graeber goofily threatens to block.

Winter: “This is the best proposal ever. OK, any concerns?” No. “Standasides?” No. “Blocks?” No blocks. Consensus!

YAY

Tammy: “The important part of that proposal is that there’s going to be trainings 5-6:30 about how to do outreach for S17 itself. So folks should come at 5 to do those trainings.”

OK, moving on.

Andy: “What’s the outreach training?”

: “So, basically, a number of people in outreach have been interested in building for S17, and the training will give people some skills in building personal outreach and doing outreach into their communities, so if there are local assemblies that want to do it more effectively, or if people are reaching out to community groups, that’s what the training is on.”

OK, next: “A PR report back.”

Bill: “We’ve been around from Day 1, and we respond from queries that come to us live on the phone and through email — many reporters, and people who need help making content. So, we know there’s a lot of excitement and anticipation about S17 and many things in motion, and from our own experience, wanted to proffer a little bit of advice: to keep it simple. And the reason why I say that is that for all the elaborate plans and messaging that we might work on and come up with, we know that a lot of this stuff gets scrunched into a small number of words. So when you do all this organizing work, think of that, and we want to make sure we’re all on the same page. One is that actions might be in the works which might compete with each other and might draw from the same pool of people who might potentially attend. That’s a political issue, but I want to flag it, and I want to flag a press team issue which is that sometimes we get woken up in the morning by press people who have press releases from the movement but we’ve never seen them. So if you’ve got an action that you’re thinking about or know is in the works and might need press help, please contact us with some lead time because it’s not fun when we find out 6 hours ahead of time — for us or the media.”

“And we — Occupy — the more of us who manage to stand together, the stronger we are.”

Someone asks if PR has a phone number: 347 292 1444. “Press and OccupyWallSt.org on Twitter. We are @OccupyWallStPR and our website is press.nycga.net. And our page will be live soon on s17nyc.org.”

Nina: “Great, thank you press. Reportbacks from action now. Or, no, Outreach first.”

Tammy: “I have three report backs that aren’t all related to outreach, but I’ll give them. OK, cool: First, last week, someone asked — OK, Civilians — do you guys know them? They do cool plays; they’re doing stories from the occupy movement on S17 and want to talk to folks beforehand about the state of the movement.” Thought it would be good to approach her, so they can get a variety of folks. So talk to Tammy about that. “Two, the S17 national calls are 7PM on Tuesdays — that’s tomorrow at 7; you register by going to the S17 Interocc hub. There was a request last call that more New Yorkers get on the call — people are tired of hearing my voice.” Would be good to get at least one person from each sub group. “And three, last week someone asked about Occupy Rosh Hashana — it’s happening Sunday from 7:30 to 11, and there are some needs — if anyone’s actually interested in helping with the service, come see me.” Also looking for folks for De-escalation and looking for livestreamers to livestream the service, and 3 tables. “Oh, and also veggie food from the food folks.”

Questions:

Aaron: “Where are you going to host the service?

Tammy: “Zuccotti.”

Aaron: “Are they going to allow tables in there?”

Probably not, sounds like. This is the 16th of September.

OK, next, Austin reports back from Action. Austin: “I would invite others to help.” Austin will talk about “the poster” and Marisa will do the spokes.

Marisa: “Yeah, so the action breakout — I don’t really want to stand up. Can people hear me?” Tammy: “They made me stand up.” Marisa: “Well, the action breakout had an affinity group spokes — an affinity group is a small group of 5-15 people who trust each other –friends, family, who have political or tactical goals in mind. And we had a spokescouncil on friday that went really well, at Tompkins Square Park, under the Hare Krishna Tree, which is where we planned S17 last year. And it was just a nice vibe; people reported back about actions they’re planning for S17 and we had a lot of support, medics, media, and it felt a lot better.” “If you want to get involved, you don’t’ hav to have an AG already; come, meet people, figure it out that way. And it’s every Friday, 6PM, in Tompkins square Park.”

Ohdette has a reoprtback: “I’ve been doing outreach for Occupy Trinity, building their twitter thing and communicating with them and what’s happening with them on the ground. And I see a few people here who’ve been coming and supporting them, but they’re all very excited about S17, but right now I just want to encourage anyone who is in this room, if you could take time out of your days to come down there to 89 Broadway and connect with them, and help, like, motivate, radicalize, you know, reach out to them. They are there; some of them are activists, some of them are homeless. But they’re a real great cross-section of diverse people, so I’m just encouraging you to please go connect with them and be involved with them.” Some are on their way.

Austin: “OK, so, another thing that we’ve got going in the action group is, Tidal has extended the opportunity to do something in the middle of the magazine talking about tactics. So Sandy has put together a piece that’s kind of a playbook, like plus-brigadey stuff you can do, and we’ve put together something kind of abstract — sort f what the swirl, i.e. hurricane is going to be. But we don’t want to make that decision on our own, so hopefully after the meeting we can talk about it.” Looks beautiful, head to leisure caucus to talk about it with Austin. “The main thing is — it has the problem, all roads lead to wall street, solution, reverse the flow of traffic.” Sounds awesome and funny.”The hope is this will make this potentially confusing thing actually quite clear.” Tactical breakouts happening, planning suggested motion games for the action…

Charles: “I’d like to add a few comments: if anyone here feels that description didn’t answer every question you have bout the direct action that day, I just want to say, that’s OK. This document — no document is going to accomplish that; none of them are designed to. But if this makes you wonder what it might be like in a favorable way, then it will have done its job.” “And even though it’s true that we might be all engaged in one direct action, um, let’s call it a fantasy where we get lots of things we want, which is a good thing, my understanding is that there are two main things that are happening: this hurricane, and something that doesn’t have a name yet but will be much more simple and will meet some of the needs of our allies who don’t want to sit through an explanation of the hurricane but want to sign on to do something that day.”

Hambone will speak to ‘where the conversation is right now.’ “We’re trying to work out the timing of when people go to engage in a blockade of the New York Stock Exchange, and when people engage in Operation Pinwheel? Eh, eh?” Laughs. “And how the sort of complimentary escalation, both ours and that of the law enforcement forces, is going to work out. But it’s starting to look a lot more coordinated than many of us may have thought previously. More on that in the immediate future. Emphasis on ‘moron.” Laughs.

Charles notes that you’ll get more info in your box, on many S17 lists, about these actions. “We’re going to be asking people around the country to sign up for this new list to stay in the loop, and to sign up for direct actions, which may feel counterintuitive. So we just want you to know that we’re not asking anyone to add their names to a list that says, “I’m doing something illegal, security services pay attention to me.” IT’s not that kind of a list.”

Hambone: “And orientation of the NYSE blockade will be an opportunity for a lot of people to gather, and then around 8am or dispersion order, a CD — a sit-in — will happen in 8 intersections around the SE, and there will be a lot of training going on before that, especially as we get a better sense of numbers. But we’re really emphasizing that sit-in blockade as an opportunity for a lot of people to come from out of town and get busted with us.”

Austin: “And I think there’s actually a lot of room for coordinating these two, so if you want to hear more about that or get involved we’ll probably talk about that at the action breakout today.”

Joseph has a question. “If you have an affinity group, how do you plug in, or who do you contact?”

Marisa: “If you have an AG, please come on Friday — every friday from now til the 17th, we’ll be meeting at Tompkins square Park, and/or signup for the S17 action list –a nd there’s now a spokescouncil list in particular. So sign up for one of those. Also, I want to point out that the action framework we consented to in the breakout is now on the S17 website, as well as draft action agreements if you’re curious about how we’ll be acting in the street.”

: “Is anyone in this room working on an action for people who don’t want to be arrested that day? Because so far all I’m hearing is taking over Wall Street.”

Both of the action plans should have space for not being arrested, Hambone and Austin clarify. More talk about this at the action breakout.

Tammy: “People on the phone around the country want to know why we’re being so public about our plans.”

Marisa: “We’ve discussed the possible benefits and downsides — previous actions we’ve been really close with our plans, like May Day ,and as a result a lot of people in the movement didn’t know what’s going on. So we’ve decided to favor openness, transparency, rather than security culture.” Cops already know what’s going on, she says.

Charles notes that the list of who goes to which intersection won’t be figured out until right before it happens — not because its’ secret but because of how it’s being plotted.

oK, next we’ll review the schedule for the whole three days.

Nina: “There’ll be stuff I’m missing; definitely feel free to fill it in, but generally — the 15th will be a town square framework at washington square park from 11 to 7, with the — probably between 12 and 3 being thematic assemblies and focus on education. And then hopefully after that there will be some more focus on DA trainings. But there’ll be tabling, and performances, and lots of open space happening that whole day at WSP.”

Winter: “And we think there’ll be an Occupy Faith service, as well, at dusk. And then there is a dance party being planned at WSP for that night. There may be another event happening Satruday but we’re going to work that out in the convergence breakout today.” This is just what this group is planning.

Nina: “And then Sunday is foley square, and again will be a Town Square framework with a concert from 1-6. And then, Rosh Hashanah after that.”

Winter: “The OTS will be at Tom Paine park, adjacent to foley Square, and then the concert from 1-6.”

Nina: “And then the 17th is… do we have times for the morning actions?” 7 until noon.

Winter: “What time is the bike breakfast?” 6AM! “Whoo.”

Nina: “And then at 12 is — the details are TBD but there will be some kind of green space, trauma recovery, space for folks to gather and be together, maybe do jail support. And that will be…” Not sure yet. “That’s the next agenda item.”

Winter: “And then at 6pm, the last item is the Emma Goldman Popular Assembly at 55 Water Street, which will be a green action for assembly and hopefully nobody getting arrested or trying to reoccupy the space.”

Big gap seen is 12-6 on Monday. Currently planning the chill space, “Where hopefully we can get away from the police a little bit.” Opening stack to talk about where we might want to do that, maybe with a POI of what assembly points for the action will be, and then also anything else going on that day.

STACK IS OPEN!

Audrey: “This is not so much about the trauma space, but I do know that 99 pickets and immigrant worker justice is talking about doing some action in Harlem on the 17th, and I suspect it wouldn’t be in the morning. So I know that’s a lot of actions,b ut there could potentially be an action in Harlem in the afternoon — an opportunity to connect with communities of color.”

: “On the 16th — there’s this book, Beyond Zuccotti Park, and they have “democracy for equity and public space” at NYU — that’ll be on the 16th, “a big thing there.” Just putting that in there.

Marisa: “In your initial question, you asked about assembly points in the morning and after — there’s been a lot of discussion; we haven’t really come to a final decision, but the call is for Liberty — Zuccotti Park — and then we’ll have fallback convergences aside from that. So I’d say probably two convergences aside from Zuccotti.”

Mark: “ONe thing we were talking about before the meeting is from 12-6, OTS is willing to do that that day, but we could just do a picnic at Battery Park and use the space for debriefing, post-trauma, and then also a potluck where you dumpster or whatever and then everybody comes together as a community and just chills out.”

Linnea: “There’s a plan to do a teach-in front of the museum of the american indian — a permitted teach in.” 4-7 on Bowling Green, Monday.

Austin: “So, this is just coming out of, like, really informal side convos that aren’t a part of any formal consensus process whatsoever so please don’t take them as such, but trying to coordinate between the NYSE and pinwheel/swirl thing — we’re looking at a lot of assembly points. Battery Park is likely attractive, but it potentially could not be the safest of spaces — people are likely going to be running through there to get other places, but it’s a good place to stage support. Foley Square feels a mile away, which is good and bad, feels hard to get to, but it’s very far from the action. So we were thinking that might make sense as a destination, when you’re done, wind up there, because it’s absolutely safe. There’s a question of moving from there to Emma Goldman — it’s a question to folks organizing that, i.e. is there an openness to putting them in the same spot — and if not, that’s cool, but we need to think about moving folks between the two spaces. But Foley seemed like a good destination and Battery Park good for support.”

Ethan: RE: dumpstering, sometimes that’s not a safe space, people can get sick, so support is trying to feed 15k each day. “trying to figure out best locations; Monday will have to be more of a mobile delivery, but Saturday, Sunday, places could be centralized. So I’m not trying to discourage dumpstering, but let you know we have some safe food that can be delivered and” help figuring out where to would be great

: “S17 is theoretically constitution day; maybe we could do a reading of the Constoitution at Battery Park or at Foley Square — I think it would be a great idea to get people to know what’s actually int he constitution. Especially, god forbid they get arrested.”

Nina wants to know if we want to think about spaces more now, and then let them be filled in with all these plans.

Leina loves the idea of Battery Park, because it’s grassy, by the water.

Goldie: “ Ithink a visible location for the fallback would be better — so Battery Park, there’s no one down there, no one walking by.” It’s our anniversary, a big day for us, it would be best to be somewhere where “we could do some outreach and decompress at the same time.”

David: “I do know what you mean, but Battery being so isolated, there’s not a lot of attention there maybe the cops would get crazy.” But recalls that we’ll have livestreamers. “But I do like the idea of it being less public;” someone shouted out Union Square but he thinks the hiss that we responded with was because of its public nature.

Sean notes that some folks have suggested closing the actions by turning our backs on Wall Street and moving towards solutions. So wants it to be visible, public. In Zuccotti “it was all those things, that giant supercomputer going on,” and maybe we’d still be there on the 18th.

: “I find Washington Square Park to be a great alternative as well — it’s green, has the fountain, location is accessible, and having meetings the last 6 to 7 weekends there, people get curious – -good for outreach.” Union Square is “over-inundated with people promoting stuff.”

Closing stack, a few more.

Charles: “Like 30% of Americans, my hearing isn’t so great, so I’m going to make a request that people think about the difficulty of hearing and paying attention in open space with a lot of ambient noise,” and possibility of being rained- or sunned-out.

: “As much as I agree with you about WSP, we need places accessible by walking, and it’s not.” Battery, Foley both work. “We should identify other nearby parks — the Vietnam Memorial,” for example. “Also, we’re going to be pretty tired by Monday afternoon. People don’t’ have Metrocard fare, so I think we need to identify sites all within walking distance of Wall Street.”

One more: “In terms of — echoing Charles, if there is a need for indoor space downtown, we also had a good meeting with our neighbor allies last week, so if we want to make a request for BC37 or CWA or 1180, then we should think about that an put that in our request.”

Winter notes this conversation will continue in the convergence breakout, so if you have really strong feelings, go there.

“The next item is hopefully going to be fun: we’re going to talk about the concert at Foley Square on Sunday.”

Yates: “Annabell is going to introduce some of the logistics set up so far, and then I’ll talk about programming.”

annabell: “I’m Annabell, my union 1199 is doing the permits for the concert. We had our first site visit today at Foley; we talked folks through — we’re thinking of doing a stage at the south end, amplification, and then where the trees are we’ll do an Occupy Town Square with tabling and blankets and stuff . Those conversations are going fine; we expect to get permits, although we haven’t gotten them yet. We have a little permit working group of about 5 of us — OTS, Concert affinity group — so yeah, if you have other questions, feel free to hit me up. And yeah, I think just coming out of that meeting we felt really good and excited about the open space that we have in doing an OTS and a concert framework, and there’s lots of space, and Yates and Nina will talk through whatever. And if folks have questions about permits or, like, whatever.”

Ethan: “So you just had your first on-site meeting today? Did they give you a timetable for when you’ll get approval?” Took longer than a month in his experience.

Annabell: “Yeah, I worked on permits for OCtober 15th and N17 and M1.” Things are moving forward in a way that feels good. Whiteshirt she deals with, the union guy, is on vacation, so they probably need to have one more conversation, and they want to know the artists and stuff. “But Parks felt good and didn’t raise any flags, and NYPD either — although they noted that “every time you do permits for Occupy there’s a thousand person unpermitted march afterwards!””

YateS: “RE: programming, there are two tracks: folks in an AG are working on securing a couple of high-profile artists as anchors of rthe concert. And the other challenge is figuring out how to plan a concert in an Occupy manner, when the very concept of a stage is anathema to Occupy.” Notes that the first GA happened by stepping off of a stage. “So it’s a challenge. So the first question is, what’s the strategic intention of the concert? Not just a concert for concert’s sake; the strategic intention of having the higher-profile anchors is to get media visibility, draw newcomers, synergies messaging, but then some folks want to know how to build space around those high profile folks to synergize with and help to amplify ongoing Occupy campaigns.”

“So, how do we really use the stage to question what a stage is? How do we do spectacular pageants, performances, things with a participatory quality” — talked about doing DA / CD trainings, bodily formations — “we’ll have this space; what’s the process through which we’ll figure out what happens there?” Things proposed: maybe having the guitar my involved, the invisible army of defaulters, casserole ballet, and maybe serious DA training.

“Just to kind of throw that out there — but one thing to emphasize, we want to popcorn for a few minutes” some ideas of what to do with the stage so it’s popular, strategic, and fun.

“The other point I wanted to make: in brainstorming, it’s not, oh, I know an artist or musician, it’s collective projects with a participatory quality that can have an ongoing messaging effect fro Occupy projects.” Will continue to talk after in convergence. “We’ve talked about re-enactments — like the storming of the Winter Palace — the Winski pageant… so it really is, like, this open thing. And we want to be really transparent about the process and utilize all the awesome creativity we have in this room and beyond.”

Aaron: “If you guys can think 20-minute increments between set changes — if you can come up with a skit. Somebody had an idea where they’d have corporations marry people. And some other good ideas too, but that’s all I have to say about that.”

Next: “Occupy Music — I don’t know if Goldie is in that group, but Daniel Baez has the people’s stage — he’s done so much creative stuff.” Want to make sure we’re interfacing with them.

Anymore clarifying questions before brainstorm?

marisa: “I love having a cultural space where everyone can come — I love the brainstorming that you just started. But why get a permit? Why? You can do all of those things without having a permit; we did them in Zuccotti; it’s OWS — we occupy space, liberate space. That’s what we’re known for. So why get a permit?”

Leina: “In my opinion, this is an amplified huge gathering. Saturday and Sunday we’re having these low-key things, but” this should be big-name people and then also incorporate Occupy things.

Yates: “Is there a way to maybe combine the brainstorm with this question? Because the whole point is — to clarify, the permit has been put in, and we’ve had consensus that there’ll be this permitted event.” So we can keep discussing the metaquestions, but also brainstorm.

Goldie notes that on May Day, they had a lot of music press, and to have Tom Morello play, they need electricity. “So the question is whether to have these anchor groups or not, and the answer was yes,” but could be discussed.

“And a lot of the acts will draw attention to what’s going to happen on Monday. They’re all very sympathetic to the movement, and they need amplification for their set, even if it’s a short set.”

Winter notes that, process-wise, there was a consensus weeks back to have a permitted concert. The decision of how to do that has been happening in the convergence breakout, not in this group. “So if anyone wants to get involved in the convergence plans or the concert, that happens int he convergence breakout.”

CQ: “What’s casserole ballet?” Yates: “It’s a dream.”

: “I have a feeling I’m going to sound like a really big asshole right now, but — so, just hearing all of this about the concert, I’m of two minds, and this happens sometimes, at least in my experience doing PR work, because… I’m a radical; the things that appeal to me are like marrying corporations or whatever ballet and these fun, neat, way-out-of-the-box things, right, as representative of the kinds of different vision that we are projecting out in the world and what we stand for. And at the same time, I fear that… that we’re not — that we’re speaking to ourselves, and that there’s not a broader “99%” that we’re talking to. Because a lovely young man — I don’t know where he is — came and suggested that we read the constitution, and I heard a lot of and folks recently objected to using the word country on our flyer. And that’s fine, but” just wants to lift up that the folks we’re talking to…

Nina: “I think, again, all of that can get filled into, like the process — “

: “I’m not going to join the AG, to be clear, but I can talk to them.”

Winter clarifies: “The AG is getting the permit and big stars, but the rest of the planning is happening in the breakout and Saturdays, 2PM, at WSP.”

Jackie: “On May Day, I think people felt really good when they were singing. I think we should sign. The NY Labor Chorus can do certain kinds of songs; we probably know other groups who can do other kinds. But I think we should sing.”

Ingrid: “This would maybe be not relevant anymore, but can at least one of the major acts wear Pussy Riot balaclavas?” Laughs, lots of up twinkles. Aaron: “POI: that will be a topic in the breakout group.”

Andy notes that the convergence group has been talking about holding one of those 20-minute periods for local assemblies, to get new members and report back. “So if you’re here from a local assembly, we’d love for you to come to convergence so we can talk about how to use the concert” to support you.

Stan notes that the HuffPo reports that NY may approve fracking. So it would be a good look to do something bout that.

: Occupalooza takes a lot with the city back in the day, but a big obstacle was having a big star. “As soon as you pick anyone with any name recognition, the city freaks out.” Should only list local acts but then tweet bigger names.

Charles: “I’d like to see a puppet show that demonstrates DA tactics,” and a puppet-building workshop.

Yates: “So, one way to put this is, how to do all of the various 99% messaging, all our grievances are interconnected, in a way that’s not political speeches.” Showing not telling. “Andy’s point is well-taken about local assemblies and using the stage as well to highlight often marginalized voices.”

Leina: “I’m just going to popcorn, but I’m working with OSP, and I’d love to do something with the rent strikers; I also love the idea of singers, like Jackie said, O4O housing blockade singers would be great. Spectra stuff, Pussy Riot stuff, and Guitarmy but have them enter from, like, the West Village and then come. That’s interesting. Or local Occupy Boston, or other occupies, whatever.”

Someone notes Right to the City had a 99% vs 1% boxing match. “And Rachel [?] is producing a show about Jack and the Corporate Beanstalk,” which is interactive and incorporates report backs. “And Iw ant to reinforce the point about other voices; one of my favorite parts of May Day was when Take Back the Bronx took the stage and said Fuck the Police in the middle of the permitted rally.”

Tammy: “I’ve been really liking and enjoying the trivia we’ve been doing in the pub crawls, wonder if there’s a way to engage the audience in that. And I love the idea of O4O auction singers, and Michelle Shock has been doing songs about foreclosures all year. And maybe if we can connect the thematic or education assemblies to do something on stage, and I’d love to see people from other parts of the country.”

Next: “Occupy Orchestra kind of stuff,” easy stuff, Ode to Joy. “On N17, one of my favorite things was there was an opera singer just singing and calming everyone down.”

: “I like the idea of — a lot of people were talking about shows or performances, but to undermine the stage — what about pop-up performances that really involve the audience? Like maybe one day you’re chilling and eating, and then all of a sudden a random performance pops off in the corner of your eye and it could even be a way for people to interact.” “I’m a hiphop head and I’d love to see a cypher — something like that, even with guitarmy, it would be really awesome.”

Austin: “This might be a dumb idea — what if everybody took a lap on the stage? So, like, the whole crowd got a chance to stand on the stage. Because with those really big crowd it would look amazing” if we were all cheering for each other.

: “One thing I also thought we could probably do is comedy — Occupy Comedy. Number two, we could probably get a few guest speakers, ike a Michael Eric Dyson or Melissa Harris Perry to talk about some of the crises we’re facing — foreclosure, stop and frisk, things that really affect communities at the municipal level and communities at the national level and we should be talking about hem. And if you can do it in a way that invokes humor, all the btter.”

Hambone: “So, I think the concert really needs a flyer — the best place I can think of to promote it is street parties we’re having Fridays (disguised as outreach); last week we took over all of 9th Ave, blasted Thriller, and did the zombie dance.” Flyer the big party in that environment! Hambone also wants to know if there’s a space yet to build banners and props.

: “One thing I’d like to see is something oriented towards labor. Now, I know everybody’s going to be focusing on the 99%, the 1%, and so on, but something specifically labor I think would be very good. And maybe we can reach out to a labor council and they may have some rock band… there’s a chorus, and it may not be the hippest thing, but people appreciate them.” “Also, saw Tom Morello in May — and he’s, like, labor 110%. So I would suggest him as a possibility.”

Rebecca: “I don’t know if the affinity group considered doing what we talked about doing for N17 that didn’t happen, which is a lot of little stages, which is obviously logistically very complicated, but rather than one big stage, a circle of smaller stages. Bill, stop shaking your head.” Laugh. “A circle of smaller stages and then maybe some kind of our grievances are interconnected thing between, like a may pole.” “I’ve seen that happen, and I’ve also seen audiences” democratically participate in what will go on next. “It really creates a less passive dynamic; it’s complicated, but it has been done without much difficulty by somebody.”

Stan: “just to bounce off of what this good man said, I think if we have 4 artists and 4 20-minute breaks, one of them can be around labor — if we’re making asks of them for this weekend, we may want to give them part of this concert, at least 20 minutes, and then the other 3 be entirely occupy-related.”

next: “Next, education about transit issues — we have to stand up, speak up, and fight for it. Bceause another hike is going to happen by next year.” Occupy NYC Transit. “Let’s talk to the community and figure out how we fight back against the next fare height from the MTA board, that plays around with the 1% while we, the 99%, have to get to and from work.” “We just started this last month; bring back the 38 bus and 2 train lines totally cut off. So, this is a real fight – we’ll never lose, still continue on, here in the city or at the 2 MTA headquarters, to make sure the 1% pay their fair share. So that’s a real community action that we’d like to see, as a neighborhood, as a community, as to the riding public.”

Next: “Good evening Occupy New York! I’m from Occupy LA.” Wooo. “How are you tonight? I started in the movement October 15th and never stopped since then,” has travelled a lot of places. “the reason why I did that was because media isn’t going to report on us there. but fortunately, with the invention of the Internet and YouTube, I’m covering in Spanish” all over the world. “LA is not only known for hollywood; there’s a lot of oil over there and in the South, and I protested over there in Houston too, because the price of the oil has been going up and up and up and I don’t like it. So I did — there is a place in LA called Long Beach — there is plenty of oil there. We went there in the early morning, like 5am,” and blocked the port. “It was raining and it didn’t matter; we blocked the port anyway.” Applause. “And I protested too in Houston, for the benefit of society, because the 1%ers have been taking advantage of people. The point I want to tell you tonight is we have to keep on going — we fight for freedom from economic slavery. I have a special sign; I made it myself. What I want to tell you guys is this — the OccupyLA parade has a… the Rose Parade in Pasadena, California.” Nina points of processes her, but she continues. “The way they play is the message of coronation, lots of drumming — to condemn the 1%. And we were screaming and shouting against the 1%ers, and that was my point because we tried to organize the parade. We didn’t have any trouble, they felt guilty when we played.”

OK. Winter: “If you want to continue this conversation, the best place would be Saturday.” It’s normally at WSP, but this time it will be 2pmish during the Occupy Town Square in Sunset Park, which is 12-6.

OK, time for breakouts. Coming back in an hour.

It’s been an hour! HUP HUP HUP HUP HUP HUP HUP HUP — plus brigades techniques bringing everyone back together.

Winter: “Let’s get report backs started! First, Jackie has a quick announcement before she has to go.”

Jackie: “There’s going to be a militant direct action against Verizon at 7:00 Wednesday morning. We could use a few more people. Talk to me right away, or get my information and get in touch.”

Jackrabbit will “start by telling us what you can use in your report backs to tell Interocc what to do.”

Jackrabbit: “Interocc has been having planning calls for S17; we’d like everyone, if you can, to give us an agenda item for the call tomorrow, and that at least one person from each subgroup tries to be on the call tomorrow. So if you would, please give me your name and email so I can let the facilitator for the call tomorrow know who you are and call and talk about it. And when you give your report back, please give an agenda item for tomorrow’s call.”

Support!

Ingrid: “We really need help. We need, like, a lot of help right now, in a lot of different areas. Medics: we really need medics. at the moment, we have about 6 medics that we know will maybe be here for the weekend of the 17th. There is an effort to coordinate an actual media training before the 17th, so if you’ve always wanted to become a medic, now’s your chance.” So put them in touch with folks who they don’t know about, and Interocc can ask other people to bring medics with them. Support@s17nyc.org.

Next thing: “Housing, we’re kind of on (inaudible) with that; we probably shouldn’t have been putting our faith in churches — we’ve gotten a few soft nos, and some folks are out of town and in bad communication, so we’re going to need to start pushing independent housing options — sleepful protest, classifieds, all the things on the Internet that already exist for doing things like this. We have some leads on storing food and cooking but we always need more help for storage and prep. We have a couple of people we can dedicate to inter-city transit for food, and we can always do more, because right now it’s like A van or A truck.”

: “Two things we talked about doing: renting maybe a couple of storage units” — “doing the 30-day trial. It’s kind of scammy but will be helpful.” “That would be good also not just for storing support stuff, but the other thing is on housing, in Brooklyn, I have a backyard that can fit a tent.” “If you know someone has that has a backyard, anything — these are ways we can do personal outreach for housing.”

Ingrid: “This is us begging you for help. That’s the full summary of this report back: we need help, lots of help, and we need folks to be generous in accordance with the principles of solidarity.” Support@s17nyc.org

OK, next: Outreach.

Justin: “We had a meeting to talk about in reach, within existing OWS networks, as well as outreach — street outreach, online outreach. We spent most of the time talking about in reach, how to re-engage people who were active in the past with OWS and have receded, how to engage existing networks that were more active than that. We now have a registration form active online at s17nyc.org/registration. It has some basic informational questions that will help people get paired up, hopefully, with housing and transportation if they need it. Other inreach tactics discussed were reaching out to allies, trying to re-spark organizing that has happened in parts with groups who’ve become more dormant, bringing them back to life — signs of that happening already. And then there’ll be lots of flyering; we have a cel.ly loop if you’re interesed — we’ll try to organize flyering, like, get-out-and-canvass type stuff in the different boroughs and with neighborhood assemblies. Union Square is a big hub for outreach and stuff; flyers are always available there. We talked a lot about different issues that are driving people to engage right now with Occupy and how there’s a broad diversity of issues, and really tapping into that issue-specific and campaign-specific organizing, and some of us want to add to the registration form something where people can indicate existing campaigns that people can plug into for after S17, so there’s continuity and folks who come and engage for these 3 days don’t feel like afterwards it’s over and you just go home.”

Ingrid’s POI: “There’s going to be another issue of the project list for S17, so as a way to provide information about ongoing campaigns that can be distributed during the weekend. We have a great infrastructure for getting that info and printing it.”

Stan: “And if you guys need anything printed — got some flyers over there; if there’s other types of things you want — isn’t there an S17 email address for that?”

Justin: “There’s services@s17nyc.org, which is a general help line for organizing.” OR get stan’s email from him.

: “Occupy NYC Transit — we started with a no-fares campaign last month, and now we’re going to educate the public before and after S17 to oppose any new fare hikes.” Also want to Occupy the Elections and put the 99% in office. “So these are the two factors that we discussed about it.”

Outreach’s agenda item for the Interocc call is… TBD.

Austin: “What’s the cel.ly loop?”

Justin: “Good question.” Looks for the cel.ly loop admin. “You’re going to set up the cel.ly loop?”

Ivanka: “Yeah, my name’s Ivanka, and I’ll be setting up the cel.ly loop.” Not sure what it’s going to be called yet, find her to get on the list.

Next, action: “Our discussion centered around chronological interaction between eye of the hurricane and the storm itself.” Will be discussed more Friday at 6pm at Tompkins Square Park. “So, how do the two different tactics interrelate in a way that creates a productive symmetry?” Also talk about a Spectra pipeline action on the 16th. “Calls that we need: again, Tompkins Square Park, and people from Occupy Trinity, that we can come back and support them.” Topic for Interocc: “How other cities can connect.” Marisa clarifies that there’s an online signup being built. “We also talked about having a conference call and/or Skyping spokescouncil meetings so that other people can join in.”

Convergence: “We continued our brainstorming discussion about how to integrate Occupy concerts into the stage — water balloons, masks, props, puppets, plus brigades training, hula hoops, a mass exorcism, possibly a guitar my march from the Spectra blast zone onto the stage.” Also collective artwork. “We talked about — for the afternoon stuff, there was the point about the action at the Museum of the American Indian, as well as really emphasizing the mutual aid component of that post-mroning space at Bowling Green. And then the Emma Goldman Memorial ASsembly, 6pm, Water Street — there was some discussion about the name of the assembly, but there is agreement, I think, that it was autonomously called for, and people are free to do other things but that’s going forward as is.”

“And two other things: There is the prospect of the citizens united versus Citizens United project, which may involve people getting married to corporations,” trying to find slot for that. “And then a money-out-of-politics assembly in the morning prior to the concert.”

: “Stan mentioned having open space Monday, 12-6, and — what we want to see in Wall Street wasn’t there.” So free food, free medical screenings, giving out flyers — ‘this is the world we envision, what world do you envision?’ And then having a website for people to chime in, and bring things to their communities.

“And also there was some question about whether Emma Goldman is too specific,” re: anarchism. Also different projects being part of it: Sunset Park rent strikers, Immigrant worker justice. “And it’s very green.”

Interocc agenda item for convergence?

Winter: “Cool! So, we are having one more hand up.”

Kara: “Look at all these flyers! Before we leave, you should grab a flyer.”

OK, last thing, some announcements for folks who were deferred to later.

“I’m going to the general meeting of the Park Slope Food co-op to make an ask; let me know if there’s anything you want to add to it.”

Global rev is training streamers.

Stan: “If you have breakout groups, please email me notes so next week we’ll know what happened last week.”

Aaron: “If anyone is interested in going to the RNC and DNC see me or Jason afterwards. I think it’s a really good opportunity to get some people down there and do outreach about S17.”

Austin: “Tomorrow at 4, we’re shooting videos of things you might do in an intersection to help give people ideas! So we’ll be planning that over the $1 beers at that place with the $1 beers. Everybody will go there, so just come along.”

Matt: “Last Friday, I was on the pub-crawl and live streamed it — you can see it on the stream. It’s easy, it’s a lot of fun, it’s more than just one time a week.”

: “Boston is also going to organize around rent strike; they want to work with us on that. Also, we’ve been offered a gallery space in Bushwick, and after S17 we could have Occupy University discuss everything we’re doing and where we’re going forward.”

There’s a meeting September 20th about co-ops.

: “I just want to make an announcement about Occupy Trinity: we’ve been there for about 70 days now, and we still need support. We’ve been getting harassed by the NYPD — we need physical support, livestreamers, medical supplies, and we need people to come down for moral support — people feel” a lack of it. “I don’t want to put everyone down but I’m just saying that we do need support down there.”

Sumumba: “We are supporting Occupy Trinity as well as Occupy Union Square; they’re very important, OUS needs volunteers to come at 10:00” to do outreach. Occupy Trinity too. “There’s two other marches coming up: S3, labor-related, look forward to that as well as S10 which is another march by labor in commemoration of Labor Day, and on S17 we’ll have teachins setting up and an assembly at the end of the night.”

Nick: “We need more livestreamers, especially before S17.” See Matt or Jay.

This Saturday, 1pm, at Church of Revelation, the south bronx community congress is having a meeting about the RNC and DNC and the election.

Leina: “This Saturday, 12-6, Sunset Park, occupy town square.” Action going to rent strike.

Marisa: “As was said before, every Friday, 6pm, Tompkins Square Park, AG Spokescouncil — an affinity group is 5-15 people roughly who know and trust each other and have political and tactical goals.” And an affinity group training at 5pm!

Stop police brutality rally for Ramarley Graham, 5pm, 7229 229th Street in the Bronx, Thursday.

Strike Debt will be doing a debt burning S1 in Central Park, Sheepsmeadow.

THE MEETING IS STARTINg

Marisa: “I’m Marisa, and I volunteered to facilitate this meeting last week. There was a proposed agenda sent to the discussion list; it’s on the table if you need a copy. And I’d like to facilitate with Ronnie here.

Ronnie: “I’m Ronnie; I’m stuffing my face with a burrito, but don’t worry; I can facilitate.”

Marisa: “And Dicey has volunteered to take minutes.”

Marisa asks if anyone wants to serve as a vibes watcher. “They keep track of how ppl are feeling in the room; if people are cutting each other off and there’s tension, be aware; if no one’s talking, be aware of that; if it seems like people are tired and need a break, be aware of that, and just communicate it to the group.”

OK, someone steps up.

Marisa: “Here’s the proposed agenda:

1. Meeting agreements
2. Reportbacks from the different groups — at the front there’s a re-cap printout of the groups. 2 minutes each for those, 10 total.
3. Action framework discussion – -we had a lot of progress with the action breakout this week; some people have volunteered to do a report back about that. It’s not to reach consensus in this group, it’s just to communicate what people are planning.
4. Another 10 minutes for actions not being planned in the breakout; if there are other actions happening, it’d be good to know about them.
5. Messaging — it would be good to have an overview of messaging and PR, if folks have questions. Might take 10 minutes; hope not.
6. Outreach — Tammy really wanted to do an agenda item b/c people aren’t coming to the breakout
7. Breakouts for group
8. Reportbacks from breakout and next steps.”

“We haven’t been doing a lot of next steps, but sometimes things don’t get done — Tammy suggested we have more time for that so we can hone in on what really needs to get done.”

“It’s a hefty agenda, but I think we can get through it. Do people feel OK about it or have any suggestions?”

Marisa: “Before we really get into it — i’ve been thinking about it a lot. I’ve beem involved since last August, so a year ago today, from where we are — mind boggling for me. And I was remembering how we all came together in the first place. And we came together in this assembly, of sorts, and we consented to this description. It’s brief.

The NYC GAs are an…..

So, you know, we were pretty badass. It was fun. So, I just wanted to keep this in mind as we move forward in this process we’re now engaged in. Cool.

MEETING AGREEMENTS

In previous meetings, we talked about how to create these spaces — how we’ll create this container for us to talk and communicate. We decided to use Step up, Step back; if you don’t speak a lot, and you’re really quiet and don’t’ feel supported, know you’re supported in this space and please step up. WAIT — why am I talking? I statements — don’t’ use any… don’t assume anything of other people; just speak from your own experience. And respect time — we tend to start late in these meetings; hopefully we’ll get better at that because we don’t have a lot of time, we’re all busy people, and we hope more people will engage.

Ronnie will recap what the groups are and “just a small recap of what’s been going on.”

Ronnie: “Services group is maintenance of communications, tech resources, volunteer resources; support is for housing…. ”

REPORTBACKS

Services!

Ravi: “Our big report back is — a request — we’re working on a lot of infrastructure stuff to help get both messaging out there but also to collect updates of what people are doing and stories of how we’re planning our processes. One thing we’d love is more of those stories — about specific actions like OTS, kitchen group, outreach — little blogs, stories, small things that tell people about how the process is going, feed into the hub. Great things are coming from Occupied Stories, but we need more. And please send info about calendars, events you’ve heard of, even if rumors, so that they can go on the comprehensive calendar, please send to services@s17nyc.org.”

Support: “I’m Ethan; I’ve worked with Kitchen since Oct; assisting with the support of planning this 3-day event we plan to feed 6,000 people over that period. We’re asking for support from ppl with food handling experience, certifications, monetary donations. I’m reaching out to different groups; we do have some kitchens lined up; we could use more and more bodies.”

Drew: “If you can outline the volunteer needs you have, and send them to services@s17nyc.org, we can promote them and help you get what you need.”

Aaron: “And a status update — we have a tentative offer of support on buses from Nurses Union and we’re looking at firming that up and seeing what the actual parameters are. And we’ve gone a bit of the way through the housing databasing and are getting a lot of soft rejections — we’re working a little bit on firming that up; I’ve been having positive conversations along those lines. But, like, Catholic churches; we apparently didn’t house anyone there in the fall and winter, so now we can go to them.” Laughter. “And burn those new relationships.”

Linnea: “At the action meeting last week, we didn’t reach consensus, so we discussed it more at a 4-hour meeting Friday and did reach consensus on something we’ll be presenting later.”

Convergence: Natasha will do convergence part. “We met Saturday to talk about how the weekend looks; I think the concert is going to be at 1-5 on Sunday instead of 4-8, so we still need to figure out how we plan that time. But Saturday will be a day for grievances; bring them to Washington Square Park where OTS will be, in a creative way — so 2 hours is creative education, performances, anything, and the next 2 hours is a huge assembly that can break out into several different groups — debt, environment, repression — anything, they can contact us to schedule that. And the second one will be really open, massive convergence, talk about year 2 for occupy. And we’re looking for people who will be doing DA trainings to coordinate with us,” want whoever is bottom-lining that to get in touch.

Someone asks if Town Square will be happening sat and Sun. Yes, Natasha says. 12-7.

Outreach: “This is in two, maybe three pieces. As far as outreach to allies, unions, CBOs and etc in NY, there has been a meeting time created to present this group’s framework to these institutions — Thursday, August 16th, 4:30-6:30PM at UFT, 50 braodway, second floor, room E. And if you would like to get more involved in that process, agenda is still in proposal format, and we will be speaking about that in the outreach breakout.” Interested, go there.

Hambone adds, “there’s a status narrative comment coming back from our allies, community both organized and unorganized — we’re not hearing echoes of our call to action. People don’t really know about this or know incredibly little. So that little ‘we are all outreach’ thing sort of comes to mind. we’re organizing each other; there’s a lot less than there used to be; let’s organize other people.”

Tammy: “The way I see it, there’s 3 kinds of outreach — outreach to institutions and orbs, which we just heard about; outreach to ppl around the country who ID with occupy, and there’s street outreach. We need bottom liners for all three pieces; I’m working on regional and national outreach to Occupy folks. We’re getting people on the calls; there’s a lot of needs. We need info and materials for solidarity actions, and we need to get our shit together for this registration process and volunteer signup and housing and all that. Lots of things in the wiki, but we don’t know who’s responding to that, lots of confusion about that.”

Marisa: “OK, we’re done with report backs, but –

Joseph: “Informational, so ppl can plug in — I was at a meeting on Friday — there’s a group under Occupy Evolve, and they’re planning for outreach appealing to Labor, appealing to CBOs, appealing to faith-based, all of the above. So on September the 3rd, basically, there’ll be a march from City Hall to Brooklyn Bridge — labor Day — will do outreach at the West Indian Day parade. So you’ll hear more about this, and a few of us going to be in outreach. This is my first meeting, and basically the time frame is meeting at BB 10am; rallying and marching at 11; and then it’s all about having a good time also and doing outreach for September 17th.” Meeting at Manhattan side, march over BB to Cadman Plaza North, take train to Brooklyn Museum and mix in with WID parade — millions of ppl there, and do outreach and party at the same time.

Marisa: “OK, so we can do more announcements later, but right now I want to move on with the agenda. So we had the action breakout framework…”

ACTION BREAKOUT FRAMEWORK

Shay: “Hi! I’m Shay; I’ve been with the s17 planning group, and over the last several weeks we’ve been planning actions to disrupt wall street.” There’s been a fork in the group between NYSE-focused people and a network of intersections, and also there are other plans. “What follows is a proposal to create space for mutually-reinforcing approaches.” Many people have put weeks into this, so if you have concerns, “please keep in mind that thought and effort has gone into this.”

Linnea: “On the morning of S17 — first, we’ll have assembly spaces; public parks on the periphery of the district will function as green — safe, less arrest able — spaces, shared by all action participants. Number two, w/in general boundaries of this periphery, we will be doing the following things in specific spaces.

First, some groups will amass at intersections immediately surrounding NYSE and seek to hold space.
Second, some groups will distribute themselves in mobile units around fiDi and try to circulate between as many intersections as possible.
Third, other groups may carry out autonomous or mass actions that will be other items on this list.

RE: comms structures we’ll have shared communications structures including an action coordination meeting, Mondays, an affinity group spokescouncil, Friday nights, and a signup website and tactical comms loops that together will help participants to make informed decisions about which action space best meets their needs, to create and recruit for other spaces, and all the groups in the framework will agree by the s17 action agreement.

That’s an important agreement which we haven’t yet made.

Shay is going to go over a few other clarifying points about the meetings and agreements.

Shay: “The action coordination meeting will be a non-decision-making body that meets weekly during the S17 planning meetings.” Open space for all people. “Affinity group spokescouncil will be participatory, autonomous, decision-making body of affinity groups, which we understand to mean groups of 5-15 people who share affinity around politics or tactics.” Can be from themes, campaigns, tactics, etc. “Spokescouncil will operate by consensus and is the only body empowered to make amendments to this framework.”

Agreements will be discussed at tonight’s action breakout (Action Coordination Meeting) and brought for consensus at Friday’s AG spokes.

Marisa notes we’re not seeking consensus here, but if people have questions or need clarification, we’re opening stack.

Linnea: “We’ll also have more time to discuss at Action Coordination Meeting breakout.”

Hambone: “I heard someone say that Shay was going to be talking about action agreements, but then I didn’t hear any. Did I miss something?”

Linnea: “The agreements are going to the breakout and we’ll talk about them there.”

?: “Is there a provision or space for mass rallies — you know, the traditional kinds of protest or march, etc? I know particularly unions will be interested in that especially.”

Linnea: “That is not excluded from this.”

Andy: “Not excluded, but there’s been no permit application or push to apply for one, so that puts a little more context on your question, I think.”

?: “Is there a backup plan for the high likelihood that the police will have blocked off the FiDi? If they know about this, why wouldn’t they?”

Aaron: “Declare victory?”

Linnea: “The details will be workshopped in the action meetings and breakout groups to plan not only the details of the day but contingencies.”

Tammy wants to know what is going o happen in the green spaces. Linnea: “We’ve agreed on this framework finally and are looking forward to getting work done so we can answer those questions.”

No more questions on this, so…

Marisa asks other folks planning actions to speak up.

?: “We want to work on doing an Occupy food and harvest festival; hopefully there’ll be farms with a lot of produce to come down; we’re hoping to do a people’s farm stand so there’ll be a sliding scale so people can get it.” Food, info booths, we want to work with Brooklyn food coalition; different groups, Occupy Sunset Park, to do a local food action and concert, music as well.

Natasha: “I just want to say that Strike Debt will do something on the day, just haven’t consensed upon yet.”

?: “Immigrant worker justice WG is talking about doing an action on prison divestment, but probably not in FiDi and maybe in Harlem or Bronx to bring communities of color into it.”

?: “Occupy Faith is very excited to support what’s happening on S17, and the weekend — just conveying a message from that group; about 25 faith leaders have been meeting in NYC alone — they want to highlight the moral dimensions of the financial crisis and budgets that fail the 99%, and they want to focus on causation: who stole the american dream? Not just to blame banks again, but to ask where it came from, and challenge narrative of blame so that people don’t feel ashamed” and look forward. Maybe a “vigil or march on S16” and want to plug into what others are doing. Meeting on next Tuesday Judson church — visioning for weekend of S17.

Sumumba: “OccuEvolve has an action on that day — red monday; we want to globally divest from the banks and make sure they go into the red. We’re meeting Friday at Union square to support OUS and OTC,” more details to come.

Tess: “In the meeting Friday where we finally consensed on the action framework, I think we decided that people would present the specifics of the NYSE plan and the intersection plan — so I don’t know where we are on time, but there could be space for that and that could clarify some things.”

Aaron: “So, the people’s picket is going to happen at 7:00 and go until 10:00 AM. Basically, we are asking the banksters not to show up to work on Monday, and if they do, they’ve got to face this picket line circling wall Street. At 10:00, it will turn into something else.”

Sean: “So, the people’s picket will be sequestering the space, and if you want to go to work, fine, but shame on you. At 9:30 after opening bell we’re going to potentially have a call for justice brought to the NYSE — need a couple hundred people, but looking at potentially having a mass CD to citizens’ arrest the stock exchange and not go until they all do that.” They’ll probably arrest us instead, but that’s the message.

Andy: “If the PP turns out a block of supporters, it should be evident that they will probably work out a tactical framework of their own. It might be premature to present our own tactical framework.”

Austin: “The things already delineated in the framework are the central holding of space, and between the green assembly zones and the center we’re working on a plan of distributed circulation to hold as much space as we can. The mechanics are autonomous motion, and the backbone is autonomous groups holding intersections as long as they can and then moving to other intersections — a big swirl around the stock exchange. There are a lot of other pieces being crafted, please come help do that, but the emphasis is spaces for self-organization. The main part is the affinity group spokes and then a website, which is aiming to help people self-organize into clusters — eco block, strike debt, etc — or we’re a bunch of Moms from LI and we’re into carrying squirrels that day.”

‘On the day, you come to assembly space to assemble clusters and create new ones; also a space for individuals showing up who might not know what’s going on” to be helped to form groups and get oriented. They’ll have maps, “basic tactics,” ideas for things to do, “and some sort of motion game that is suggested to you that might tcreate a symphony of chaos — such as take the intersection, if you have to move go down two, over one, down two, over one — when you hit the edge of the space, reverse.” Also ideas for slice-carving, etc. “There’s about 30 important intersections. The main point is that people be free to express themselves in ways they feel good about in small groups they trust.” And “if there’s a cluster of AGs they might take a chunk and figure out how they feel good about moving within it.”

“What’s an AG?”

“An AG is an affinity group, which is a group of roughly 5-15 folks who share affinity about the politics and tactics, etc.”

Marisa: “So, that was group 2, the distributed, affinity-group based action based in the periphery of wall street.” Anyone want to talk about the “center holding-space group”, group 1?

Hambone: “I don’t think that enjoyed a lot of attention at the friday meeting, so it’s still a pretty general” civilianing plan; probably red, “an opportunity for anyone involved to be involved in a direct confrontation with the financial industry.”

Linnea: “There’s one other action happening that day – it’s something focusing on the climate and the environment, and how the climate crisis is, at its route, an economic crisis caused by Wall Street.”

Aaron: “I’m not one of the people coordinating, but there’s going to be a bike swarm, starting with breakfast at 6am at hester and canal.”

Someone shouts out the Guitarmy, none of them are here right now tho. “There’s the prospect of the guitarmy, more on the weekend, doing something…” Apparently they’re trying to get Mitt and Barack masks so they can be really chummy “and make the point that we’re not the liberal wing of the Democratic party.”

Someone is also working on a Free Pussy Riot demo!

Also, the Emma Goldman Popular Assembly in the evening.

Marisa: “OK, moving on to messaging.”

“We have a call to action; both teams — there’s a typo in it, but I corrected every version.” Hahah. “And the typo has been corrected other places, anyway.”

OK: “I’m going to try to sound epic, and not salty.”

“Last September 17th, as part of a wave of global protest, people from across the country raced to the heart of the FiDi to Occupy Wall Street.” [get text from her]

“We are — wait for it — the 99%.” LULZ.

Lots of messaging goodies! And that does it for the messaging cluster.

Natasha: “I just wanted to point out — I know messaging has been closed, but I wanted to point out a few things. I just don’t know if I like that “join us in our fight for our country” — in terms of nation states; I don’t know — I didn’t join OWS for that. I’d request that that could be changed, to fight for our rights or our commons or our world, or whatever. And second of all I saw the poster online, and I realize it’s a blue color, and we were at a conference and someone pointed out that it looks like the UN symbol because of its color — blue, white, the globe. So I want to make sure that we’re not — if Occupy Part 2 — if it’s our next ballerina-on-the-bull, I just want to point out it looks like a UN symbol.”

Andy: “Good catch, Natasha.”

Drew from Tech points out there is a space on the website for posters, flyers, etc, to be dragged and dropped onto the website. Rachel made one for “all roads lead to Wall Street.”

Next: “I’m rather concerned that the independence of OWS from the main political parties be strong. I know that the unions, as compromised as they are, are using OWS as a vehicle to promote the Obama wing of the ruling class.” We should “not be co-opted by the Democratic Party and make that very, very clear. Believe me, Obama is up to his eyeballs in corporate money as is Mitt Romney. There’s no difference.”

Before an argument can erupt, we all laugh it off and Marisa: “We’ve always been independent; we’re about direct democracy, and not electoral politics.”

Next from ARF: They’re working on the budget and ask the messaging cluster to add something on the site about, if they can’t come out to the streets, donate!

Ravi: “We don’t’ — there’s a saying, ‘property is theft’, so it’s ours — and we can do with it as we will, and if someone wants to add a click when they send it to people, they can.” They used the call for the newsletter, and other stuff.

Joseph wants to talk about unions. “By and large,w e expect to collaborate with the unions, but what is this group expecting from the unions?”

Marisa: next, Outreach.

Actually, someone suggests we might just reach consensus on replacing country with world in the call… really, really positive temp-check. Marisa doesn’t want to go through a whole proposal process, but “that could help people determine” what to do.

Next: “I wonder if we’re clear on what the body’s desires are in terms of stating our independence. And we can come from all kinds of political backgrounds and convictions, but I would like it to be plainly stated that we are independent of either political party, and I wonder if we have consensus on that before closing the topic.”

Marisa: “OK, well, with statements like this, we’ve been going into breakouts and working out the details. We haven’t been proposing things to this body… it wasn’t intended — AFAIK, the call to action was brought for people to know about and review and there were calls for others to go out, and there is going to be more discussion in the breakout around outreach. I liked the temp check because that at least allows people to get a sense of where the room is when they’re drafting the call, and we could do that but probably not go through another temp check on the question of whether we’re independent of political parties.”

?: “Are we going to throw in a sentence saying we’re independent? That’s never been a problem in Occupy, othe than being subject to endless existential dispute” from others. That gets a laugh. “The statement of autonomy covers that.”

Marisa wants to encourage other feedback for messaging to go to Outreach, but the outreach group puts up points of processes in dispute. “Let’s move onto outreach; Tammy wanted to talk.”

Tammy: “I did… but now I don’t want to as much, so I’ll keep it short.” 3 kinds of outreach: institutional/organizational outreach in NY and national, and street outreach in NYC, and outreach to other occupiers. “No one is coming to this breakout during these meetings, so I thought maybe we could do something here..” Some discussion. “MAybe I’ll just ask questions.”

?: “Who in this room is thinking about doing street outreach in New York?” 6 arms or so. “Great — thinking about doing it, not just thinking about it.”

Someone says that “the LAbor Outreach Committee decided at its last meeting that we’d devote ourselves to doing outreach to labor, and in conjunction with those people, and there’s a number of us here for that and we’ll come to outreach.”

Someone has a question about “What’s the role of street outreach? Trying to get people to the outreach, or… because handing out flyers doesn’t actually produce anything” without details available.

Hambone: “The only organized street outreach so far” is “Awesome for us” and it’s the friday night pub crawl — “we’ve been throwing the dopest street parties; I had no idea it would be so much fun.” Come! “As far as organizational outreach, we’re getting a deafening response.” Him and Andy are organizing a Thursday meeting, but its’ hectic, so we need to start reaching out to other orgs, he says.

Shane: “Coming out of the May Day planning, it was kind of wild and wooly coming up with outreach, and one of the things” they picked up from others with experience was “there’s kind of a methodology, right — a rollout of videos… we’re thinking it in terms of outreach, but I think there’s benefit in thinking of it more as a promotional campaing. There’s this wave of videos that come out, and then ramping up leaflets and targetig people where they exist — because May Day, we were three-weeks-out and no flyers; all I heard was ‘everyone is outreach’ and then autonomy became more of no one was taking it on.” Then last minute rush.

Audrey: “RE: institutional outreach, to make it more concrete, if you have contacts with individuals in organizations or unions , can you come to the Thursday meeting with that information?” People need to follow through, email people to get ahold of them, etc., not mass mailing. “We realy need to step up the individual outreach for Thursday.”

Andy: “There has been a call setup Thursday at 7pm for people who can’t make it to this meeting and live in NYC, local assemblies that would like to do outreach, and campaigns that would like to do outreach.” Please get emails, invite folks into the conference call, and “hopefully we’ll expand out outreach capaibilities into the boroughs.”

Austin is glad folks are reaching to assemblies, “but we’ve got structures we’ve built on our own” and maybe those are most aligned with what we’re doing. He’s at the crown heights assembly, but that stuff tends to be more locally-focused. “Doesn’t mean we can’t get people to Wall Street,” but there may be a disconnect.

Yates: “I just want to second Hambone’s weight for the Friday Pub Crawl — it’s awesome. It’s kind of a direct action.” Everyone should coming! Next, “15,000 copies of Tidal will soon be washing across the city.” Fundraising should help with flyers, that was to blame for May Day.

Marisa: “OK! We’re done with this; we’re going to break out.”

Breaking Out

Coming Back!

Convergence: “There’s been a semi-finalizing — looks like the concert will happen Sunday from 1-5, 1-6, at Foley square — not totally clear what’ll happen there, but there’ll be a stage at Foley with a permit. That’s made us reconsider the weekend, so we have a whole new schedule laid out, which is still kind of temporary — we want to bring it to the Saturday meeting of the Education assembly which will now be our S17 meetin.

Saturday, OTS at WSP, 12-7. A few hours of education, assemblies or discussions, a few hours of DA trainings, maybe some other things as well.

After, we all like the idea of a party at WSP. We had someone from Occupy Faith, and we’re thinking about doing things with a vigil or a really cool service or something.

Sunday, we want to move some of the performancey stuff to… OTS will be 12-7, concert again will be — not decided what that will look like, but we really want to play around and include all the things Occupy has been doing, and make it really horizontal and cool and fun. There amy be a Rosh Hashanah service; that’s the only thing happening Sunday night that we know of.

Monday 12-6, there’s nothing really happening, and we agreed that we need some kind of recovery camp after the action. We like the idea of, at 12, turning our backs on Wall Street, going somewhere with Medics, not deciding in advance where to go but to see — we talked about Foley square for jail support to be close, Battery Park, but it’s not clear at this point. Mark’s not here, so we didn’t get anyone to weigh in on the aseembly, but it’s clear that it’ll be a green space — kind of spontaneous; we don’t want any risk of arrest there. So we talked about how these two spaces worked together and whether there’d be a march, if that’s a bad idea bringing police to the assembly, if we want to stay in Foley the rest of the time — we want to talk to Mark and get input from the rest of the group.

Natasha: “RE: interocc, if any other occupies want to be part of education or the convergence, the people’s assembly… if anybody wants to be a part of the conversation…”

Tammy: “How do they do that?”

Natasha isn’t sure yet. They’ll be talking abou that soon.

“The meeting will be … WSP near the Garibaldi statue.”

Yates: “We still, for the weekend, do not have the DA training space squared away.” Still need to figure that out.

Action! Nicole: “We started out our conversation tlaking about the shutdown action, or confrontation at Wall Street, on the 8 intersections near Wall St, like N17. Talking about whether it’s possible, what it looks like, how it’s going — but because it’s like intersections, like the other action, it might just be different people doing actions or things at intersections. There’s overlap there, and it made sense to think of them kind of in the same house.

And then after that, we talked about affinity group spokes, and so, we had this affinity group spokes taht meets on Fridays, but we talked about what are the structures we need to make this day of action happen. We need some kind of wider action coordinating, clearinghouse, meeting where people can come as individuals or reps or AGs as anything and then kind of find out what they were doing at intersections and what part they wanted to take. And then we went into a discussion about… there was a lot of discussing.” Laughter. “And then we talked about the Eco thing and what that’ll look like and what that even means — maybe that’ll be an affinity group or a cluster in the wider construction of these intersectional happenings. I think it will get rolled in and figure out what it wants to be at some meeting that wants to be an action coordination body for that morning. Am I missing anything?”

Marisa: “Just that for the time being we said that this meeting will be the action coordination meeting, until there is a separate action coordination space. So if people want t come and figure out what they want to do on the day, they should come here to this meeting and join the breakout.”

Outreach:
Ravi: “We talked about big topic areas — the registration/signup form,” it’s an opportunity to get contact info, find out what their needs are, talk about convergence options, get data. “Great discussion about pros and cons re; housing /transport; the team that takes that on is going to bring a draft to the housing listserv.” Feels consensus needs to come from those doing the work.

Danielle has an announcement: fundraising will launch in the next 1.5 weeks; “please be open minded into incorporating it into other things you’re doing; its’ actionresourcefund.org.” Hoping to do budgeting via cluster, like May Day, but it’s a little different this time. “Please start thinking about money you’ll need” and what you can get donated instead.

Aaron, Support: “We have a few needs in food; we would like to talka bout storage locations because we may or may not be getting in-kind donations of non-perishable food soon. We have a braoder request for volunteers; most ofthe people who have experience in kitchen prep and food service. Those who don’t, we need help with transportation and cleanup and that sort of thing.”

“As far as transport, the most important thing we need is if you have direct contacts in other occupies to get ballpark estimates of how many people they’re going to bring so we can get” ballpark estimates for bus needs to the Nurses Union before Wednesday.

“Other than that, I think we’re ok.” People should obviously be reaching out to housing sites; “we’re dusting off the house-an-occupier network.”

Justin notes that a discussion came up about using media to solicit housing. “There are a lot of allies in the city” who would support if they knew there was a need.

Tammy: “I think I already said this, but if not, the Interocc call is every Tuesday, 7pm EST, and if you have any agenda items please see me before I leave.” Any ask or discussion they want to have, or anything you think they can help make a decision about. “One of the items that is a standing agenda item” is solidarity actions — if you have actions you’re doing here that would be good distributed solidarity actions, please let her know and get materials to her or services@s17nyc.org “If you need volunteers for anything you’re working on, please let Ravi know because that will go in the reg form as a request for volunteers.”

Andy: “I did the meeting that’s going to talk to our allies about what’s going on with us; that went really well, Jackie was in the house… we got on a great track in fguring out the lay of the land of our allies in new york, and how to talk to them and work with them and not have them kill us. We talked about connections people had; we talked about strategy, especially in regard to presenting corporate targets in the financial district to unions that might not like them and might want to do whatever they do in front of them.”

Also some talk about the need for phone banking and really not take for granted that people will come. “There’ll be 5,000 flyers here next Monday so that when everyone leaves they can take a stack of them and go somewhere.” Post on FAcebook! Put one of the videos up! Put the event page up! “There’s enough people in this room that we can start creating the kind of ripples throughout social media that there aren’t” a lot of yet.

Tammy: “We talked about outreach in nYC — Pub crawls,” event outreach, and reaching out to NYC working groups. “Also, going to open mics” around the city. “There’ll be a lot of outreach on the listserv — you can sign up for it — if anyone wants to join the street team, do that.”

Institutional outreachers are still interested in hearing about people’s contacts! Get at Andy or… Bianca?

Marisa: “I built in the 30 minutes for next steps because there’s a specific need for Outreach for people to bottomline specific tasks.”

TASKS:

* Drew: “Emailing services@s17nyc.org anything — like, go to the website, look at it — is there anything that needs changing? Email us the changes, or if you’re familiar with WordPress, ask us to — that you want to help, and then you can go in and do changes and stuff. We need current information on the extremely changed convergence plans; we need accurate information on the action plans; we also need — anytime you come across a youtube video or a poster or any kind of media that’s interesting, go to the website or email us, please. Just — it doesn’t matter — dont’ think about it, just send it.”

Ravi: “really. Really. Because ,like, we need good content.” Write about what you’re doing! “If you have things that need to be done in your group,” and you want people to want to sign up, they’ll write you copy! “People want to know how to plug in, so please give us that info.”

Drew: “Also, any kind of a meeting or event.” “Your facebook friends aren’t the only people who need to know — the rest of the people need to know.”

Updates on the call– some quick fixes; will be finished soon (tonight).

Also a need to send materials for actions, etc, to services. Tammy notes that if they don’t go up at some point people are less likely to do them.

OK! Same time next week. Thanks everyone.

Notes:

Nancy – fac
Tammy – ta
Jackie – notes

Check-Ins
Ryan – SF bay area – Oakland, SF and Berkeley – opened old library, gardened lawns – (missed a lot due to tech difficulties-j)
Nancy – s17 hub on interoccupy.net if you’d like to send info there
goes over housekeeping

Daniel – from oc la – a lot of us have e-mailed about the bus today – a lot want to try to get there – working on mrg proposal, keep in contact with nurses union; trying to nail down solidarity action for the 17th

Larry – occ philly – bunch of folks going up; the movement that changed the world – gonna celebrate our birthday in style

Dicey – NY- on call today to give us update on action framework for monday and how you can plug in

Steve – Occ Philly – working with larry to org transport to ny

Tammy – NY- is teching call – if you go to s17 hub you can find notes and agenda doc there and also watch as notes are being taken here

Ingrid -NY office – been working coordinate trans stuff and fundraising for actions

Jackie – occupy Buffalo – approx 20 folks from Buffalo – we would definitely pick up 50
if we could do a run from Buffalo to Albany along thruway, pick up in Rochester, Syracuse, stop in Binghamton, then to NYC.

Michael Daley from Honolulu – deOccupy Honolulu – Hawaii occupied by US for 117 yrs.
organizing actions against Monsanto ; interested in watching what is going on in nyc;

Shakti – wonderful to have our country celebrating OWS on the 17th – I created a hub on the committee of OLA and occupy the 2012 elections here, people’s counterculture event; national gathering of the 99% in opposition or as alternative to the election; would like to get opinion on this – maybe not as an alternative to what you are doing or do a couple of weeks later on Oct. 1 – the 29, 30 would be the weekend next to that; would like to help with whatever else anyone here is doing in LA – wanted to put out and get ideas or feedback

Kasha, James – no plans presently for solidarity action, but we plan to be more active at the DNC in Charlotte. immediate plans; want to listen in and find out what is going on; ows an inspiration to all of us and hope you kick off demonstrations

Noah – Occ Boston – trying to get folks signed up; s17occupyboston.org, form for folks from NE to fill out – hope we can get at least a couple of buses from the Boston/NE areas.

Dennis – 63, lived most of life close to manhattan; here to encourage the young people to get involved, take the lead in this thing; son is a green beret in the army; mom & I don’t agree with the wars, but support him in his doing

Janet – Concord Calif; looking forward to being in NYC for this first anniversary; if buses not an option, consider taking the train which i am going to do

Shea – Occupy NY stopping in here tonight – working with Occupy Congress – hoping to get things moving – Geo Wash first and last speeches warned us about our situation now – and article V – move to amend; no confidence vote, fire congress and start over. 545 ppl need to be removed; that’s it; have worked on the stock exchange – very familiar with their antics –
by the election have something rolling where there is an awareness – Washington said in those two speeches – don’t forget I gave you article V – it’s in the constitution – need to get together and do this.

Mark – Staten Island –

Nancy – Agenda –

Tammy asks for those not willing to share info or else or contact info will be collected – also go to the interoccupy.nets17nyc Hub – there are e-mail sign -ups for 6 groups.

Report backs and discussions from NYC subgroups
- Action – updated action plan and how folks traveling to NYC can plug in with affinity groups (Dicey)

Dicey – excited to share with everyone the action framework we settled on; a couple of different plans discussing; – many groups working on plans what we’ve come up with is an action framework that will make all these work; public parks, haven’t figured out the shape of those spaces yet, but they will be shared by everyone; one plan that came up is to focus around the stock exchange itself; other plan is decentralized action focus on taking intersections and — eye of the storm – looks like a hurricane – take an intersection, disrupt as much as poss w/out getting arrested; strike debt (student, general), students groups, immigrants groups – many groups can plug in – full text of the framework on s17 Hub on Updates http://interoccupy.net/s17nyc/
groups who may want to come from around the country early to see how things will go down – there will be a form so folks from outside the city can submit ideas – there will be space, even just for report backs, once you get here, we can have a spokes council, get involved; folks can think about how to do your own actions, also ahead of time can plug in – the better planned, the better it will go.
Mike – in terms of the pickets – are u in communication with the unions doing pickets that day and are they interested in coming to NYC that day.
Dicey – now that we have framework, folks can plug in, doesn’t have answer now about unions; hoping.
Janet – guidance on plugging into an affinity group – travelling by herself
Dicey – there will be stuff to do as individuals but being part of an affinity group is important too; as far as ahead of time, if you have friends, people who are interested in the same things, maybe get together, if not, we will have a way for individuals to plug in

Services (Ravi)
- s17nyc.org is set up and ready to go. We need content, volunteers, and any other help. Interested parties
should email services@s17nyc.org
- Invite to occupies will go out this week, along with registration form. Please get folks to fill out the form so we can get accurate estimates!

Tammy – report back – impt things to know s17.org is up – anyone interested in working on should e-mail services@s17.org; registration form will go out this week – please please have people fill out; last week there was a reqeust for OWS to — media section on the website – posters, other things that are made will go up as well
wiki – there is a list of roles and tasks needed – either there or e-mail services@s17nyc.org

Daniel – haven’t been to the site – is there a statement to send out to the Move To Amend national list to encourage our members to attend?

Tammy – Call to Action – Text just for that purpose s17.org – in media or on home page is a statement, and also send out today if you are on the e-mail list; also in IO Newsletter that came out today

- Education (?, Tammy if no one else is on)
– workshop space 12-7 Saturday and Sunday. If folks want to lead workshops e-mail
convergence@s17nyc.org

Tammy – Ed – on the last few calls ppl have shared the schedule for the weekend – that schedule has changed dramatically, so keep find info on Hub http://interoccupy.net/s17nyc/, on website, s17nyc.org

chance to lead workshops 12-7 Sat and Sunday; e-mail: convergence@s17nyc.org
concert on Sun noon-4 Foley Sq.
Sat in Union Sq.
Rosh Hashanah service on Sun nite
bunch of other things doesn’t have off the top of her head – check the website.

Shakti – what was the e-mail again for doing a workshop? convergence@s17nyc.org.

Ryan – wondered about permits and why used

Tammy – the goal is to make it a safe event everyone feels welcome at without fear of arrest; had to get a permit for concert

Larry – re: permits asked about – we had to have that conversation on a very real level – we had to get a permit for natgat – we hate permits, and voted to not have a permit, but when it came down to it the goal was to have people have a safe space to allow people to meet, gather, connect without fear

-Support (Stan, transport – Roni, Fundraising)
Transport – Estimates for Nurses Union – need by tomorrow. Please e-mail to support@s17nyc.org

Tammy – important things on support side of things – looking for housing, ppl looking for housing from orgs around the city
food – planning to feed 1500 folks 2x a day for three days
trans – nurses union have offered to help with buses
e-mail estimates for numbers of people form your city to support @s17.org
note whether you will have x number of people at a hub or if people will travel to a hub city

Steve – was at a breakout group last night can add a little – looking for food storage units; start to stockpile non-perishable goods, also looking for kitchens; may have one outside the city, if we have trans.
trans – train travel mentioned – got a conference discount rate 10% off Amtrak tickets – wasn’t hard – we got it in a couple of days after applying
buses – we put out calls today, and got lots of responses – at least 30 Occupies who say they can fill buses

Ingrid – sorry didn’t step up to do report back – two things on housing: pretty sure we will use occupy classified rather than the occupie xx we created before – don’t have the capacity, the people to be managing – the classified someone can post a need or an offer and have more one on one
also going to try and include sleepful protests – perhaps strategically useful

Chakti – have heard that people want to come from Occupy LA – would it be possible that buses will be coming from this area? can the other LA person respond to that?

Tammy – right now nurses have said they would fill buses east of Chicago and south from Miami; a little unsure of the situation

Daniel – sent e-mail in today, also included quote form Greyhound, Amtrak – c. $20K
Ryan – last week there was 60 people and this week there is 70 people camping out in front of the federal reserve in Sf. Just wanted to mention this – might be good to reach out to.

Chakti – we might want to combine with SF s17 action to have a place to converge on the West Coast – might be a good way to make a statement about global warming (not usually fuel)

Nancy – wondering if we need to suggest a west coast call coordination

Noah – Boston, going to try to get an e-mail with estimates – thinking 2 buses – also trying to coord something just for the day, not whole weekend; regard to on the ground in NYC, would encourage everyone who can to try to make it to NYC – there is only one Wall St.

Ryan – to woman from LA – thinks that’s a great idea – everyone invited to the Human Be In on the 14-16th and let something organic evolve for the 17th – how to survive with the world we have – golden gate park – e-mail particpate@ humanbein.org

Steve – comment to Boston – e-mail from Occupy New Hampshire – they have 16 people want to travel to NY; to the people from west coast, there is no substitute for face to face and worth trying to be in one place

Fundraising – Roni

Ingrid affinity group Action Resource Fund – did for Mayday – asks subgroups to submit budgets, and then basically as we raised funds, we distributed as best as we could; hooked up with in-kind donations to find for free ; getting ready to do a formal ASK – Aug 23rd will be push out date – to raise both funds and in kind donations. As of now having talked to regions to see if they would want to work with us, or how to
actionresourcefund.org
Tammy – folks doing fundraising – said they did want to see if other occs would like to raise funds so all fundraising not coming out of ny
support @s17nyc. org and someone will get back to you

Outreach – Tammy
Outreach plan, how do folks feel about this?
Three types of outreach – this plan is just for nat’l and regional otureach
1. National and regional outreach to national occupy folks
2. Outreach to institutions and organizations in NYC and elsewhere
3. Street outreach/canvassing/pub crawls/etc in NYC itself

1. Send out the call to action over the interoccupy newsletter. happened today
2. Registration form going out later this week and in the interoccupy newsletter next week
3. Assign follow up calls to those who want to help. I think it would be rad if we could do this regionally, meaning folks from various regions call people who live close to them. This way they can make better connections with those close by and perhaps discuss travel plans. Below are some ideas about how to do this, but please add some. I’m looking for some guidance especially from you tech folks.

would be really cool to have people who want to do outreach around the country
what we want to do is put a call out for people who are willing to make calls using the OccupyDirectory – look for folks or send an email if there is no phone #
if they are coming, fill out registration – make sure they know about the hubs, who to contact
ask people to keep track of the folks they contact
————————–
Tammy – reporting back – 3 basic types (above)
for purpose of this call we will talk about national outreach around the country – put together a plan to review here and see how ppl feel about it:

a – help with the plan?
b – will contact ?
registration form will be done on sun. monday – will be able to start on monday or tues.
Daniel – sounded like a good plan a number of people in LA have been taking a headcount – we do things with Oakland, and SF, so probably would have people willing to help with regional outreach
Mike – wanted to ask Tammy if the outreach includes media releases – are you sending out or waiting until closer
Tammy – there is a PR team that is working on…. will email and we should have an answer by next week
Mike – should have spoken when services were mention – last meeting mentioned I was a graphic designer and in the meantime have been looking at the s17nyc.org website. still looking for graphic designers? – who would I contact – I have a lot on my plate, but would like to support this
Tammy – will put Michael in touch with someone from the website and from support
Larry – s17 listserv; make posters on own and post; Tammy will put you in touch with the right folks.

Ask if it is ok to collect contact information (Tammy)
Tammy collected folks for Outreach list – also collecting info from latecomers – press 1 if do not want to share info.

Solidarity actions and outreach (Tammy)
What solidarity actions do we want to include in outreach packet?
– Move your Money
– Occupy your state capitol
– Debt burns
– Monsanto (I think this is a call from the west coast)
– Citizen’s arrests

Tammy – we have talked about several weeks on this call about national solidarity actions; we have found that packets or resources help, especially the smaller occs

what are folks interested in having outreach materials for?

Daniel – Move your Money very easy to put together – resources out there – so include that one.
citizen’s arrest – maybe go somewhere the night before and declaring a bank a crime scene

Shakti – Move your money really important, citizens arrest, monsanto action – would like info on that

Mike – not an expert, but there www.ocuppymonsanto.org – you can find info there and on faceback – we decided quite early to commit to Occupy Monsanto – we have GMO fields being planted here by x, x, and Monsanto – the biggest three; also concerned about labelling foods; we’ve been meeitng every Sunday for three weeks – they Monsanao are such an ugly corp that they are rep of the big corps OWS is fighting against – this is a local issue and pertains to Hawaii – importing seeds that are going across the world and event to India (checking on that)

Ryan – elaborate on solidarity action here – human be -in 3 farms being evicted, 2 are permaculture farms, the other — plants; being evicted by landlords or the city; edible forest in the city, DA Sept. 14-16, be together, invite, participate humanbein.org or participate@humanbein.org

Ingrid – question to people who have planned solidarity actions – any plans for solidarity in NYC for all the anniversaries that will happen in rapid succession after s17?

Tammy – just wanted to say that anyone who is planning a solidarity action – please put in the wiki on IO hub http://interoccupy.net/s17nyc/, , add solidarity – if can’t figure out mail to services@s17.org – great to get the info here but also please put info on the wiki

Jackie – Occupy Kalamazoo info, protest 3-4 banks in a.m., fracking teach-in and event in afternoon; having an occupation from Sept. 1 – election day.

Mike – Ryan to spell out the humanbein address

Ryan – humanbein.org and particpate @humanbein.org

Shakti – Ryan, interested in what you are doing there, will e-mail you, could you possibly set up a call for people on the west coast; i could do a vegan ecology teach in

Ryan – very interested in a teach in on ecology , could do a call; could you give me your e-mail now so we don’t lose track after the call

Would anyone like to co-facilitate next week?

Please press one on your keypad if you are willing to be a co-facilitator – knowledge of the maestro system or would like to be trained. Tammy collected info.

Goodbyes.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1fH1Hmal0MBmqDjw84rpmGIwyz9Yo64GM6vDKMl3YiOE/edit?pli=1

Brett starts the meeting, gets consensus for his facilitating, introduces Tess as stack taker and Dicey as notetaker and then reviews the agenda:

AGENDA:

- Welcome / Agreements
- Presentation – Action Resource fund (10 minutes)
- Presentation – Tech / Interocc (15 minutes)
- Messaging Discussion (30 minutes)
- Afternoon Actions (30 minutes)
- Cluster Breakouts (45 minutes)
- Reportbacks (15 minutes)
- Pick a facilitator and popcorn agenda for next week (5 minutes)
- Goodbye!
Total miracle time: 2:35.

Brett: “We can always extend things if we really want to.

I outlined a couple of meeting agreements based on previous meetings, both in this and other spaces, that would make me feel more comfortable facilitating this space and hopefully create a safe and productive atmosphere for everyone:

Step up, step back — try to prioritize individually whether we jump on stack; if we’ve spoke n a lot in this meeting or this community, perhaps we wait to see if what we want to say needs to be said. If you’ve often not spoken in life or the movement, we’d encourage you to take the space and have your voice heard.

WAIT: Why am I talking? Reflection before we jump on stack.

Active listening — be sure that when folks are talking, we’re listening and being respectful

Respect each other’s voice and time;

I would respect hand signals — Points of process or points of info be directed at me or Tess, not who’s speaking — not to be used to shut someone down or indicate disagreement, but to tell facilitators we’re off-topic.

This is an open meeting, but cops and press, please identify yourselves — not equating the two.” Laughs. “This is an open meeting, so in terms of law enforcement, don’t say anything here that you wouldn’t say directly to a police officer. this is not the place for that.”

Brett asks for any further suggestions for agreements.

A concern: “brought to my attention yesterday by someone who couldn’t be here; this particular planning committee is in some places being perceived as a little bit elitist. So, to continue to be open to other Occupies locally. That’s all.”

Negesti has a thought about the messaging conversation… didn’t hear response.

OK, end of that! 5 minutes.
OK, now for the ARF presentation.

Daniele: “We printed out about 45 packets… I’m Danielle.”

Ronnie: “This is Ronnie.”

Daniele: “We are part of an AG now known as the action resource fund. Basically, the May day Spokescouncil empowered the creation of a fundraising group, which we called the May DAy Fundraising AG. This is a report back about the money we raised for May Day and how it was spent.

At the top of the page is the total we raised, and how much we think is still remaining if everyone who we think still has a receipt comes to get it.

We had a lot of success doing a fundraising drive for a big day of action, and we’ve talked about doing the same for S17 and also moving to a form that’s not totally monetary — so, connecting resources, hence the new name, Action Resource Fund.

The other members of the group, just so everyone knows, are Ingrid, Devin, and Yates.

Ronnie: “So, we’re starting to do preliminary work fundraising and connecting resources.” Setting up fiscal sponsorship. “We’re working on the Ask letter, making an ask video, trying to work with other occupies around the nation and will offer a budgeting workshop for folks interested in getting funding.”

D: “So, for May Day — it formed mostly around clusters, like somewhat what is happening here, and clusters were supposed to come to consensus on a budget. The budget went to us — we were able to fund everything on May Day, which was amazing. But having a budget and working through budgets with groups was a great way to make sure that where there were free resources, borrowed or shared… we’re looking to use the same collective budgeting process for this group as well, kind of cluster by cluster.”

R: “So, for S17, we’re actually going to try to prioritize funding things that are crucial for hosting a successful gathering — housing, supplies, medical — non-structural projects, we’ll fund as we can.”

D:” We’re psyched to fund everything, but we do think that getting people here and giving them the resources to be happy, healthy, and safe for the weekend are really essential to being able to host a gathering.”

“That’s pretty much it; I’m pretty much here every Monday, as is Ronnie — we have a website, actionresourcefund.org — it’s wonky because it’s not done. And we have an email, arf@september17.org.”

“We also want to do some food credits- – set up a food credit system, so instead of donating money people can donate to a food supply.”

Aaron: “I understand it’s controversial, but are you the people who are going to try to unlock the other general fund?”

D: “The answer is no. We tried that once.” Hahah. “Thank you, and please feel free to hit us up with any questions… we’ll have a timeline and a budget review sheet up” with all the details they need for a budget.

Brett: “So, despite Aaron Bornstein trying to open up the worst possible can of worms, we still came in under time!” 6 minutes.

OK, next is a Tech/InterOcc presentation.

Tammy: “Hi, I’m Tammy!” Will show us some features on InterOcc, and tips to empower people nationally to help them feel that this is their day too and not just ours in New York.

“The problem we were trying to solve in creating this new site, is when we’re coordinating in a lot of different places and not seeing each other’s faces, it gets spread out,” Twitter, Facebook, Websites, disconnected. “So we’re trying to bring all those tools together so people can find out what projects are happening in the Occupy Universe and” connect them together.

“this is the S17 hub that we’re on…” “We have a list of all the hubs that are on the website right now, and the idea is that anybody can go to the Interocc site and search for the different hubs that exist — action hubs, issue hubs, other kinds you can explore on your own. We’ll soon have a better system for searching, I think, but we’re fixing it.”

Zooming back into the S17 hub. “Tehre’s two features I want to show you first.

First, on the info page, it’s just the basic stuff you need to see — planning calls, 7pm every Tuesday; info to register for calls, which is easy and lets people see everyone on the calls, and the notes and agenda for the call. If you go down, we also have all the different email lists that exist listed so people can plug into different convos about what they want to work on.” Show people these if they want to help!

“Across the top is the various different communications — website link, Facebook link, forums link, the email, and then Help Wanted. This is the classifieds tool that… I should say that these hubs are a combo between Interoccupy and TechOps tools.” Classifieds tool is where “any need we have can be listed” — most needs are actually in the wiki right now, but people should use it!

“Here’s all the minutes from the various meetings — main meetings, breakouts, conference calls, all here — so you can go to find out what happened in other breakouts, and anyone from around the country can go” too. There’s a form to submit minutes. “You don’t need an admin to approve or anything like that.”

Next, “Updates”: “What updates are are not minutes that people don’t usually read through, but things people need to know about. Flyers for distro, updates on what’s being planned here, updates on housing. You can see the four different updates we have so far; this is how people will find out what we’re doing and planning so we should be using this. Every update from our hub gets outputted to our newswire, which has a few different categories — announcements, resources, statements. Anybody can submit to the wire anything you want — an announcement about an action, something that’s happening, a resource — and in addition to that…”

Someone interrupts to point out that Shawn Carrie can’t hear over Skype. Lulz! The computer moving closer…

“Anything that goes on the newswire goes out in the weekly newsletter. So what goes up on the hub goes to both the newswire and the newsletter” with about 7k subscribers.

“The other thing that’s like that is the calendar. Along the side, you see upcoming events — these are calendar events related to S17. Everything that we put in the calendar also goes and gets outputted to… OK, so if you go to the calendar, you can see just S17 events, and we have different tags — actions, calls, meetings, mobilizations, and outreach. Everything on the calendar is one of those things; on the S17 calendar there’s not that much, but everything we put on the calendar goes out to the full movement calendar, which can be overwhelming, but the cool thing is that you can filter by those categories. Just actions, just calls, just meetings — etc. Really important, because we can now get a sense of what people re doing around the country. Not as hard for folks to know what’s happening here as us elsewhere, so hopefully that will help us solving that problem.”

Tammy asks Andy to navigate to Categories and then to Calls. “So, just calls. And if you go to actions, just actions.”

Returning to main interocc site. “The other things to know about the hub is we’re working on 2 really important pieces — a bulletin board, so you can just post things like important flyers we’ve made or, you know, we can actually post resources there — not up, but soon. And there’ll be a media section, so we can start listing our media and we can see what we’re getting and posting media-wise everywhere.”

Tammy: “This isn’t about the hub, but it’s important — the services menu.” Request an interocc call, start a hub, manage existing hubs, submit to newsier, submit to the calendar, connect to other occupations.”

“The important thing to know about this is that there are three different lists that we’ve built.” “We have the Interoccupy list, which is a one-way communication newsletter — 7k. We also have a movement contact list, which is semi-private — anyone on it has access to it; various info, names, emails, locations, etc. Very important for outreach; will be linked when we get the new database up.”

“And then we also have these public lists of people from other occupations and groups who have signed up to help connect people from their occupation to other people across the country.” List is getting old, been building since October. “We’ve been calling them and contacting them to try to keep it updated,” really important and useful for Outreach.”

“And then one last thing — people can sign up for the newsletter; goes into Occupy CiviCRM; there are questions that will help us get more information and organize and connect ppl across the country. S17 has its own signup, so people can sign up on the hub to get more info about S17, and we can manage that as S17. The email list is specific to S17 on the S17 hub.” Anyone who wants one-way communication can go there.

That’s everything about the site Tammy wanted to show us now — the other thing she wanted to talk about was “building national teams. We’ve learned a lot about organizing nationally in a decentralized movement.” “In NY, we’ve had a habit of putting out national calls and executing people to respond instead of involving them in planning” campaigns. “It’s tricky, b/c there are things we can’t decide nationally or that people cant’ do unless they’re here — I implore teams to think about what people can take on who aren’t here, and what are we going to ask of them to take on? And what decisions can be made nationally? What kind of decisions do you want to bring to these calls so that people are involved in the conversation?” And “as much as we hate email lists, they” onboard folks elsewhere in a way that these meetings cannot.

Tammy forgot the Wiki. “Tjat’s all the documentation — again, the Wiki you do for your individual hub is an entire Occupy Wiki.”

Drew: “On the hub page, what you’re seeing is the S17 2012 wiki front page being pulled into the hub. But it actually resides at Wiki.Occupy.Net, which is the movement-wide Wiki that has an enormous amount of info on it. So, if you click ‘volunteer roles’, it’ll take you to the Occupy.Net wiki — again, same wiki, just pulling in a front page. There’s one page that appears on the Interocc hub, and then you can go from that to the other wiki. and essentially, what you’re able todo is, on the left, you click ‘log in, create an account’ — once you’ve created an account, which requires looking at pictures of kittens and picking them out of the pictures of dogs so that we make sure you’re not a robot… which is weird….”

Laughs!

“…but it essentially creates these interlinked docs that anyone can edit. So once you log in, all you have to do is navigate to any page you want, and up at the top, where it says “view/view source” you click Edit and you’re presented with what may appear to be a little frightening, but its’ just a text box, and you can enter text into it, and then there’s a space where you can summarize what you did — like, just a minute ago, i put a link in the resources section.” “I had something that was useful to the whole group, I put it on the wiki, and now people can find it.” “You dont’have to find someone who has access to the site to get stuff up there — create na account, and use the wiki for any Occupy-related stuff you want, and you don’t have to worry about doing it right — there’s no right way, you just do it. And if it’s dumping a bunch of content, other people can go in and make it look nice and add stuff to it.”

Tammy notes that we shouldn’t be intimidated by the hub “because I’m a tech idiot and I helped build it, so it’s tech-idiot proof.”

Andy: “Lastly, if you’re new to this meeting, and you’re like, oh my god, who are these people, what’s going on — this is a good resource for you. Especailly the volunteer roles; it’s a good presentation of how to plug into various tasks that need to be done. These three days of action will require 1000s of hours of volunteer work.

Brett notes someone is recording audio, so he asks them to ID themselves. They do, then Nick Pinto from the Voice identifies himself too. Marisa reminds everyone that everything said in this room is ‘on background’ and any quotes need to be cleared with the people who said them. [Now is a good time to note that these minutes are NOT exact, even tho they may be close. Assume any quotes are exactly wrong, media. I anticipated EXACTLY the thing you wanted to quote and I fucked it up, so you’re fucking up if you print them.]

Next, Drew: “Any group should have someone in their group who will interface with Services — that’s me, Ravi, some other people — email services@s17nyc.org. Think of what roles you want ppl to fill, and we can get those roles onto the wiki, into classifieds, onto brochures, pamphlets, blah blah blah.”

Brett: “OK, now there was a need expressed to have a discussion about messaging — kind of a big-picture framework discussion for how we are approaching S17, coming out of this meeting. We’re just talking about how this group wants to plan for it, and what is the messaging around that. I’ve seen this need expressed in the action breakouts — if we don’t know what we’re calling for, how do we plan an action?” Other work, too — outreach, mutual aid-building, propaganda and PR — “If we don’t know the framework, how can we do these logistical things? This discussion isn’t to decide on any one framework but to get ideas out there so that the actual work, which is happening in the breakouts, can be informed.”

“If we maybe do short stacks of 5, and then we’ll take new ones just to keep the conversation a little more focused on make sure we’re hearing each other, and notice an evolution in the discussion….”

Drew has a proposal. “I would like to propose that we have this discussion, but before we do, people identify, here, who would actually want to bottom-line making the message, and then listen to what we talk about and deliver something to next meeting. Because I need a message to give to designers and stuff. So… that just seems like a way to… because we could just talk about it forever.”

Reiterated: “Proposal is that we empower a group to write messaging based off of what they observe in this group — they use their best judgment to come up with a solid piece of messaging.”

Brett asks for concerns. “I haven’t been a part of any of the messaging outbreaks; anyone i n that group see this proposal conflicting with work happening there? I’m seeing an adamant no, and the temperature check was very good on that. Are there folks that are interested in being a team that helps assemble the message based on how this conversation goes.”

Marisa suggests folks assemble around it after the conversation is over. A CQ: “When we say messaging — such a huge, global term, from flyers to press releases to things said to press to names of events — are we saying there’ll be a group of people who will come up with tag lines, work with press — if we say to the room, who wants to work on messaging, it’s so broad…”

Brett: “We’re asking for folks who will listen to the conversation, synthesize the sentiment, and come back next week with an” assembled message to propose. “Starting to create a framework.”

Someone asks how long we’ll talk about this — “I’ve been in a lot of messaging groups; this conversation has happened lots of times at this meeting and at other meetings, tho not today. This is repeating a process that actually has already happened, so I’m concerned, as someone who is working on messaging, to get more and more info and to spend time” in an already packed agenda on something that’s already happening.

Negesti: “I’m confused, because I thought we were going to open a stack for messaging.”

Brett notes we’re trying to figure out what exactly this conversation means; agenda shaped on pop corning from last meeting and wasn’t sure what the request for the convo meant. “WE’re trying to figure out what this conversation is going to look like.”

Hambone: “This group is a large, and unwieldy, group to have a messaging convo where we could refine what we want to go into messaging — might be better done in breakouts; for example, the action group is bringing a framework to the messaging, “all roads lead to wall street.””

Tammy: “If there’s already been a messaging conversation, it would be useful to hear that; we could brainstorm what people want to hear in the message without making decisions.”

Daniele notes that the way Brett framed this asks the question for why we’re having an event on S17 — “I’m wondering if that’s the question we need to readdress, rather than messaging.”

Marisa: “I think it might be helpful tot ale 10 minutes, not half an hour, to popcorn where ppl are already at. There have been a lot of slogans and conversations about messaging, so we know what we’re thinking about.” “I don’t think we should try to consent to anything today, I just want to be aware of what people are thinking.” Brett temp-checks a “10 minute messaging report back.”

Sounds good! Stacking up folks who have messaging-related things to report back.

Negesti: “I have a real concern with the phrase Black Monday; black is contacted as being bad, and I’m black and that’s offensive. So I’d like a clearer, better messaging structure.”

Next: “I like Red Monday! We’re all in the red.” RE: S17 edu assembly, “We decided to call the 12-4 block Sat/Sun, Education for Liberation, and Saturday would be “What are your 99 Demands?” And Sun “what are your 99 solutions?” “reflecting on past year, and then looking where we’re going as a movement.”

Marisa: “Austin and I have just been brainstorming, but I want to throw this out — we were thinking that the S17 is really this day to sort of celebrate Occupy and celebrate that the power of people to self-determine, self-organize, and have a voice — really, that’s what it’s about. The voice of the people. And so we wanted to have the action logic crowd-sourced, and ask people, “What’s your mic check? What do you want to say to Wall Street on S17?” And do a viral campaign about that; might work well with other cities, and there could be some sort of extended component beyond the actions. But anyway, yeah, “What’s your mic check?” Around the mic check; having one giant pp.’s mic.

Dana, PR: “The stuff not he website came from an earlier version of this convo from a smaller group; it’s by no means perfect. An attempt to keep things simple — the idea was that we wanted to invite people into this, on this day and beyond — how do we create a space that allows people to see themselves in this, as part of the 99%?”

“I can just read it.

Occupy Wall Street invites you, the 99%, down to the Financial District for three days of education, celebration and resistance.
The 1% is controlling our fates; we are drowning in loans, student debt, fraudulent mortgages. You are not a loan. Democracy is sold to the highest bidder, destroying our political process, our communities and our environment. Join a mass mobilization of the 99%. Stand and be counted. Let’s occupy our future, together.

They can steal your job, your home, your freedom, your vote.
They can’t steal our ability to dream together.
Nothing is impossible once you refuse to live in fear.

“There is no way we should get rid of ‘we are the 99%’, even if we’re sick of it here.” PR has discussed a lot how to keep it simple and make sure people who need to hear 99% vs 1% hear it.

Hambone notes that there’s a ‘proposal from the action group’ for the action to be ‘all roads lead to wall street’. “Since our outreach strategy actually sucks, the messaging could help” by having people bring their own ideas. Doesn’t like some of the website content about “they can’t steal our ability to dream together.” “The rest of it, I like it.”

NExt: “Trying to understand the message of the movement, and speak to it — one of the most common messages I’ve seen emerge is what it feels like to assemble in public space for the first time in a very long time so that it produces solutions — where that comes from, to occupy.” “There’s been discussion about a possible construction or building project that might reach folks who it might not normally,” want to extend message to folks who might not normally understand it, without police attention, to improve people’s lives. There’s some discussion around that.

Next: “I like this text a lot; I think its’ really clear — the last part is a little off, but I think Occupy should bring the message — am I out of process?”

Brett reminds again that we’re reporting back about things that have been created, and not debating merit of them right now.

Tammy: “I don’t know if this counts, but outreach – -we need a call to action, like, yesterday — feels like messaging needs to be figured out before that happens.” WAnts to know who si responsible for that.

It’s probably Dana.

Nxt, “I just wanted to bring up that I saw today, in the Guardian, there’s an article entitled ‘financial crisis; 25 people at the heart of the meltdown. Where are they now?” Suggests that this article is a good read on people who might be worth focusing on. Because that’s messaging that will get out of the” occupy bubble.

Shane, PR: “Reflecting from May Day organizing and other stuff, I’d hope that those of us in the messaging cluster operate more integrally and tighter this time so we’re not doing the same thing on two different planets.”

Matt: “I do, like, just messaging on the subway and in public — I’m trying to basically get people to realize that we’re all in a precarious situation — I want people to realize that it’s important for them to be the leaders and stop waiting for elected leaders.” And to hold people accountable, those who are destroying the planet and putting us at risks.

Brett: “We heard a lot of report backs, and some other things that were great.” Points people to messaging group for further conversation.

Daniele has a process question. “Since there’s not necessarily a clear goal for S17, is this the sort of thing that’s going to be presented for loose twinkling, or is it the kind of thing where…”

Marisa is confused. “As someone who’s been going to the action cluster, I’m confused, because we were going to present some kind of framework for the call to action, so… I’m confused as to what my role is, now, if messaging is going to be doing that.”

Brett isn’t sure, but would love “to not open up a huge stack right now.” “When we did our reportbacks…. I always think it’s a good idea for groups reporting back to be reporting needs and offerings.”

Someone has a scale model of the freedom tower. For no reason I can tell.

Negesti has a concern about official messaging and wants to know whether it’s coming through the full body or if it’ll just go through the messaging cluster.

Marisa: “This is the planning body. If we’re not going to do it… we’re here. We’re going to do it.”

Brett: “Last week, again, another agenda item without much framework was, there was interest in discussing what the afternoon would look like.” Lots so far about morning, not as much about afternoon. Brett asks folks who might already be planning things for the afternoon report back.

Austin notes that the action breakout is probably really close “and we could come back with a report back that is fairly tight and fairly clear,” which could inform discussion about the afternoon, rather than vice versa. Suggests we do breakouts first, then come back and maybe talk about afternoon.

Brett clarifies breakouts; action, messaging, education and convergence, support/tech. “OK, so can someone from action, real quick, just describe what your breakout is doing? SO that if people are here for the first time, they know where they can plug into.”

Marisa: “I mean, we started the planning process for intentions, and the disruption became an action breakout. So we are planning a disruption of the financial district, come join us.”

Dana, Messaging: “A lot of the messaging has been based on needs thus far, i..e. putting up the website… we’ve been — we’ve had some ideas and text and language we’ve been refining, you can come and throw your two cents in for this small amount of time.”

Andy, Education + Convergence: “This one’s got a lot going on it it.” Lots of educational stuff 15th and 16th of Sept; every day a new open space park, some indoor activities as well. “There’s a concert planning committee planning a large-scale concert of 15th or 16th.. lots of ways to plug into this one.”

drew. Tech/Services: “If you’re interested in helping working with other groups and figuring out what their needs are, working on the website, helping with minutes, keeping wiki up to date… basically, all the most exciting parts of organizing.” Tactical comms.

Dani, Logistics/Support — “Really unsexy stuff; logistics, housing, transit. Food.”

Hambone, Outreach: “We just smoke cigars and talk shit about our parents in the Outreach cluster.”

Brett suggests we, at least a little, focus on needs and offerings.

OK, heading to breakouts.

Brett; Ok w’re gonna start report backs from the breakouts. It would be great if each person from your group could go through three things: needs, offerings, report backs

Messaging: We brainstormed. We talked about messaging, it was great. Shane is now a liaison between action group and messaging group. I need at least one person from each group, if you are planning something, or if you have needs, let me know. I am a person of contact. Dana@danabalicki.com. We are going to have a meeting this Wednesday at Liberty after report backs. There will be NO idea floating at this meeting. This is to draft a call to action.

Action: We had a long, bizarre breakout meeting. There are a couple proposals percolating. There is the beginning of a working compromise to use All Roads Lead to Wall Street. This is not consensed upon. We meet here on Fridays 5-7pm. We need a more highly crafted call to action based around that.

Support: Support group continued to talk about kitchen and transit. We have a list of potential housing sites and we’re looking for people who have relationships with these sites – most of them are churches. We have letters drafted, community agreements, etc. So if you’d like to do that come and speak to Daniele or Ronny and we’ll give you the most up to date list. We need more people in this group! Logistics is really big and really hard. Action might do better with less people, and we would do better with more people. Also looking to start the conversation, maybe with Interocc, about transit hubs. We’re looking for kitchen volunteers. We’re going to need bottom liners for every housing site — sanitation, deescalation bottom liners. We’ll coordinate trainings for these people. We’re going to ask out of towners too. But we need people to offer to spend nights at the sites. support@s17nyc.org

Education/Convergences: We’ve come up with a rough narrative framework for each day. Saturday: what are our 99 demands? Sunday: What are our 99 solutions? Saturday there might be OTS, with DA trainings. 12-4pm Education spaces. 4pm Debt assembly, Occupy Film Festival. 8pm dance party at Judson. We want things on Saturday to focus around a concert. Start with a Guitarmy march … lead into Spectra pipeline action. Still unclear on what day the concert will be. Sunday we want to have a Casino night on Wall Street. Monday at 6pm is the Emma Goldman Memorial Assembly. And there’s a gap between morning action and the evening assembly – so do we want to have a solution oriented activity during the afternoon? We have a whole lot of projects going on — there was a suggestion for an affinity group

Outreach: No one came to outreach. We need an outreach schedule to make sure your ideas get heard! And Tammy needs a point person from every group to get on the Interocc call tomorrow. Hambone mentions there are outreach tools available thru Interocc. Sandy shouts out the Friday pub crawls – this week they’re trying for Brooklyn. There’s a Facebook page called S17 Pub Crawl.

Dana:So there was a small group that showed up yesterday of folks who are bottom-lining a strategy for how we are engaging our lefty institutional allies. There are a bunch of ideas. We’re working on a draft of an email that we’ll send to them to invite them to a larger meeting, and we’ve crafted something of a decent agenda for that meeting. We do not yet have a date set for that meeting but it will be sooner rather than later. There was a doc Henry was mentioning where people can sign up based on their relationships to various institutions if they exist. Come talk to me if you’re excited about reaching out to the institutional left.

Tech: Needs- we need ppl to go on the Wiki, to add to them. We need groups to submit content. You can do it yourself. If you wanna keep me up later, you can send it to me. Give us events, we can promote them, put them on the websites, on Interocc. If you like the lists and want to OWN one, talk to us. Offers- posting content on website. I’m currently the only person doing anything with it. So if you like blogging, and can do stuff, and can write things that won’t offend people, contact us. Post notes, minutes, documenting is very important. Also offering Sunday work sessions in downtown Brooklyn every Sunday afternoon. Send us graphics! Flyers! Posters! There’s a place on the website where you can literally just drag stuff from your computer. All you have to do is email services@s17nyc.org – if your group wants an email address, we can give that to you.

Brett: Is there still energy around talking about an afternoon action? (Not so much). Ok so let’s popcorn ideas for next week’s agenda. And a lesson learned from this week is maybe that if there’s going to be something put on the agenda, we need a person or a group bottom lining that agenda item.

Matt: I think it’s critical that we as a large group come to some concrete decisions together, instead of in our breakouts. Visualize the three days together.

Marisa: I’m willing to facilitate. There was a mention about an agenda item about Outreach.

Ronny offers to help facilitate.

Daniele: I have a question about our breakouts. Each group seems to need a different amount of time.

Andy: I’d like to make a presentation about leisure caucuses for this group. Beach and bars.
Shane: I know I’ve been really frustrated in the past when we go into breakouts and find out at the end that we’re overlapping work. So maybe we have one person for each group visiting the other groups so we have

Sean: We have a lot of people here — we maybe need a bigger space?

S17 Planning
Agenda & Notes
August 7, 2012
Facilitator: Tammy
TA: Tracy
Notetaker: Jackie

Intros (15 min)
Where are you calling from, plans in your city to date (numbers interested in coming, solidarity actions, etc)
Check Ins
Em -Occup LA – trying to work on plans
Billy – NY – consensed on a framework for the action on the morning of the 17th
Daniel Lee – Occupy LA – started planning Solidarity action for the 17th, and our anniversary on the first; a lot interested but trans problems
Michael T – Occupy NY – starting to get tapped in to what’s going on
Larry – Occupy Philly – sounds like we are talking about potential solidarity actions, most here going to NY, but will probably something here too
Steve – Occupy Philly – getting people to NYC; the most efficient way of going is to get the Mega Bus, quickest, most flexibility – strongly encouraged to get there night before at the latest. earlier if can
Alana – Tim – Occupy Eureka – not too familiar with the OE scene – been there a few times to try and get something going; from Occ Orlando – think they’re doing something also
Adam – NYC – last night met to go over the action, messaging, whole bunch of strategies – talk about later in call
Jackie – Occupy Buffalo – some coming, many wanting to; no specific plans yet; have heard from Occupy Elmira/Corning who want to have Solidarity Action on s17 as jump off to specifc local campaigns like populating the City Council meetings to advocate for local change.
Michael B. – deOccupy Honolulu – call ourselves deOccupy because territory already occupied by US – planning an action in support of Occupy Monsanto; website; a Global Day of Action to protest GMOs on Sept 17 – we are running with that ball; here to find out what is happening with OWS group and what’s happening in NY; apart from Occupy Monsanto – our event will happen at the State Capitol (part of Occupy your State Capitol actions)
Andy – OWS – will be talking about the weekend, the days before the 17th
Tracy – Indiana, works with IO, trying to promote s17 around IN – she will be coming
later arrivals:
Lisa –
Mark – Staten Island
Jay Moor – Vermon, Monpelier
Aaron – Omaha , Neb
Ryan H – Occupy Owingsville, KY
Virgina Alvarez – NW Indiana
Jake – Humboldt Co., CA

Tammy – hosekeeping points – how to use the keypad, remember to say check or yield; find the agenda on http://interoccupy.net/s17nyc/ will post into partcipant dashboard; look at video posted on particpant dashboard
collects contact info, reveiws the agenda

Report backs from NYC subgroups (10 min)
- Action
Billy – getting close to real consensus – a synthesis of two ideas on the table – 8 pressure points around the stock exchange like on (N17?) – symbolically shut it down; other convergence points – sign up on the website or sign up when get there
can decide what to do depending on what your affinity is
compliments “all roads lead to wall st” message
the ring in the center will be willing to take arrests – non-violent; actually, everyone in that section of the city can be subject to arrests; suggest non-violent training ahead of time and know your rights

- Services
website ready to go http://s17nyc.org/
Roles we are looking to fill
s17nyc.org is set up and ready to go. We need content, volunteers, and any other help. Interested parties
should email services@s17nyc.org
Tammy collects contact info to share
all info to connect with s17 on the s17 hub; Wiki that has roles in it; some need to be done in NYC but a bunch of outside ones

- Education
Andy – the weekend – two days of education and organizing programming and DA training to help compliment the s17 action – a weekend of Reconstructive organizing to contrast a day of Resistance action toward questions
permitted park space – open area donated by different ed activities and presentations – encourage others to bring their educational programming – can easily plug you in – please share – a large scale concert planned, in negotioation with NYPD about permits – not sure where, when but will be Sat or Sun night
direct action training for the Monday – encourage anyone to come day or two before to participate in the training
Jackie – mentioned on earlier calls having trainings outside of NYC, Northeast – perhaps sending people out to train; anything more on that?
Andy? – that has not gotten the organization it needs; encourage others to…. if people want to organize for training, get ahold of us?
Tammy – who, how to get ahold of?
Andy – get a hold of Andy neverprosaic@gmail.com
Tim – any web site or anything to e-mail us to do that kind of training somewhere else in the country?
Andy – that would be the s17nyc.org and will be forthcoming
Billy – mention that I know the lawyer’s guilds have disobedience training plans in Charlotte and ___ so training there could help and spill over into NYC
Tammy – we are connected to trainers all over the country, so e-mail on interoccupy.net and we can connect you from there

Discussions requested by NYC subgroups:

Support (30 min)
Transportation
Should we invest in buses, or try to fund individual travel?
Regional travel hubs – where should the regional travel hubs be?
Aaron – report back – start with the good news – seem to be in decent shape as far as food – gearing up for 2K people across the 3 days, occupy farms and other org around the city donated; potential refridgerated truck,… NYC
housing – max capacity would be 1500 ppl if everyone we are reaching out to gave us spaces; that’s not likely for every one to give
encourage people to find their own but don’t let housing or food concerns stop them from coming
part of housing agreements is having staff on site to handle sanitation, community interface, NYPD and owners of the sites – e-mail later this week that will have a list of roles, things like voulnteering to do 4 hours of sanitation, etc. volunteers would get guaranteed spot in those houses
Tammy reminds io.net hubs, s17 – on that hub are all the e-mails lists and those roles will go over those lists http://interoccupy.net/s17nyc/
Daniel Lee – transportation – feel like at least for West Coast – should think about one or two central locations to meet from; do more like the Mega Bus thing from the South, Greyhound; stupidly expensive to come from West Coast
Tammy – where should a hub be?
Daniel – not quite sure – for Chicago people came from Oakland to LA, but there are folks from Salt Lake City, others?
Steve – Mega bus works well if they live in major metro areas; another way to consider is to rent 15 person vans; do some fundraising – Occupy Caravan used vans to travel from the West Coast as well as Occupy NE – travelled in vans.
Aaron – respond – getting grants from MRG – great idea – encourage Occs in smaller or even larger cities to apply for a grant 2) as far as getting buses from West Coast – nurses union are not thrilled to do again – very expensive, $25K, not thrilled to do for 40-50 people would love to hear about contacts, try to put you in touch with nurses union or Occupy Boston who may have extra funds aaronb@riseup.net
Tammy – 2nd e-mail address?, that’s not working Aaron – yes it is
Billy – in LA for about six weeks, and know there are some folks doing fundraising for s17; $25K is insane; flying would be cheaper; buses have to feed, etc. all the way. horrible experience
Tammy – does it make sense to rent buses, to do regional fundraising?
Michael – have to leave the conversation, really engaging, have to leave the call; graphic designer too, may be able to help with web design and content; has the group released a statement that we can read at our GA?
Tammy – not a statement yet; will do a call to action
Michael – would like to support what is happening at OWS; something to read from organizers? – that would go over really well
Adam – dr; re: to flights, poi, not an expert, the tickets must be bought by the person who is sitting in that seat, other issues and logistics; think there’s problems with that
Tammy – don’t believe it needs to be bought by the person, but some of those are true
Steve – quickly, the reason the buses are so expensive you are paying for the dirver – if you rent and drive yourself, much cheaper
?response – you can buy a ticket for anybody, just need ID to get on the plane
Larry – trans question – was involved with natgat – the things that helped out the most was the Occupy Caravans; no reason that type of tactic couldn’t work for getting people to NYC too; ride shares; ride frog; platforms to communicate between occupations – finding people who are going to drive; had help at nat gat with MRG grant; seems best way; centralize rideshares
Jackie – van, WNY peace people drove to Philly in a van, shared expense with Occupy Buffalo, brought the drone with them; hoping to get them to come to NYC; they have money
Daniel – tell Aaron – he could contact me or give me the contact for the nurses union; will try to work through; piece funding togetherfrom ourselves, nurses union, MRG
Tammy – other comments about this question from anyone? caravans – reach out to NE caravan; regional hubs – get going on that
Virgina Alvarez (joins call) – from NW IN, supports Occupy xxx
Tammy – any other ques about transportation – Aaron?
Aaron – only request is if people are interested in sharing rides, funds, etc. get up on s17 IO hub ASAP because people are starting to make trans plans –
Tammy – put into a forum on IO Hub; also try to work on a specific transportation piece but might take a minute http://interoccupy.net/forums/#/categories/s17nyc
Fundraising – How can local occupations help with fundraising?
Ask letter – should we share with people all around the country?; should people do locally?
Aaron – sorry – Danielle has the info there – on next week
Tammy – thoughts on fundraising to distribute the burden from NYC?
Daniel – funded stampede tour – online fundraising indigo xx or kickstarter, or easiest to meld to our situation; easy way and should look into it
Steve – is there a fundraising page set up on s!7 site yet? – might want to design one and say for a specific purpose like transportation
Aaron – e-mail Danielle arf @s17nyc.org re: donating

Messaging (20 min)
Call to action, what do folks think should be included?
Tammy – Messaging – for folks from around the country – what should be included in that call to action?
“all roads lead to Wall Street” – some think that’s a little unclear
Aaron – Black Monday, kind of ambiguous – had meeting yesterday – occupy is often criticized for being ambiguous need something more specific even if sacrifice some of our poetic bent?
I read Wael Ghonim’s (the man who started the fb page in egypt ) The Power of the People is Greater than the People in Power – kind of lengthy for us
Michael – loves Black Monday – along the lines of millions now live in fear and uncertainty, now time for 1% to do the same even for one day
Andy – have lots – first – messaging – if you want to make, make it, stuff catches on
messaging that exists for the day of action:
Occupy Wall Street invites you, the 99%, down to the Financial District for three days of education, celebration and resistance.
The 1% is controlling our fates; we are drowning in loans, student debt, fraudulent mortgages. You are not a loan. Democracy is sold to the highest bidder, destroying our political process, our communities and our environment. Join a mass mobilization of the 99%. Stand and be counted. Let’s occupy our future, together.
They can steal your job, your home, your freedom, your vote.
They can’t steal our ability to dream together.
Nothing is impossible once you refuse to live in fear.
get these from the site http://s17nyc.org/
messaging isn’t for occupiers, it’s for getting others interested
money out of politics, debt, environment
Daniel – actually really like all roads lead to Wall Street but could be used in a meme campaign – comes at it from move to amend perspective; working on script about GAs; a moving video document of why I am going to Wall St. a good wealth of information that could be pushed into a 30 sec to 2 min spot; I thought a few IO people had started the where is Wall Street campaign – specifically identify where Wall St around the country is impacting people’s lives
Ryan – mobilizing people – one thing that would help in Owingsville – different than big cities – smaller places in conservative state – mobilization comes out of seeing progress is being made – corp money out of politics; ppl get disenchanted; ppl lose morale whenever they see that the group won’t be visable – groups need to be working together constantly to produce that large coming together – a need to work with nearby groups
Tammy -we are not a loan message can work for smaller occupies
Larry – also in addition to convincing people, we can take it upon ourselves to inspire people – we were all inspired by OWS and as we have kept going, we have connected in tight knit groups – if we incorporate messaging into this s17 – it’s atill history, we are sitll making it – inspire people to action – they made a difference last time, maybe we can make a difference this time – we are the history; speak like it, so we can become it.
Aaron – see what the fuck did occupy do for list of accomplishments http://whatthefuckhasoccupydone.com/
Billy – looking at an e-mail Ft. Lauderdale, Miami, Orlando – in the first year we changed the conversation, this year we will change the world; took shame off debt, etc. you can be proud that you did, xx with occupy, moved your debt, helped your neighbor – this language should be part of the call, instead on non-stop conversation, moving into action in daily lives
Steve – f/u with gentlemen from KY – something to relate and highlight accomplishments – no one will dispute that occupy has changed the conversation; that Florida conversation is right on the head – what we have accomplished in one short year
Adam – forgot to mention, did like a lot of the language on s17 site; twinkles to You are Not a Loan; xxxx
Tammy – e-mail request said that debt and loans – even to establish debt is more privileged
Tammy – hope to have call to action ready and will get out – when we have the call to action ready we’ll be in better position to do outreach

Solidarity actions and outreach (20 min)
debt burns – burning in front of institutions
citizen’s arrest – arresting bankers, et al
move your moeney actions
State Capitals
Monsanto
Tammy -a place on the Wiki to add your Occupy’s solidarity actions so others can see
Steve – this list should be the starting point – the Wiki is an excellent source to list them; little trick to using, but once you get it there and everyone posts…
Daniel – crime scene tape, not actually accost people – where the American dream died
– in South – did that locally – was considered graffiti and so might use caution tape
Tammy – sense of what is happening in other locations IO.net s17 hub – tab Wiki or posted the link into the particpant dashboard
Ryan – put into the hub – been talking about doing something Aug 21 Mitch McConnell and Ron Paul? are gonna be there
Tammy – right now talking about solidarity for s17; wil have call to action ready by this week and will start outreach
to help make phone calls around the country to help see what actions are being done and how to get people to nyc- press one now

Three forms of outreach
National to get to nyc and soldiarity actions
Organizations and institutions
Street outreach in NYC
gonna try to get somewhwat accurate counts of who is coming to NY
Jay – posters ready? 2. trying to figure out coming from Vt.
Tammy – Sat., Sun. Ed workshops Occupy Town Square; concert; DA training; smaller actions; in addtion to that housing and food
Jay – Zucotti Park?
? getting permits for both days – depends on where we get permits, maybe not Zucotti itself
draft version of a flyer, will e-mail to everyone on the call
Billy – worked realy well in the past – if you call the known churches, attend the service and make a 2-3 minute pitch; in the south churches havea little coffee and cake after the service – good place to have a conversation; hoping to do that in NYC around churches, synagogues
POP tracy – new people that came on – permission to add contact for new ppl to e-mail, press 1
Jacob – posters – my question too – is anyone highlighting classe? had any one taken that on? would be happy to take on doing some graphics for s17 as well
Tammy – there is a set of flyers I will send, hopefully in about a week there will be more, more developed
press 1 to get back on stack
Aaron – first time calling one of these – it’s pretty cool – got back from Chicago in May – crowd sourced – wondering if something being organized along those lines
Tammy – talked about earlier in call – check notes on IO s17 site; can tell you that nurses union not looking good – also add self to discussion announcement list

Tammy – last question is about these calls – need help with facilitators – you won’t be alone, will have cofacilitators
Would anyone like to co-facilitate next week?
press 1 now – will contact during the week

Tammy in the meantime, any other questions
Jackie – notes raw form right away – will clean them up and put on IO s17 Hub when cleaned up
Aaron – couple of great websites for posters
http://occuprint.org/, http://occupyposters.tumblr.com/, http://occupydesign.org/
Jake – from Humboldt Co Calif
Billy – music, something I know a lot of people in NYC are interested in, musicians bring your instruments
Guitarmy march
Ryan – SF, Bay Area – the space transformers, occupy xs and occupy the farm – organizing the human being on…. inviting everyone to come to haze farm permaculture farm, haight ashbury council community garden – being evicted – inspired by beacon hill forest, food forests, gather people together to build comminity and establish contact; http://thehumanbeing2012.blogspot.com/
Billy – MRG.org Ben Cohen foundation
Tammy – is that being coordinated to s17?
Ryan – will happen organically on the 17th – hoping will culminate into something organic on the 17th

Good Nights

http://notes.occupy.net/p/S17_Call_8-7-12

S17 Planning-Notes
Date: July 31th 2012
Time: 7pm EST
Notetaker: Lisa Ricci

( Took notes off line- will enter later tonight or tomorrow)

Introductions
Report Backs
Education & Convergence (Andy): Education and convergence have been meeting as

one group. Numerous groups- focus on debit, free university, horizontal, ed. Group

2-4pm sept. 15&16th. New york and various intellectuals teaching about debt student

debt. Host of others. Host in occupy town square style. Permit for large spaces and

use space at their discretion.

Action-
Services/Tech-
Daniel (DR)- Contact info. Few designers in LA who can help. (Larry) I can help too.

Aaron (support)
Outreach (Steve)- Working w/ Tammy and other folks on interoccupy on a list(s) that

we can use for outreach. Trying to consoildate them into one big list. Help with

communication. There are a good number (600?) that we do not have contact

information for.
-Larry: Occupy contact list. Semi-public directory. Interoccupy (people) are working to

consoildate…{explaining what steve described but in detail). ←-I will fill in
+ Outreach: On s17 interocc. Specific campaigns etc….already a solid media campaign

around debt. Sure we can get the same for money out of politics. (info comment)
Drew (DR)- Pull content from website. If we have people active in certain groups

(projects)..we can quickly mobilize and build a media campaign around it.
Stewart/Diane- Emphasize the fact: Money out of politics action on the morning on the

17th and debt actions. Encourage people to focus on those two things.

Break Out Groups:
Larry- [Explaining the break-out group process; what questions we are asking, 5

breakout groups]

Questions:
1. What can we do to help support the team on the ground in NYC? Specific tasks.
2. Who wants to do those tasks?
3. NOTE TAKER <3

Five Break-Out Groups
1. Convergence and education
2. Action
3. Infrastructure
4. Support
5. Outreach : Andy, Steve, Lisa, Jackie (notetaker) ←–Outreach & convergence

merged 8:00pm

Report Backs
Stewart , Diane, Tricia- Transportation & other logics (bathrooms, sleeping, etc).

Specific things to do in NYC, providing specific info (Celly loop?), importance of

central website for info sharing, and the importance of having a central location to

meet up while in New York.
Jackie [Outreach]- Clear messaging, S17.org site & the interoccupy, consistancy,

Move Money & Debt Campaigns, Focus on Convergence- create open space,

(transport & housing important), Steve mentioned Occupy Caravan and garnering

excitement through, Media- where does it fall? Tech & outreach? + all groups? Andy

mentioned messaging falls into three broad categories: Move you Money
Jacob [Action]- LA-would be up for a solidarity action OWS- have not reached con.

yet pushing for large action + small scale action, OWS DA group coordinating trainings

for the 15th – looking for trainers – (discussion led into logistical questions) Destructive

actions countered with constructive actions. Leave a positive mark. Discussed

reaching out to other organizations for various resources etc. (Nurses union/NATO). +

DA do trainings prior to the 15…{{missed the first}}
Tracy [Tech/Infa]- Info inbox. If anyone has any questions or anything they can ask

and get a direct response. Info hotline

Andy- 15&16 Revolving around constructive/Monday direct action. They are really

our balance in this.

Solidarity actions
Some options for solidarity actions brainstormed so far
1. Debt burns
2. Move your money
3. Citizens arrests

Larry [Take stack/no break outs] + lots of people in agreement

Tricia- September 17th is also Constitution Day- thought we could do something w/ the

visioning list that came out of the National Gathering. Make it a living document.

Acknowledge that we are doing things!
Jackie- Debt burn/Move your Money/ Citzens arrest + Gambling Actions. Decals that

look like borded up glass? Blown up glass?
Sheppard- Money out of Political groups on the North East are interested in doing a

solidarty action (albany/documentry- 99 banners). Looking to see if anyone on the call

is planning these actions.
Stewart- Big money out of political/corporate control of politics. Messaging in concise

with this. If we keep the messaging simple nationwide (10,000+ people)
?- Where is Wall Street. Showing the relationship between wall street and main street

as a possible solidarity action
Larry- someone in philly doing street art to that end (main street/wall street

connection)
Daniel (LA)- Had conversation at are GA. 17th 24th and the 1st (their ann.). Actions-

presenting some of the economic alteratives….(missed the second)), encouraging our

members to come to nyc or participate in solidarity actions.
Tracy- Chicago – Huge occupy mid-west conference. Solidarity action planned for

S17+ one for their Anny. as well. Details unclear yet.
Steve- A lot of great of ideas for solidarity actions. Encourage local occupations to do

what they want to! What is good for their community.
Larry- big push to occupy state capitols. Not specific date. General enthusiasm for this

idea
Jason- Solidarity actions (occucards! www.occucards.com) have a bunch you can

print out . Has information on all ideas presented.
{Sheppard connect w/ jacob}

Larry- Check-out/network opportunity for last five mins.

Do I need to take notes for this? No, right? …Just connecting people w/ people. Nice

way to end <3
Kate- (connect w/ daniel…nevermind person for san diego)
?-

Cal- [Explains the contact information sharing process and how to opt-out if you so

choose]

LOVE BYE! Have an amazing night! and a brilliant tomorrow!

{{{I will clean this up tomorrow….good call everyone! Much <3, Lisa}}}

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1fH1Hmal0MBmqDjw84rpmGIwyz9Yo64GM6vDKMl3YiOE/edit

S17 Education and Convergences Minutes

* Meeting agenda is reportbacks and updates about various points being worked on the calendar for September 15th, 16th, and 17th.

* The following (rough) framework for the day’s education events and mass convergences (previously referred to as “spectacles”) is put forward:

Saturday:

11am-7pm: Occupy Town Square. (Potentially: with Direct Action trainings at OTS)
12-4: Educational Spaces
(12-2: Performance and Interactive Spaces – Theme: “What Are Our 99 Demands?”)
(2-4: Education Assembly)
1pm: Lunch!
4pm: Debt Assembly
4pm: Occupy Film Festival (exact time and location still not concrete on the schedule as of this reportback)
8pm: Dance Party at Judson Church

The following events are tied together in date, but due to the fact that the concert’s time and location are not yet solidified, its date might even potentially shift as permits are secured and planning continues:

?am/pm: Spectra Pipeline Assembly
?pm: Guitarmy March from West Village to location of concert
3-7pm: Concert Convergence

Sunday:

11am-7pm: Occupy Town Square. (Potentially: with Direct Action trainings at OTS)
12-4: Educational Spaces
(12-2: Performance and Interactive Spaces – Theme: “What Are Our 99 Solutions?”)
(2-4: Education Assembly)
1pm: Lunch!
8pm: Casino Night on Wall Street
(Second choice timeslot for Concert convergence. Guitarmy march and Spectra Pipeline assembly move with Concert if its date shifts from the first choice of Saturday)

Due to the fact that the date of the concert is not yet pinned down, a convergence event that is intended to be on the ‘other’ day is likewise not yet pinned down. Presuming the concert is Saturday as consented upon on 7/30 by this group, this convergence would be Sunday:

5pm: Citizens United Against Citizens United: Corporate Marry-In Civil Disobedience

Monday:
6pm: Emma Goldman Memorial Assembly (Loc: 55 Water Street, to conclude by closing of park at 10pm)

* The concretized schedule concluded, there is then a reportback from Sean: “Additionally, coming out of other meetings there is the beginnings of an emerging consensus, that after a morning of actions focused on Wall Street and the ‘problems,’ we need to open space for working on solutions instead, to turn our backs on Wall Street and restore a public forum for the exchange of ideas and discussion about solutions to our 99 problems. This could potentially mean we might want to plan Open Spaces or Think Tanks or just opening a public forum at a central, green location (hopefully Liberty Plaza) for cross-cause fact-sharing, solution-seeking and general cross-pollenation of ideas.”

* Mark adds to the group’s reportback to the larger S17 meeting a ‘Need,’ to transition to an affinity-group spokes model focusing on projects rather than the current framework of massive meetings and breakout groups on broader swathes of projects rather than chunking down to smaller grain sizes and having groups condense around individual selected projects. This might be a more wieldy way to have these meetings; the present framework is starting to be too unwieldy under the large number of people currently participating for consensus to be truly emergent. Potential affinity group spokes being called for Saturday at 3pm is considered.

08.03.2012 minutes

Agenda item #1: Reportbacks
- Negesti reports back from InterOcc call
- People from out of town seem to have strong intention for CD and doing trainings ahead of time
- We’ll need to put together a NY-specific Know Your Rights package
- Materials for this already exist, they just need to be collected

- Ham reports back from discussion with direct action groups
- Some frustration about specificity and clarity of action logic
- But would be very receptive to a specific “put people in this place and tell them to do a certain thing” type of plan

- Andy reports back on trainings
- A permit for Sunday Foley Square seems plausible

Agenda item #2: Review of existing framework
- Review over document issued
- Open questions

Agenda item #3: Intentions
- Go-around

Agenda item #4: Messaging discussion
- People’s arrest
- Concern about supporting prison industrial complex / new jim crow / alienating groups
- World comes to Wall St
- Wall St Greed
- Debt
- 1yr (moment) / still here / happy birthday
- S18 and beyond
- Community involvement
- 99%
- Power of the people
- Inspiration / Hope
- Money out of politics
- Disrupting capital
- Make room for thematic zones (4? 5?) allow each zone to pick their own messaging
- Rather than issue-specific blocs, values-based blocs: e.g. freedom, justice, etc…
- Let issue-specific blocs organize organically, rather than segmented ahead of time
- Focus on intersectionality, not splitting us up into blocs. Something about the action should emphasize our coming together.
- Message about solutions; something in the action about moving away from Wall St.
- Turning our backs on Wall St.
- Form a circle, shouting their ideas for solutions

- People’s arrest (cf prison industrial complex)
whatever your issue (p/i, healthcare, education, bank justice, debt, money out of politics, ENVIRONMENT)
… follow the money, “all roads lead to wall st” (another way of saying “all our grievances are connected”)

- Desire to consense upon a particular INCLUSIVE message
- Clog the intersection
- What are your 99(%) demands?
- All of our grievances are connected
- (Follow the money, and) All roads lead to Wall St (temp check most positive on this one)

Agenda item #5: How?
- Discussion about the physical plan

Services
not planning actions; facilitating
1–3 people from each group what do you need, classifieds, tools, for printing, folding, etc., get it on the wiki, share not duplicate, but copy
services@s17nyc.org, mailing list, directly upload to hub, identify someone who will know what is up, what is needed, work to fill needs
working on roles: coordinate international calls, wiki, etc.
on wiki page, there is a tab for volunteer roles, check what is interesting, add anything you think you want to do
interoccupy.net/s17nyc; tab for wiki
look for handout TechOps trainings Thursday, Sunday; Brooklyn
all events should be put on
Action/Disruption
report back from Thursday in the rain, proposal brought by Charles—quadrant based (lower Manhattan, based on Wall St. and radiating out) with targets in each quadrant, as well as assembly spaces in each quadrant; distract the cops at various places, not highly technical, people show up, get a map, and see what is happening; training is preferred; plan to disrupt/shut down, largely symbolic, but with some specific spots
have not quite reached consensus, next meeting Friday, here, 5–7p.m.
Heard from education that they want a block, bike coalition is interested in doing something mobile, perhaps an eco block; creativity (puppets)
would like more detailed goals/message, what we are doing
talking about green actions, including People’s Picket
Convergence/concert
moved to saturday, between 4 to 8 p.m., Rosh Hoshana is Sunday. Affinity group has been approved to curate/plan concert; they will talk to the artists and organizer, report back to convergence; Central Park, Bryant Park, Foley Square, there is a group that will give us South Street Seaport
student debt encouraged to get involved
student, environment, etc.
1199 is helping to acquire permits, a handful of folks will talk to cops about that
concern about Emma Goldman popular assembly; 2 of the targets are near 50 Water Street, if there are any events planned for, this is a green space on a red day
price for permit is different if private/public; may need funds, looking for groups that are willing to help
do not know whether the funding will be through S17 or outside
meeting again, Doodle poll will be set up; report back next week
Needs: Monday is big, sexy, and awesome, but 15 and 16 needs lots of people to work two full days;
May 1 raised $5,000
Concert/education
next saturday at 2; direct action on Sunday, S15 and S16 are Occupy town square, lots of trainings, events,
Support
housing; drafted letter to those who have provided before, we have drafted agreements for those staying, we need “bottom liners” to organize, we also need people on site, including medic
transportation; handing out Metrocards is not superefficient
national ask, need to find out what people can bring, what we need to ask for
kitchen has put together spec budget; they will need more space and volunteers, kitchen > site transport; E-mail to S17 list that will include all housing sites, those who are most comfortable should make the calls; only about 24 sites; will cold call together with pizza!
Outreach
locally to organizations, nationally to Occupations to get people to come here and to support local actions
printed materials out through ether
need to tell people what is happening, how people can plug in to education
get your own intersection with your own messaging, same with workshops
let people know that there is transportation and housing
what needs of outreach, welcoming, etc.
national calls every Tues at 7; need one person from each subgroup to lead; tomorrow we have one from each subgroup—yea!
discussion of that subject
national people want more outreach, percolate everywhere, there will be a database/spreadsheet with organizations and what they are doing to support
phone banking Sunday afternoon, 12–4, WorkSprint
need to be connected with Medics; who is still around and working?
Wikis
there is a wiki, with a huge list of things that need doing, requests can be added
s17 resources, s17 invitation, at work session asked someone to edit; collaboratively edit, central repository, training on Thursday, it is a great skill and will help us coordinate
wiki.occupy.net; can get there through InterOccupy.net hub, the tab that says “wiki” gets there
go to WorkSprint to get trained on the wiki and to work
working with institutions
proposal: see attached agenda for meeting with institutions: NYC Institutional Left, 8 August (date is contingent)
institutions have problems whereby they speak to one person and think he/she speaks for all
presentation about permits, two days before, action framework and how institutions can plug in (red/green)
need consensus on action before we can tell people where we are going
reaffirm nonpartisanship, we might be concerned about getting embroiled in politics
stage is not a place for speeches; this type of meeting gives us an opportunity to listen and learn about how we can work together with institutions
Friday at 5, meeting on planning for this; need to discuss which institutions, what is dialogue, etc.
Doodle poll on announcement list; goes up tonight, response by Wed. s17@lists.occupy.net
there are two ways we can go to institutions: this is what it looks like, invite into process; or this is what it is, here is what we want you to do; processwise it is up to entire group, need a separate discussion
not a coalition meeting, is an open meeting, to discuss having a coalition meeting and what it looks like
Agenda topics for next meeting
how we interact with unions/institutions
other actions for Monday; after the morning, what are we going to do
Emma Goldman assembly, jail support, education
arts breakout
revisit intentions
messaging
agenda gets sent to S17 discussion list, that will be tweaked by all
Facilitation
Brett has offered to facilitate the next meeting
applause for facilitation
meeting adjourned 21:15

Establishing a national ask:
-we need a lot of information from other occupations and from people coming into the city.
-Headcounts
-Skills, so we can connect people to projects
-Resources (car, food, puppets, power tools, puppies)

Kitchen:
-wrote up a really great spec budget
-suggestion: look into ROC and Colors as possible cooking site/assistance?

Housing:
-ask letter written, housing agreement written
-we need help with the ask process–list of spaces will go out to discuss list this week, we need people to step up to be the point people for spaces. If you have a good relationship with Reverend X or Pastor Y, and feel like you could deliver this ask, we need you.
-we also need point people for spaces to pin down a sanitation team, a de-escalation team, and a medic for their site for the duration of use of the space.
-Campsite update: there’s a spot in SI near to the Verrazano Bridge that might be a good fit, can hold 6-7 people per site, we could probably host like 300 people there.

Fundraising:
-ARF (May Day fundraising team) will be making a presentation next week at the general planning meeting
-need to be in touch with other Occupations re: do they want to coordinate fundraising with us, do they want to contribute to our fund, do they want us to fund their projects, etc, etc, we will bring this to the conference call.

S17 Education Planning

July 28, 2012

Idea: the free u is happening after s17, we didn’t know what was happening educationally during the events on s17.

Two sections to this meeting:

(1) Reportback for S17 planning,

(2) a brainstorm for possible educational activities for that day and days leading up to it.

(1)REPORTBACK

S17 still vague, but there are some possibilities. Saturday is Bryant park town square, Sunday is Foley Squaer. Saturday night will be a concert, Sunday night will have games. Monday morning will be an action down by Wall street, not sure what yet. 6pm people’s assembly. Interested in shutting down the financial district. Different scenarios. Five blocks for five different choke points. Theme is convergence, so things don’t happen in different places.

Sat. 12-4

Sun 12-4

Sun 4-6

Monday morning.

These are the times for education activities. Also we want an educational disturbance. Creating awareness around certain issues wrt debt. Right before the people’s assembly at 55 water street, from 4-6 educational disturbance and head to the assembly.

Launching to s next phase, some follow through, plugging in more people, use education as a tool to bring people to assemblies, being articulate.

2) BRAINSTORM

Post capitalist strategies, what is postcapitalism, like the commons, making worlds.

All in the red is organizing around s17, we’re doing an NYU campaign about student debt in August and early September. Pamphlets, fliering, etc. we’d like an all in the red march, a DA action also. Workshops in the lead up to S17 for creative actions. Autonomous distributed actions, we like that from the education standpoint. Needing solidarity around debt, 99 pickets.

Different gathering points around wall street, maybe we could call for a convergence point. We should figure out various tiers of involvement. If we have an educational convergence we can keep in mind. Workshops for book shields making? Could have a clearer idea what we’re there for. CUNY won’t have classes for Rosh Hashanah, so a captive audience. We’ll be trying to have another free u between 10-2pm after sept 17, starting sept 18-21. Wanting it to be open and capacious, transform Madison square park again for four days. NYC student union formation, consolidating power for that event.

Horizontal pedagogy’s fall campaign, planning, and maybe trainings leading up to S17.

Having a unified all in the red language, playing with the red, paint bombing the bull, red beer?, ways of extending that theme “all in the red.”

having a people’s convention. What to do with academics and intellectuals? Saturday would be a conference set up, and then sunday is a debrief and looking toward the future. We could invite people who may have more knowledge in certain spheres. Short presentations, keeping it all horizontal.

Massive convergence around 1-2 called the Citizens United, but could change.

(These have been report backs, so maybe we could think of events now. New creative ways to do education? Something new to experiment with?)

Entertaining performance that showcases the crisis in education. Poems, music, theatrical costumed thing integrated into other ideas.

Book blocks with a theatrical twist?

Recording with live stream, actual videos to distribute after.

Request: have as little going on during direct actions, schedule around these DA events.

Coming out as a debtor. Identifying publicly with the situation. Coming out setting, like staging actions at schools. Get them to confess how much they’re in debt to understand their situation.

Thinking beyond NYC somehow. Day of different creations, producing, alternative forms of education, a horizontal discussion is great but maybe we could punctuate and interrupt the assembly style of education.

Effort to indoctrinate people from the start of college semesters. Get them interested in events leading up to s17.

Focus on high schools? High school teachers? Can we motivate them to see that the only way to get educated isn’t the university? Making book covers thematically related to debt and other occupy issues.

Free U at Washington square park? More accessible. We’re having workshops already in this park to prepare people for the the 17th. Creating big sets at are like visually classrooms, a declared space, in red, with materials in them.

For-profit colleges target low income families. Jackson Heights is a diverse neighborhood where folks go to these universities. Should we be going there?

Free U is open to the suggestion of having their events at Wash Sq Park. S17: Day of performative action? Education could come in swinging. Dropping off red squares, making music, puppet shows, other kinds of art. Days of conversation on 15th and 16th and then have 17th be a day of action.

Question sessions that lead up to yelling questions in the streets.

Break out groups. One group for 15th and 16th and another for S17. (20 min)

PROPOSAL: On the 15th and 16th, split the four hour periods into two sections: fun & games (12-2) and conversation (2-4). Games will be the kind of thing that you do in parks: three-legged races, balance an egg on a spoon, freeze–all with a debt theme infused. Then, for the conversation, some kind of questioning session and emergent series of groups that have access to “experts” with experience regarding certain questions. (Many things to be determined here, but that’s the basic gist.)

AGREED: meet on Aug.4th, 2pm, Washington Square Park to have another meeting re: S17 education.

NOTES

S17 Planning-Notes
Date: July 24th 2012
Time: 7pm EST
Notetaker: Lisa Ricci

Welcome [on call]

Tammy-OWS
Sally- Berks County NJ
Michael Pearlman- OWS
Daniel Lee-LA
Ariel Boston
Nancy- SF
Jose- Long Island
Rich- ?
Lisa- Philadelphia
Steve- Philadelphia
Aaron- OWS
Ingrid?- OWS
Jackie- Buffalo
Henry- Brooklyn
Russ?- NY

Tammy- [review procedures]

Messaging & Goals for S17
Ariel- Occupy Boston def. looking to get people to NYC. Trying to outreach to NY-Boston
- People in NY having difficulty getting on call. Mistro message: At capacity.
Hambone?-Focusing on banks. Organized for Nov. 17th which is was attempt shutdown. All our resources were depleted and we almost were able to shut Wall Street down. We believe that with more people we can do this. We also want people who are trying to get involved and want to be apart of the movement to have an opportunity to do so.
Daniel- We are trying to think of solidarity actions. Trying to get folks from LA to NYC. Work with move to amend and we are trying to outreach to our supporters to also come to S17
- Take cues from Global Justice. We want to be a continued unstoppable presence. One thing we did that changed everything…changes everything is to show up. We just need to continue to show up.
Jose- Organizational meeting…[for next agenda item]

Plans & Needs for NYC Convergence
[5 Sub-groups present at last night’s OWS meeting]

1. Support
Aaron- Basic infrastructure we have so far. Reviving food network’s (food) and support networks we had before (housing). Try to get buses (transport). We are also talking about literature and guides for those who are coming to NYC for the first time. Ariel has given a lot of support from Boston. Looking to work with others from different cities for outreach, support, and an estimate headcount. Needs- continual rough head-counts, what resources you can offer (materials- art, tents, food, RVs). Let us know.
Q & A for Aaron
Sally- Can help with literature.
[Tammy collecting contacts]
Hambone- (comment) we are also trying to get an RSVP thing going. Asking different groups to encourage those who are coming to fill it out. Will help with assigning groups to intersection. Needs- someone to help with that spreadsheet.

2. Outreach
Hambone- Trying to reach out nationally. People all over are geared up. …come and drum up support in their area. Use help with monitoring outreach in area, coming up with strategy, etc. Actions schedule that we can talk about in that section. Need help with ideas on what to target, etc.
[Tammy collecting contacts]
Hambone- One more thing. Can we collect the contact info for people who are specifically would like to help with outreach? In getting people to NYC? or Solidarity actions?
Tammy- if interested please press one. Michael will collect contact info.

3. Education and culture
Andy- Sorry I was late. Framing- we are doing a lot of organizing on the 15 & 16 not just the 17th. Permits in the works. Not sure which park we will actually get. “Reconstructive” <–messaging for that weekend. ‘Resistance’ ←- Messaging for Monday. Weekend: Come one, come all with your teach-ins, etc. We are also going to highlight campaigns that already have a lot of people behind them (environment, money out of politics, etc). Topical assemblies- bringing professors down to the park. Livestream debate on a variety of issue. Saturday night is the target date for a concert. No real set framework on that just yet – but we will cover what will be happening the next day (action). Sunday- direct action training. Mass public training for the action on Monday. That is an overview. Open space. Specific needs: orientation as well as experienced direct action trainers, people with various contacts- musicians, etc, and ideas.

Q&A
?- What to be able to help out with whatever is needed.

4. Infrastructure (AKA: Services Group)
Drew- Trying to collect volunteers who would like to help with logistical issues- managing email lists, other tasks associated with internal communications. Web/tech issues. Coordinate S17 hub on interoccupy. If you want to be apart of this group, help with tasks associated with internal communications, web, tech, etc. find link at Interoccupy S17 NYC hub or email drew@NYCGA.net.

5. Actions
Andy- So the action. The action is two moving parts or many moving parts. But there are to organizing efforts going on right now. 99% Picket (People’s Picket)- in negotiations with Unions. Has not gone through the most transparent process. Fixing that. Green action. Basically trying to get as close to Wall Street as possible. Distributed blockade system. Groups of 20 get as close as they can. Have people move in a spiral fashion and shut down intersections. [Check disclosure: public action. good] What it will be is people moving and being disruptive. Yes can be an arrestable action but learning from our experiences with the NYPD, etc.
Hambone- clarify one element. Spiral things sound confusing but we are considering assigning intersections to 50+ people. (20 groups of) Will not have to start with a march. Sounds complicated but it is super simple.
Sandy?- This is still an action that is open. Even though some might not want to take part in the civil disobedience.

Questions about the action itself? Press one now.
[Tammy and Michael collecting contact info for those interested in each sub-group]

Solidarity actions brainstorm (on the ground and online)

Tammy- if you have been apart of discussing solidarity actions, please press one
Steve- Move your money. Can be local & national. Enough people interested, mobilized, and have a solid messaging campaign.
Sean- Focusing easily replicable actions that can go on outside of NYC. Taking about having a convergence before concert on Saturday. Stand up and be counted. Another action- serving indictments to bankers. Citizens arrest. Symbolic but powerful.
Daniel Lee- Move to amend..free speech TV. Stream everything live. Get other occupies to stream. Even if people cannot make it can upload their own video (compilation?). Think that would be an interesting solidarity action. Something to consider.
? -Solidarity needs to be very simple. Easily replicable. What is the form of that target…specific targets on bank. I would love if we can focus more on that. NYC has specifi
Hambone: Other idea may be having direct action campaigns that rev up excitement for S17. Is there room in the agenda to hear about other ideas that are floating out there?
-Move your money: (starting early sep- rev up action)
-Burning Debt (hospital, school, etc): burning their debt in front of the orgs. they owe.
-Gambling actions: live real poker games etc. in bank lobbies
?- mobilize people behind a popular action/topic such as move your money. Talking with people who say the only
Andy- do a re-occupation of the camp you were evicted from….all across the country.

[Tammy- having people vote on each idea/action suggested]

Sean- (detailing what he outlined before- Stand up and be counted!)
?- Different ways people can stand up and be counted (petitions, etc.)
Alana- Abolishing the idea that money equals free speech

Pre S17 national training
Andy- National training (structural issue as well)…we are going to try to get many different trainers from other occupations (very experienced) …to go to other occupations? Also train the trainers.
? – Action camp-out toward the end of august. Hour or two north of NY. Camp out. Know your rights, direct action, etc. Currently trying to find space.
Daniel- interested in helping the content for the 15 & the 16th. 15 was going to be more instructive. 16th was going to be more direct action? Address the various training needs.

Roles and structure
Different areas: (7) Support, Education & Culture, Outreach, Infrastructure, Action, Solidarity Actions, Trainings ←-subgroup calls?

Ariel- (phone breaking up) Same organizers? Solidarity actions? Would it be helpful to have breakout groups on Mistro? It might be an effective use of the tools
Michael: Could you repeat the link?
Tammy: Interoccupy.net…
?- ?
Andy- I second ariel comment on break-out groups. In a few weeks we will have a big meeting, should try to replicate that nationally on a conference call. Use classified section on the hub where we push all our contacts. Also classified section is a little fucked up…but we can talk about that later.
Jackie- still have this main call but maybe have smaller group calls in between the larger calls.
Hambone- emphasize that we are trying to push these solidarity actions before the date.
Ariel- (bad connection could not hear…something about Mistro..and tools…and discussing the two.)

Tammy- Here is an idea on calls…one call- solidarity actions and training
Other call- convergence on NYC

Hambone- I don’t think we are there yet. I think that more people still need to plug in.
Ariel- might be helpful to split the agenda for the call so that people know when to plug in if they only what to focus on one of those thing
Tammy-Idea for the next call: First ½ hour solidarity actions; Second 1+1/2 convergence issues. (vote)
?- listserv’s all have ‘s17/’ and then whatever the topic is. (discussion list, announcement list,…and a number of other lists). Listserv’s are both local and national [[[insert InterOccupy address]]]
Tammy- if you would like to add any items on the agenda list for next week, please email me tamarashap@gmail.com
Ariel- trying to get as many people from the New England Region to NYC as possible. If anyone from NYC would like to help with that effort…or other occupations that are also working on that effort. Was thinking about making a hub..to bring people together and address any issues associated wih getting people to NYC and disseminating information about S17.
Hambone- we had pretty broad support for the ‘burning debt’ action. Are there people on the call that would like to start organizing actions related to this? Student debt might be a good one to start with.
Jackie- This thursday the 26th is the deadline for the MRG proposals. I just wanted to throw that out there if anyone is looking to get funding.
Daniel- National Nurses United. Turnout matters. Impressive sight. If we could confirm one or two busses from the west coast might be beneficial in terms of drumming up excitement for this event and getting more people occupations over there involved.
Tammy- I think that we need a team to outreach to the (many) contacts that IO has collected throughout the year (almost year). I think that it is an effective strategy for creating solidarity actions across the country (reaching out to local organizers, etc.)
Hambone- trying to generate more diverse outreach materials. We would love to have people develop different outreach items (different topics, etc.)
Steve- we need to start now to drum up the excitement and have people prepare for the logistical issues involved in getting them to NYC.

July 23rd #S17 Education, Culture, & Convergence Group Minutes

• In process
o 2 permits
• Bryant Park – permanent sound s15th
• Foley Square permanent sound s16
o Concert 15th @ night

• Schedule Brainstorm – in coordination with Occupy Town Square
o Sat 15th
• 11am – 12pm: Orientation (Solidarity NYC, Center for Popular, Economics, Mutual Aid)
• 12-4pm: Education Programming
• #strikedebt
• All in the Red
• Occupy University
• Free University (Starts 18th ?)
• CUNY organizations
• Movetoamend
• 1 pm: Lunch (cooperative kitchen, potluck)
• Guitarmy March
• Occupy Film Festival
• 4pm Citizens United Convergence – Move to Amend
• 6/7pm Concert (4-5? hours long)
o Sun 16th
• 12-4pm: Education Programming
• 1pm: Lunch
• 4pm: Debtors’ Night/ Assembly
• Dance Party (Dance Dance Revolution) @ Judson
• 6pm training
• 8pm Casino Night
o Monday 17th
• 6pm: Emma Goldman assembly/event (55 Water)

• Next Steps
o We will have a meeting to discuss the content and coordination of the education programming for S15/S16

• General Notes/ Ideas
o Local assemblies should take control of these two days
o Student presence
• #strikedebt
• unite CUNY
• Casserole march
• have actual students organize
• all in the red is doing “disorientation”
• Occupy University (over the weekend)/ Free University (starting S18)
o Occupy town Square @ Wash Sq Park
• Judson, sympathetic NYU presence
• Outdoor + indoor events
o Need for a hub, centralization, green space
o Weekend for organization/ reconstruction – Monday for resistance
o S15 – actions in different neighborhoods (in Bryant park we end up talking to tourists); S16 for convergence
o Citizens United against Citizens United – mass convergence (like Times Sq. occupation) again (low first step to get new people involved)
o Action on midnight on Sunday – casino night on Wall St. – if denied permit, frame it (messaging) – if we get it, bring in craps tables, etc. (green action)
o Concert Saturday, education Sunday, intense Monday
o Emma Goldman event
o Concert (Saturday)
• Big high profile names
• We need artists

Start time: 6:18
Facilitator: Linnea
Stack: Maura
Notes: Ravi

Meeting Agreements
Trust in good intentions rather than codify everything
Why Am I Talking; Step Up Step Back
Start on time, respect time
Respect the facilitator
Agenda should move us forward

Reportbacks

Housing, Support, Transport
Drafted community agreements for potential housing sites
Tech infrastructure under discussion

Strike Debt
Potential for debt burns
Agitprop book being passed around
Action Camp in Vermont, August 9th
NE Governor’s

2 page on S17 for outreach

Bike Coalition is here to help

InterOccupy National Planning Call Tuesday 7/24, 730pm

Our relationship with institutions and unions
What’s the context?
Background: on MayDay, Occupy was standing in solidarity with unions and immigrant groups; on S17 people should be standing in solidarity with us.
Needs: Global justice, environmental groups could bring a lot to the discussion
Working with outside organizations can bring in culture clashes that we should recognize
No reason to not work with one another
Occupy should open a space to bring together all these voices- unions, crackpots, etc
What about all the folks who have never been involved in any of these kind of organizations? maybe link up for permits but really focus on bringing new folks in.
Didn’t we start out wanting to make S17 as big and wide as possible? Let’s get everyone back together. Keep it simple so people can come (back) in. Setting limits is counter-productive and against our vision.
These institutions have amazing people- and occupiers- that have come out from Occupy and done great work. We need to maintain a space for that. We can engage as individuals, rather than institutions. So we don’t have to care about anyone telling us how to do our stuff.
The challenge is to get out to people who are not part of networks. Think about it as a launch for the larger conversation and engagement.
Elections are going to be really distracting for a lot of those allies. How do we continue to work with them, create space for people within them.

ACTION ITEM: Bring proposals on how we should interact with institutions, allies and unaffiliated people
For example: ‘Occupy and the 99% Opposition’ The Nation
Table for continued discussion next week

Affinity Groups and AG Coordination
Keep the space open to whoever
Improving AG coordination over May Day
Acting as a hub for information on AG activity so people know how to plug in
May Day was about lots of AGs hitting whatever targets they wanted; S17 is about convergence
Affinity spokes would be useful if its work oriented and decision oriented

Break outs
* see individual meeting minutes
What is up with Outreach? Where is it? Could be part of Info, could be part of spectacle or education/culture.

Outburst from Oakland Guy: Can we stop talking about meanings of words and just get moving!!!!

The break out groups initially came out of intentions.
Take 5 minutes to discuss intentions and give each big break out a one word name so people can connect and then be directed outwards

In breakouts, talk about
- intentions
- name
- actions
- calendar

Education
2 permits: Bryant Park or Foley Square
Saturday, 15th
- Orientation
- Educational Programming: Strike Debt, OccU, FreeU, etc
- Pot luck lunch
- Guitarmy type march?
- Convergence around money in politics, move to amend
- Evening Concert

Sunday, 16th
- Educational Programming
- Debtor’s Assembly
- Dance Party
- Evening Training sessions

Monday, 17th
- Morning CD
- Evening Emma Goldman Assembly

Disruption Group
- Moving Blockade
- Assembly
- People’s Picket

Support: Housing, Transport, Kitchen
They are coordinating support needs for a solid ask to community allies.

Outreach
Pub Crawls
Thursday meeting will be posted to hub.

Services: Tech, People, Press
We’ve brainstormed a bunch of roles and tasks that need to get done if our shared intentions are going to be actualized. These are intentions around reaching new audiences and skill sharing for people to organize around issues they care about, not just for the weekend and S17 but also afterwards

Announcements
Propaganda folks should check in with Yates to form a cluster
Strike Debt strategy session: Pot luck meeting Sunday

Presentation on Mailing Lists
The most important thing is that we use whatever we decide on. Tools only work when we put them to work
Do we want to have a unified set via lists.occupy.net?
S17@ is an announcement and report back only list
S17-services@ would be where discussion takes place
Moderation is REALLY necessary- each sub group should come up with their own agreements when they request a list
Important to make lists easy to find no matter where they are- we need a comprehensive lists.
Text loops are for tactical decisions or event days

Report back: Interoccupy is set up
What are people’s intentions for the s17?
Mutual aid event on the 17th that is both disruptive and dual power
Educational event on organizing and direct action
Creating an action menu over the weekend that will push people to large action on the 17th.
Focused disruption on the 17th.
Focus on mass national convergence
Action that raises awareness of Occupy throught the boroughs leading up to s17
Help someone to collect all these intentions online so people outside of this circle know what’g going on broadcasting intentions.
To do an action around food and bring awareness to food issues. Fortune cookies that have information about Monsanto etc.
Push conversation forward progressively
Organize live streamers to cover everything, raise awareness.
Show people how to urban farm, show people alternatives.
Mara thinks we should build up to the civil disobedience and begin with the education
Focus on the marginalized communities
“The group decides whether they want to break out or not”
Access to info and visability : including tech and live streaming
Convergence, education, awareness and mutual aid
Distributed, education and awareness and mutual aid
Disruption
Spectacle and celebration
Pat saw three theme :education mutual aid and training
Broadcast citywide training
Spectacle, disruption and

s17 meeting 7-16-12

Visibility and Information Access

Talking about:
Technology infrastructure
Material creation
Material Distribution
Cluster/WG working on web and media, communication hub, press liason, coordination
NYC non-Occupy contact person
Get feedback from May Day team, other non-Occupy teams

Properties

• Interoccupy Hub
  • Coordination/organizational/organizer information
• Website (S17NYC.org)
  • Calendar
  • Blog Posts
• Comprehensive list of Occupy properties to coordinate with/operate (allied media)
  • Twitter Account
  • Facebook Pages
  • Interface with existing Occupy FB pages
  • Interface with recently made S17 FB event page
  • Find and coordinate with other FB pages
• Importance of making clear who contact people are, where press information is, how to plug information
  • Define workflows

Content

• Press releases
• Stories
• Human Interest Content
• May Day audio stories, leveraging existing infrastructure
• Forward looking
• Organizing process
  • Logistical Details
  • Minutes
  • To-Do Lists
• Important to divide and define work processes to improve onboarding of new participants
• Allied Media
  • Need dedicated hub/gathering space for curated submitted media
  • What’s the most efficient technical method for structuring this submission process?
• Propaganda
  • Visuals
  • Audio
  • Video
  • Text
• Larger campaigns?
  • Packaging content for strategically differentiated constituencies
• Content by request, take an active curatorial role
  • Best of distributed/found content
• Day-of media
  • Livestreamers
    • Keep livestreamers informed about events, timeframe, location, nature/topic (style of Occupied Inbox)
  • Hashtags for each event
  • Informational pages for each event?
  • Live Twitter stream for livestreamer information
  • Identify livestreams and YouTube channels for live and post-hoc video distribution
  • Global Revolution-style “livestream of the moment”
  • Keep in mind the implications of the 17th being Rosh Hoshanah

Roles

• Internal communications
• website bottom liner
• Press contact
• Convergence contact
• Non-Occupy NYC coordinator
• Calendar bottom-liner
• Social Media
• Onboarding bottom-liner
• Hub coordinator
  • Minutes and notes coordination

checklists

• How and where to post:
  • Press release
  • Allied Media
  • from S17 cluster
  • General media
  • Minutes and notes
• On-boarding volunteers

Education of the masses
food
action
involvement
tactics
connect to international actions (outreach)
Resources
premits (Bryant Park/Foley Sq)
concert group
National Gathering Group Planners
Housing (safe/supportive)
-logistics/time lines/deadlines
People’s guide to NYC (anarchists cookbook of the week)
Unions
tent camping
training booklet
group outreach to Solidarity NYC
Food(?)
Training
Inter Oc
Move to Amend ($ out of politics)
Academic training
Volunteer Academy
Events:
Film fest-15/16
Town Square (info/welcome comitte)
-Family friendly
-Location: Washington Sq./Bryant Park(?)
-Accessibility
Debt Summit (speakers from…?)
Where’s Wall St (7th-@27th)-discussion of issues/educational resources
National Day of training-(18-26 aug)
Wassaic action camp (10-14)
Direct action training in Foley Sq. (sun 16 sep)
Concert (sat 15th sep)
Free University
To Do:
Contact List
Logistics
Draft Calendar
Call to Student Groups
Organize for the future

Action training escalation August 18th -26th nationwide day of action, Sept 10th -14th Wasaik Farm action training camp, Sunday sept 16th public DA training Foley Square

S17 planning meeting – 7/9/12

We’re going to get started with some quick report backs from the S17
meeting at #NatGat. Introductions first, tho.

Ingrid – she – “been woefully behind on like everything, so I’m happy
to be here to get up to speed
Dicey – he – etc
Yeats – he – working on provisional discussion of weekend programming
leading up to S17, also strike debt.
Winter – first time at meeting – pretty excited!
Jeremy – live 100 miles away, so not continuously involved, but been
around for a long time Member of the environmental solidarity group,
and am involved with something called Labor Network for
Sustainability.
Stan – he – working on early morning action, a big picket — right now
we “have close to 1300 people confirmed for the morning of S17.”
Similar to 99 pickets. Trying to get a big, long picket around lower
manhattan that AM from 7 to 10. “I have a couple other ideas of how I
would love to see this day go.”
Abigail – recently got a trial rescheduled for the 17th, so maybe
touch upon how we can address that.
Brett – he, they – first S17 meeting; lately been focusing a lot on
court support, jail support ,strike debt. Want to tailor S17 to
building momentum around debt issue.
Matt – he, they – first S17 meeting “this year” (LULZ), “mostly
involved in Strike Debt/ mutual aid.”
Merisa – she, they – “mostly involved right now in debt-related,
Strike Debt stuff, and been going to Sunset Park” strike – first
official S17 meeting.
Mike – “my first meeting here for this thing. I haven’t been too
active in the past month; been taking a break, burnt out from May Day,
Chicago, before that.”
Evan – “been out of the loop for about a month… happy to get back into things.”
Aaron – he, they — been to a couple of things – “applying nervous
energy in various directions.”
Courtney – “I haven’t been involved in anything yet” for S17.
Marie – first
Linnea – “first large meeting for S17- environmental stuff and
promotional videos.”
Billy — “second time for this particular… been here since the 13th of
June, 5 days after Philadelphia, trying to make it work.”
Badger – “I was at the NatGat, at the S17 meeting there sort of.
Primarily I’m with InterOccupy, and we just launched what’s a new
organizing platform for national coordination, so I’m interested in
seeing how we can use that system to really build a cohesive strategy
for S17.”
Paul – less active the last few months, “but I was at the National
Gathering and was involved in the S17 convo Andy put together.” He,
she, they.
Shawn – “involved with Strike Debt; first S17 meeting, but been at S17
DA meetings.”
Melanie – “first S17 meeting, also been mostly involved in
environmental stuff, war and peace stuff.”
Ravi – “I was brought to this meeting on false pretenses; I blame
Charles. I work mostly on inter connective work — the newsletter,
project list, stuff like that.”
Charles – “I’m mostly active with TechOps; I prefer to think of people
as rows on a database. I come to you with a suggestion of how to shut
down the financial district on S17. Don’t’ yet have a good reason to
do so, but if we decide to do that I hope plan will be considered.
Drew – first S17 meeting – “I also work with TechOps and also brought
here under false pretenses, but I’m happy to be here.”

Yeats asks for elaboration on the false pretenses — Ingrid wonders if
it was “free candy.”

Ingrid: “OK, we’ll go into some report backs on different S17 planning
activities – S17 workshop at NatGat, and community dialogue that was
on Saturday.” Yeats suggests a 99 Pickets report back as well. Andy
asks if he wants to talk about the weekend. Gets him to.

Yeats: “Just as a really basic intro, the framework that has been, I
guess, yeah, consensed upon for the intention of these meetings, is
both to plan the kind of buildup to S17, the weekend of education and
cultural programming on Saturday and Sunday, to then set the tone,
provide plugins, and orientation for people to move into a big action
on the morning of Monday that would have some element of arrest able
civil disobedience, with possibility of other things to happen with
other levels of engagement and risk, but with a red action in the
morning, well-coordinated. So, an important part of the weekend
discussion is just how to bring people in, plug them in, orientation,
education, and some aspect of training as well that would be
accessible and get people prepared for the action on Monday, if they
want to participate in something of a higher-risk nature. And also,
maybe the prospect of having it be — having kind of conferences,
assemblies, concerts — a diverse action menu, but oriented to an
action on Monday in the morning. Kind of basic, really an empty
containiner at this point for brainstorming.”

Andy: “OK, so the S17 workshop at the NatGat was a little bit of a
clusterfuck — people didn’t want to do breakout groups, instead
wanted to spitball ideas, so that’s what we did. You know, the
framework’s so open that people who want to throw down certainly were
given, like, a clear way to get involved. We got, like, you know,
bottom liners — names and numbers for different occupies, which will
help with Interocc and future coordination calls. But there wasn’t… it
turned out to be a very loose brainstorm, and not a sort of working
organizing meeting, as much as I had hoped. But that’s OK. Yeah, I
don’t know — was anyone else there? Any other opinions?”

Paul: “There were some themes — not decision-making, but did come up
from a number of people — one was to try to do a flip — direct
action as not confrontational but pro-active and making impacts on
communities. So there was a lot of discussion and agreement on that,
maybe doing the weekend before or on Monday. And there was talk about,
you know, how do we get to some sort of mass numbers, and, you know,
is that connected to some demands or not? So there was some
conversation about that, and there’s two main — discussion about
doing DAs to confront and challenge power, but maybe to flip it over
– for example, a bunch of people taking over a subway station and
painting it, which would be illegal but proactive and
community-oriented. DA, but make people like us.”

Andy: “This is one of many, many ideas that were thrown out at this
meeting — the notes from that will be provided; in fact, we’ll talk
about how we’ll share notes through Interocc later in the meeting.”

Badger: “Interocc did gather a list of everyone at that meeting, and
in the next few days, we’ll send emails out to that group trying to
offer a listserv.”

Linnea: “At the NatGat, my group — the weekend group — a lot of
people were commenting on how, you know, with May DAy, we tried –
spread lots of little groups out, do-what-you-want approach, and al to
of people were interested in trying like, a all-together approach –
more powerful when we’re all together.”

We’re trying to find someone who went to community dialogue Saturday,
which was facilitated as if it were a GA.

Billy says the facilitation was weak; “She broke process on her own,
and when people called her on it, she seemed to think it was OK, that
that was her role. But after reading the book, it’s really important
to have the GA, and number two that everyone agree to follow the
rules, and the hardest part is going to be trusting each other. Often
seems like left hand doesn’t know what right hand is doing. I think
it’s really important to get to GAs, if we’re offering an alternative
to vertical democracy. Our only attempt crashed and burned, it’s going
to be tough to win hearts and minds without it.”

Aaron notes that the “September 17th meeting Billy was going to
facilitate was not that — it was supposed to happen Sunday night;
thing that happened Saturday was confused, possibly because Billy was
still in jail. Wasn’t what meeting was supposed to be.”

Yeats: POI: “Because Billy wasn’t able to do it, Sean kind of merged
the two, but maybe it does — maybe we do need a proper September
17th, outward-facing buy-in meeting.”

Billy: “September 17th was on the agenda.”

Dicey points out some folks have problems with Black Monday; trying
Red Monday maybe for a debt-related deal… getting buy-in may come into
that.

Andy notes that a community dialogue needs to happen — it was very
important, kind of a snafu. “So, now might be a time to take 5 minutes
and try to figure out when to schedule that meeting again and make it
happen.” Tells us Drew has been taking secret stack. So no one was
getting on stack.

Marisa: “We could just have these meetings in Liberty Plaza, or
somewhere else that’s more open, and invite people to come, instead of
having a separate outward-facing meeting.”

Winter agrees; notes this meeting wasn’t on the website and he had a
hard time finding it. Saturday, he says, is an attempt to re-establish
the NYCGA, not an S17 meeting. Dicey agrees.

Shawn wants to make sure we go out of our way to make clear it’s “not
a GA thing; people might not be sure and bail unless we make clear
that this time it’s not a GA meeting but an S17 meeting.”

Drew: “I think it’s a waste of effort to try and have another GA while
there’s already what, from what I can tell, two groups trying to
restart GAs — there have been GAs in Washington square Park, and then
there’s the group trying to restart the NYCGA. So, rather than put our
efforts into putting together a meeting, we should reach out to
whoever’s doing that, put ourselves on the agenda, be a part of that,
be in the community, talk to the community and not create a meeting
where we’re telling people what we want them to consense upon.”

Charles is worried that would lend legitimacy to effort to revive the
GA. Andy is also concerned about that. We lul.

Badger wants to tell us about Interocc’s new platform, “Because it
could solve some of this issue. Basically what we have is, you can
start a hub for organizing — basically, an S17 hub, and on that hub
you can keep a calendar of upcoming meetings/events, you can post
minutes, you can post updates to the hub which also get channeled out
to Interoccupy newswire and some to Occupy.net also. The reason I’m
mentioning it right now is because if thre’s a question of openness
and not wanting to legitimize a GA, one answer could be to start an
S17 hub where all the meetings get posted for this project, all the
minutes get posted there, and then basically just start spreading
around to the community that that’s the place to go to to find out
what’s going on with S17. One benefit is it’s not just NY-based;
people around the country will also become informed as to what’s going
on with this project.”

Andy: “The last piece here is that someone actually bottom-lines doing
an Liberty square meeting — maybe there’s no one here who’s going to
do it and then it won’t get done, but just putting that out there. If
someone wants to do that — Wednesday is another day when there’s a
lot of people there; I would do it on Wednesday if i had any time to
organize that meeting, because that’s the report back.”

Ravi: “While I agree that just everybody’s so burned on the idea of
the GA, I think there care two points that have been brought up that
are well-taken — first, this group has to decide if they’re
organizing S17 and everyone else has to sort of come along; to what
degree do we still consider our selves a community where we should all
be discussing things — IT hunk the planning process would be very
different. Is this an AG where people show up if they are in the
network and know about these meetings, or is there an effort to make a
larger conversation? needs to be structured very differently. I mean,
the idea that this group has to have an outward-facing meeting is
interesting to me — outward-facing to there set of the world or to
OWS? If so, it needs to be happening in town squares, the places where
we are. Debt assemblies, etc — but that requires a lot of commitment
to the people in this core group to go and talk to everybody, and not
everyone is going to be interested or have the time to put in the
time, and there’ll probably be the kind of differences of opinion or
disagreements that happened around MayDay ,and how do we deal with
those?” Suggests we be really honest about our self-conception. “WE
should be open about it — saying it’s an open group isn’t enough for
it to actually be an open group.”

Yeats: “One thing is, these meetings, in the same way that May DAy
was, are kind of housed, or hosted, I guess, by DA — and the DA
workshopped the framework for having a big DA-type thing on S17 for
more than a month, at DA meetings, and even before that there were
these discussions of Black Monday — the conversation has been
happening for a long time. And part of the intentionality of these
meetings was for them to be sort of a planning spokes, not unlike
MayDAy ,where epoeple working on the project come and reportnback on
what they want to do on S17. That was what people seemed to feel good
about. One concern was making sure it wa s conversation that does
include everybody, so everyone can plug into it.” “Last time, it was
proposed to have this bigger meeting at Liberty to make sure everyone
knows that this is the place to come.”

Ravi notes she’s “talking about it more on a, you can document the
things you try to do and if they didn’t work, they didn’t work.”

Paul: “I just wanted to reaffirm exactly what Ravi said — what are
the goals of the meetings, who are reaching to, who are we trying to
engage? Are we engaging people as decision-making, planning, or
reporting decisions that have been made? So, the question — even Andy
when you say there’s a meeting next Weds, a meeting with what people
and what audience and what goals? I only knew about this meeting
because you asked me to; there are a lot of people who’ve been
disengaged, and will want to re-engage around S17, and I think we need
to be really careful not to structure this around the people already
here” or we’ll “replicate a lot of bad shit.”

Marisa thinks “this is a structural question — how do people come
into this planning process, and what is the goal? To shut down the
FiDi on S17? To my mind, that would require a support cluster, spokes,
and an affinity group structure for the actual actions and levels of
risk.” Marisa asks if she can draw something.

Andy: “We’re going to have some breakouts on information flows, web
people, structural meeting stuff — I thin some of this stuff will
get fleshed out in the next bottom-lining space. I think it will get
fleshed out. We’re also over time on this.”

Marisa: “OK, so — the project list, newsletter, Interocc — that’s
our convergence center, right — how people are being directed. And it
makes sense that the support spokes would be the kind of more open
space — to get people connected with whatever, making posters,
banners — and then the affinity group thing would be more closed.
Those would be the levels of engagement for me.”

There are about 10 more people here now than during intros.

Linnea: “I propose we don’t have a meeting at Liberty Square for this;
that we just commit to announcing these meetings everywhere we go, and
encourage folks to show up.”

Aaron: “I just wanted to clarify — the way this worked out is there
was a lot of back-and-forth about what S17 should look like; one group
said there should be a meeting every week, and that there should be a
few days of stuff and one central action. This very meeting was
supposed to follow the big meeting, and would be start of actual
decision-making. So, yeah, it sucks that you just found out about it
by word of mouth — that should not have occurred — but the structure
hasn’t been imposed; y’all are in at the very, very very ground floor
– was supposed to be, and things got fucked up, but we can still make
structural decisions now.”

Ingrid notes this is a good segue into actual discussion.

Andy: “This is the point where this shit gets really fucking
complicated — we’ll do some breakout here into different things;
let’s go slow into breakout groups; last time I tried to get a group
do break out, it didn’t work. Nope — refusal. Maybe that’ll happen
this time, maybe it won’t. I think a big piece we just touched on is
information flows — how do we make this the most transparent process
possible, that use the horizontal network strategies that we use and
are good at? A big piece of this is the web info piece, and there are
some people from tech here, but I would encourage folks who don’t
normally see themselves as Tech get involved to make sure the
information gets farther and farther out, transparently. So as Paul
and Ravi said, we’re continually growing the meetings, but at the same
time staying organized and not overwhelmed.”

“So, there’s been a request for a calendar of events leading up to
S17; there needs to be some kind of talk for a schedule for national
conference calls — again, it’s a question of when, and who’s going to
bottom-line the calls? Weekly? I hate conf calls, they drive me crazy;
we’ll need to hare that, I’m sure. There’s a weekend of events; we
need to figure out how to fill them with programing. Free University
will throw down; there’s a lot of talk about a concert, there’s a lot
of talk about large DA trainings — propaganda stuff. How do we
continue the cultural creation really hard, and have a space on the
website where we push things out really hard over Facebook, twitter,
the websites, all million of them?”

“And then transparency — again, meeting minute transparency; where
does Dicey send the meeting minutes after this? Where are all meeting
minutes for S17 put really intentionally, and open? So I suggest that
this be one breakout group. Who’s interested in going to that breakout
group?”

So, some people.

“Then, there’s a big propaganda and art piece; you might talk a little
bit about messaging or something, and then how to realy push on
propaganda. There’s a huge training piece that needs to be addressed
on Sunday and up to the day, that is unfilled — not a lot of folks
here. And then there’s this whole outreach piece as well; how do we
bring people not in our networks out to this?”

“Let’s talk about that structure for 5 or 10 minutes and see how we
can make it better.”

:”Maybe with the training part, there should be some other weekends
training stuff — or add a component for the weekend events.. don’t
see that up there.”

: “In terms of outreach for people not in our network and not
traditional allies, I think we need to get a more cohesive plan or
something to say when we outreach, other than say, “Oh, come hang out
in the FiDi on S17!” We need some messaging, and concrete events need
to be locked in before we can ask other people to come join us.”

Ravi nudges Andy: “So, mesaging.”

Marisa: “Yeah, web info propaganda a– all outreach, so it doesn’t
make sense to me to have these as separate categories, and actually –
yeah, I’d think that outreach would be the orientation; how people are
getting into whatever space we’re creating. And so, even training is
part of outreach in a way. So, we’re actually — this is not really a
structure, it’s just breakouts around different types of things people
are doing — we’re not really addressing how we’re moving forward and
what our goals are or how we’re achieving them.”

Paul agrees 100%. “What are we outreaching, training for? What’s the
message? People are going to ask tomorrow what this meeting was, ‘what
are you guys doing?’ I awno, we just broke up into groups. And when
people wake up end of day on the 17th or the 18th, what do we want
people to think about the Occupy movement? because what happens on the
17th, it’s going to define that.” So, “to me, to move into those small
groups without having a bigger discussion of what the goals and
message are, and what we want to happen prior and after the 17th….”

Linnea: “I agree with him completely. I don’t want to break out into
these groups until we know what we’re doing- want to have a brainstorm
about that — what that weekend and maybe the two weekends before that
look like.”

Yeats: “I agree that one lesson from MayDay was that having small,
quasi-secretive affinity groups plan actions… didn’t work very well on
May Day. And part of the discussion thus far in buildup to these
meetings has been a large-scale DA on Monday, and I don’t think we’ve
really talked much about what that would look like and what the tactic
would be — I mean, something about shutting things down, CD — that
would be interesting to talk about. Also, in terms of what the
messaging would be, something that’s gained a lot of traction in these
discussions is the question of debt — debt as a connective issue,
that can sort of re-radicalize stuff around the 99% and be a gateway
into a larger conversant ion about capitalism.”

“So, in terms of making an invite to allies and friends, maybe have
some insight into what kind of action, but we haven’t brainstormed
yet. So I agree with Linnea.”

Andy wants to do whatever the group wants for sure, will temp check,
but wants to “throw out that there was some kind of messaging — one
group had a clear consensus that the messaging used should be most
broad and accessible messaging possible. That kind of ended the
large-scale focus on Black Monday as a term for the day. Or, if
nothing else, using sort of a dual-messaging — using it where it
works and not using it where it doesn’t. I also would say that 99
pickets is a picket in the FiDi, hitting goldman, wrapping around wall
street — that’s an action being worked on. Oh, and the more
broad-=based messaging is… does anyone have that? So, PR created
messaging for our… thing… it’s like, they can enslave us, they can put
us in debt, but they can’t stop us from dreaming together; we can’t be
stopped once we refuse to live in fear, we are the 99%.” That was the
more open messaging created by the PR group ,and I’m sorry I wasn’t
prepared to have the text out for everyone.”

“So, just to be clear — and there was some focus on Debt and there’s
a large push to do some focus on money out of politics stuff as well.”

Brett: “I think the thing that’s been lacking here is vision;
messaging and action are derived from vision. I want it to be more
than the 17th — we do something every 17th, and it’s SEPTEMBER 17th,
so we’re going to do something bigger, out of obligation. Debt is
starting to revitalize and looks to be the start of a larger campaign
– we can message; Black Monday is a meme, not a vision; it’s not
saying anything, it’s not energizing. So I think that should be part
of every conversation we’re having about this — is it feeding back
into our vision, mission?”

Ingrid notes that before everyone talks about what they want to talk
about, let’s talk about stuff.

Marissa suggests we do “ a visioning session for what we want the
movement to look like post September 17th.”

Ingrid agrees, notes there are 5 ppl still on stack, invites anything
crucial to be said.

Andy temp checks on taking 30 minutes to do a visioning brainstorm –
“it’s just going to be a dump, I imagine, but it’s important, so let’s
do it.”

Someone suggests we do “goals for the day” instead of “specific actions.”

Andy suggests again a temp check on goals and vision for 30 minutes.

Also, someone asks, “what the fuck are we doing here? Why — it’s
summer? Most of us are young! When I remember being young, I hated
being in these things! But every single person here feels it’s
important to be here. Why are you still here? Because for me, the
question is, how do we get all the people who had been here who got
sad and depressed and left — how do we get them back? It comes from,
why are you here? I agree with what you’re saying, but it’s got to
come down deeper — why are we here? And if that can be part of this,
we might be able to get something throbbing, as in energizing.” Ingrid
notes it’s gonna be longer than 30 minutes, but speaker suggests “make
it an hour!” Ingrid suggests we do 30 minutes to start.

Charles is on stack still — wants to know “if there’s a way to divide
into people who want to do logistics” versus visioning.

Some concerns: “Visioning should be part of all the breakouts; I never
imagined it would be separate when breakouts were suggested. Visioning
needs to be a part of every planing process we are going through; I
don’t see the need for it to be split.”

There’s some contention about this — Ravi and Charles don’t want to
be involved in visioning, just tech tools stuff. OK, visioning
discussion for 30 minutes, loosely facilitated.

: “This is going to be in September. Presidential Election is in
november. We need to take advantage of the fact that Americans are
going to be less apathetic than usual, involve din politics and issues
- if we can come up with cohesive messages.. .we know why we’re here,
but this would be an excellent opportunity to break that message down
and send it out to a general public. That coupled with an awesome
direct action would sell it to general public, but with messaging and
flying that can maybe answer the question “why do you occupy?” we
could answer those questions and have an awesome morning of CD, so
people would say “they gave us all this information and pulled off an
awesome action that disrupted the status quo.”

Shawn: “I envision S17 being a big day but just a day — so it can be
a powerful way to develop momentum with anniversaries of events, and I
think debt could be a powerful tool — it connects every issue that we
talk about. I think we can envision this stuff, and develop it, and
maybe we can have a really cool plan for the weekend.”

Mike proposes a way to do visioning in small groups: “I propose we
break up into groups of 4 or 5 for 10 minutes, maybe 15 max, and
people just come to agreement about 3 questions which are about
change, and at the end of S17: “how does the movement change, what’s
the change in the conciscousness of the GP, and what’s the change in
the power dynamics around these issues?” And maybe that can help us
move towards some consensus around what we’re doing on that day.”

Yeats: “I just wonder if… maybe, so we don’t entirely have to reinvent
the wheel, we can say some of the things that have already been talked
bout in these meetings, in terms of getting traction, etc. I think a
couple points that haven’t been contentious — it’s an anniversary, we
want to take advantage of that, and the media focus, but use it to
launch something new. A debtor’s movement, maybe. Also, an affirmative
dimension, so “reconstruction,” or “building another world” — both
additive and subtractive tones. The narrative of debt and
reconstruction had been consensed on, but needs a lot of elaboration.
And the question of how we weave it into the action that we’re
inviting people to take part in needs answering too.”

Aaron: “ Iwant to note, with a touch of very loving irony, that it’s a
little ironic that we were just talking bout making this inclusive as
possible, and now we want to do visioning in a small group, and have
some kind of outcome. I think doing visioning in a group larger than 3
people is going to take a very, very long time, and maybe we won’t get
to a vision. That said, I completely understand and think it’s
important that we all have the visioning conversation and make sure we
all feel ownership over this thing.” Aaron suggests goals, rather than
vision. “I don’t think we should even dream of one focus for that day;
we could spend 20 years talking about what the vision would be.”
“Also, we shouldn’t be too intentional about what’s going to move us
forward,” tying ourselves too much to a particular vision because “as
we’ve seen it will” turn out differently than we intend.

Aaron’s ideas:

Elections — “the third convention, where the power actually lies”
Getting money out of politics is an “enormous thread going on all over
the country.” Wall St is a good place to go to.
Justice — “there was an investigation launched in Spain against head
of IMF; indignados are taking credit for that; we can’t do that in
this country, but we could call this a citizen’s arrest of all these
motherfuckers.”
Police state + stop and frisk — we should drive this home
Debt — yeah, directly tied to wall street.

“So, all these things have been talked about — I think you exclude
people by focusing on one of these things, and we should focus on many
or all of these things,” make a platform for people to express
themselves against all of these bad people. “All our grievances are
connected.”

Andy: “So, PR — here’s the messaging PR came up with which they think
is super broad-based — “they can steal your job, your home, your
freedom, your vote — they can’t steal our ability to dream together.
nothing is impossible once we refuse to live in fear. We are the 99%.”
There’s more, Andy talks too fast. “You are not alone.” “Let’s occupy
our future together.” “So, that’s what a lot of people worked really
fucking hard on to come up with, for some broad-based messaging, so
far — again, I’m with Aaron; I don’t think this day is going to be a
specific issue — I would love if we focused on 5 things and not 100
things, but even then, who fucking knows? So, I guess we’ll continue
the visioning. But I just don’t know how — sorry for not creating a
framework to make that into a productive space, but I don’t think
people want to break out into smaller groups.”

Drew: “I just want to agree; I think it’s foolish that we could come
up with a vision or have anything — I think the productive use of
this amazing organizing talent in this room, other than talking in
circles, would be creating the space for people to fill. I mean, going
to the park with tables and stages and just opening it up and just,
you know, having empty space that people come and fill, and reaching
out tot he groups that are super passionate about these issues –
those are who will invite their friends, do outreach, make FB pages,
do all the legwork, if there’s a space for them. Ajd then our job is
making the physical space, networking space, and online space, to put
it to ether — here’s who’ll be here; folks are doing this at this
time, and then as we see who’s coming together, we can just market
around that. And what Andy just read is pretty — pretty great, and it
leaves it very open. So, I’d say that, you know, we’re focusing on the
wrong thing; we’re already probably part of groups that are super
awesome and have clear goals and visions, and I think it’s our job not
to choose a vision but to create a space.” That’s what we did last
year. “Imagine if we had an infrastructure in place beforehand, rather
than $400 of PB and bread.”

End of stack.

Andy: “Again, I’m not sure where to go here — it seems there’a bit of
a split in the group. New people who haven’t been involved, people who
want to do visioning — about half the group — and there’s another
half of the group that wants to do organizing in breakouts.” It’s
tough to know where to go from there — the people who want to vision
should have a visioning conversation — stuff that comes from that, we
can do from there.” “We could get a bunch of stuff done in this
meeting, and it would be nice.”

: “If a lot of people want to break out into groups, why isn’t one the
groups visioning?”

Paul: “I think we were calling it goals, not vision — want to talk
about concrete goals for the day.”

Someone suggests they’re not mutually-exclusive. Ingrid asks how many
people know what conversation they want to have. Andy reviews the
groups:

“Goals, web/info, propaganda/art, training, outreach, programming for
weekend, monday’s direct action.”

Marisa wanted to have a goals conversation not to “have an abstract
visioning session, but to concretely decide what it is we’re doing, so
that we know what kind of web/info/infrastructure we need, what kind
of propaganda we need, so that we can connect.”

Ingrid is frustrated. She leaves.

Someone suggests we have the goals conversation; Andy’s not clear on
whether that’s what people want and wants to make sure strong visions
aren’t silenced. “Who wants to stay in a large group discussion about
goals?” “OK, who wants to break out into more specific groups around
framework?”

Kobe: “It’s just a question framework:

1. What are the objectives of the action?
2. In what ways will objectives be met and to what effect?
3. If not met, what will the effects be?
4. missed it
5. missed it
6. What role will the action play int he larger strategy?
7. What is the audience of the action? How does time/place/messaging
affect that?
8. Is it an action you’d want to join if you passed by? Would you feel
alignment with protesters or want to be protected by the police?”

There’s 5 more. But andy wants to know if we’re doing goals discussion
in small group or large group. It looks like we don’t have a strong
preference, so we’re staying in this whole group. Andy: “There was a
lot of talk about shutting down Wall Street.”

Opening stack on goals.

Linnea: “So, my goal for the day is to have so many — over 100,000
people. With that said, I’d be happy if we just doubled May DAy. So,
my goal is then to come up with an action that we can do outreach on
that is clear, that we tell everyone exactly what is happening, and
that we can get people to come and do, and in this we educate people
that the way to make change in history is to put your feet in the
streets.”

?: “I have a similar idea about, your presence means more than your
vote — or your body counts more than your vote, something along those
lines.”

Billy: “Where are people going to stay? I’ve been here 18 days; I’m
sleeping not he streets. Where are people going to stay? Philadelphia
had a lot — the bottom line on how many people you’ll get will be if
you have a place for it. And if you’re planning this over the weekend,
Sat/Sun, they’ll stop you — have a plan B.”

Yeats: “So, I think that people who want to do propaganda will do
that, tech ops, etc — a lot of that work will happen outside the
meeting; this was supposed ton e report backs of what are folks doing.
I think the one thing that we all need to talk about is the one action
on the day — we’ve talked a lot about example of seattle; people
doing hard locks, soft locks, and support contingents from allies. We
won’t right now know what the exact spatial tactic will be, but what
kind of CD that can have some accessible, theatrical messaging? But we
do need to start thinking about how we have as many people as possible
commit to an action with various tiers of engagement, and for which
there’ll be some more specialized training, and other things only a
day of training for folks who come to city and want to put their body
where their mouth is.” So, convo about CDs might be a fun and
productive thing to do. Because on May DAy, “the secret tactical
teams” didn’t pan out. “Awesome things, getting locked down, we have
trainers that know how to do this shit.”

Kobe will rephrase: “We have better tools now: inter occupy; the PR
group is pretty good in messaging. If we don’t have clear objectives
or clear goals, we are again talking inward, to each other. We have
350 million people in this country — why can’t we, like other
countries, get people in the street? What is the common ground that
each of us in the next few weeks will put many hours of work into? How
can we get 100000 people in the street? Been an hour, no clarity
whatsoever so far.”

Drew: “Yeah, why are we doing actions? We can have a bad-ass action;
why the hell are we running around the street doing… almost none of
our actions have I really seen a clear like, “Hey, we’re out here
stopping traffic for this reason.” And we do need the coordination,
both technical and face-to-face outreach — you know, we have a
mailing list that reaches 20,000 people ;we have to be able to say,
“Hey, we’re coming out for this,” and my contribution to why is I thin
kwe should have a day of — we have all these solutions!
Solution-based, like, “here it is.” I mean, it’s boring, sure; it’s
not running around the street in a mask and having a great time, but
we need to show that it’s open source — oh my god, I could do a whole
thing about how you can get all your shit for free, why are you
wasting money — so blast it out, get people not in our Facebook
groups into the street.”

Paul: “I think goal conversation is really important; if we agree we
want 100,000 in the streets on S17, it’s going to require a real plan/
conversation on how to move those people. We’re not going to get
100,000 at 8am; we’re lucky to get that 4pm; I’ve never seen an action
that’s gotten more than 20k, 25k, on the streets on a Monday — maybe
40k. That’s a big decision, and we’re going to need a day just to
figure out how we move 100,000 people, and it’ll be a lot of work. So
that’s why I’m really clear on what our goals are — if we want
100,000 people in the streets, that’s going to affect TEchOps and the
database –y ou guys can’t be off… that’ll affect the decision.”

Tess: “I’m concerned about the logistics of it being a Monday morning
– it’s Sept 17, which is a totally self-referential day that means
nothing to anyone but us. At least May Day had some history behind it.
So, I think that, like, being really really clear about why this day,
why not any other day; why does it have to be at 8am on a Monday, why
does it have to be September 17th, and what are we actually doing and
what’s the purpose to people who have nothing to do with Occupy is
really important to nail down.”

Shawn has a POP, not a reactionary one — “I’m confused about the
process we’re doing.” Andy explains we’re talking about goals. “OK.
Yeah, this time last year, there was about this many people who knew
about OWS, as are sitting in this room. Actually, this time last year,
probably nobody knew about it except two people at Adbusters. So, I
mean, like — we have the potential for.. the number of people who
were there last year to times 10. So, I’m not worried about what part.
But in regards to the message — in the past year, we came last year
and said, “Yo, wall street’s fucked up,” and then we figured out,
“holy shit, there’s a huge homeless problem,” and then “holy shit,
racism is a problem,” and like, “Woah, prison-industrial complex,” and
“woah, police violence is everywhere!” And we’ve done all these
things, and public space, and money in politics, and DA — that all
came after the initial idea that, woah, these motherfuckers are really
rich. All that stuff is after S17 2011. S17 2012, we have evolved and
expanded, so much. PEople actually realize — people talk about
systemic analysis, and capitalism, and things that never were on their
radar. So S17 to me, goal, is to bring it back to Wall street — all
of those things that we have now grown to encompass. Wall Street is
everywhere, fucking capitalism is everywhere. Taht’s what we bring
back to Wall Street, 2012.

Andy: “For organizers who aren’t into DA stuff, and they’re into
growing, you know, the organizing process — we have all these GAs,
and organizing campaigns going on right now. I want to grow the local
GAs, make sure there’s one in every borough after the 17th, making
sure the campaigns are strong — strike debt, student movement. So,
we’re applying for permits in Parks, Bryant and Foley just to have big
open spaces – welcome people and do the hard organizing that many of
us are really into. I’m not really into the DA on the 17th, I don’t
think it’s really going to do much of anything — but that’s OK; it’s
important, just not my strong suit.”

“I also think the weekend helps to radicalize people towards the
actions on the 17th. 99 pickets is a little more left-reformist folks;
want to go down, be on Wall Street, be en masse. I want to be blocking
entrances to the roads, like the west side highway, and the brooklyn
bridge, so that wall street doesn’t open on that day. That’s not a
mass action; that’s an affinity group structure. I don’t give a shit
how many people show up on wall street on that day; I’m interested in
organizing people so they go into their communities and do work. I
don’t think massive work so people show up on one day is an effective
strategy.”

“And on the gaol side, I think we do have to clarify — debt is clear,
and people have been focused on it, and it’ really comepling stuff –
it’s been done. There’s money out politics folks they want to do a
live broadcast; I think we should give them one corner of the park to
do that. I think that framework to open up is a great idea, but I
think we will need to bring like 5 things maximum if we want people to
show up, that they think they’re going to get.”

Linnea: “I have ideas for how to frame this whole weekend, but I also
don’t know if people want to actually talk about actions.” “What I
envision for the day is we spent Sept 7 to that day to talk about
“where is wall street?” which gives us a space to talk about all the
things wall street effects. So we get a mass demonstration after we
get people to understand that change is not going to happen if they
vote every year once a year and watch their TV.”

Charles wants to make sure that we weren’t offended Ravi and him went
to work on tech stuff. “We got lots of stuff done. I think it would be
great if we had a plan and got 100,000 people out for whatever, but
I’m a pessimist, and don’t think that will happen.” Plan B might be
“focusing on a smaller group of people, up to 10,000, can do using
direct action. I think S17 is a play that needs the scene — the press
is going to commemorate the 1-year anniversary. Our allies are going
to demand a 1-year anniversary thing that demands attention. So what
is that going to be that conforms to what the media expects in order
to maximize the attention we get and fill it with what we want?
There’s all kinds of ways, but how about shutting down Wall St to
traffic — that would be a great way to start the morning; will get
attention even if it doesn’t work, and will connect to all the goals
we’ve been expressing for the last year. And anyone who’s been working
for a news station will simply find some reels from the past, and
connect it to what we’re doing that morning. Our message is almost
secondary to that.” “This is America; there’s a reason we don’t have
lots of demos that bring out millions of people — we have a political
culture that de-emphasizes people power and risk and emphasizes
voting.” Thinks we can at least make sure that we have “an
easy-to-televise spectacle” that will get people voting to pay
attention. “The event that reaches the most people will be whatever we
do the morning of the 17th, which will be televised and written about
in daily newspapers. And this will be true even if we have lots of
conversations with people about what the future might look like.”

Sue brings up “efficacy. And what I mean by that is — I don’t care
what we do, actually; I don’t think we’ll get 100,000 people; I don’t
think we’ll get 10,000 people without the unions. At this point, I
hate most of the unions — I’ll sing you union songs if you’d like;
I’m sure you wouldn’t. But the point is, how do we show that what
we’re doing works? People don’t believe in their own efficacy, and
when we started, all of a sudden, it was like a north wind — people
got a belief that somehow this group of people developed some sort of
efficacy and pushback. We need some sort of pushback again- we need to
underplay and succeed. OTherwise it goes back to narrative of
disappointment. On May DAy, did you know the cameras were out in the
morning? They showed the Tax Dodgers, etc — but virtually no one
covered the march, and how we were corralled by union people in red
shirts. So whatever we do, if it’s to open spaces for the local
assemblies, which is what the indignados are doing in Spain — so
whatever we do, let’s think in terms of efficacy. That we have to do
it well.

Marisa: “So, we don’t need 100k. We actually only need 500 of our most
militant core occupy folks to come out, if we actually want to shut
down the FiDi — we can do that, if we train and get into AGs and
prepare for it. And I’m actually not interested in having 100,000 in a
march of any kind, and come commemorate the spectacle of OWS –
tourists taking photos of the red thing — I’m more interested in
people doing actions in their own cities. So, I think we should focus
on that — what was it that empowered people to go out and organize in
their own communities? Not a spectacle, but what actually empowered
them. I liked the people’s convention idea — some kind of affirmation
that we are what’s really legitimate; our relationships with one
another, our DAs, but the political system is illegitimate. So I like
that kind of power play. And obviously, I like the debt thing — I
think we need to, if people do want to shut down the FiDi — well,
first, where is WAll ST? Is it the FiDi? Are we doing it for symbolic
value, or are we actually going to sites where business is actually
done? Do we want to go shut down chase headquarters in midtown? I
mean, what is it we’re shutting down when we shut down wall street?”

“And on the debt thing — I mean, yeah — I liked the sort of
imagining the debtor as this new sort of working class — it’s the
common denominator, and we’re all oppressed — having the debtor in
public and visible on that day. But I think that’s sort of a
subcategory of this larger framework. Yeah. I don’t know.” “So yeah,
the question is, what are we going after? What do we want to affect?
How do we want to empower others to take their own actions?”

Matt: “So, I think there are two basic threads I’d like to see emerge
– one is direct action, two is dual power. Thinking back on May Day
– in the days leading up to, there was this great article about the
Pinkertons characterizing us as wolves and the banks as elk – and back
in the day, people were saying they were terrified of this movement
because it was making people think critically about capitalism. And I
don’t think we’re that threat anymore, and I want to be that threat
again. So to have an actual affect on capital, unlike on MayDAy, when
the dow reached an all-time high.” Less concerned with how mainstream
press interprets, or mainstream america (code for white middle class),
but what affect we have on that day on capitalism.

And also, “i want to see what ideas from May DAy that were good come
to fruition in btter way — have different actions, red yellow green,
in different places, so people have choices. And how do we demonstrate
the viable alternative to capitalism on this day? And to actually
demonstrate that those solutions are here with us.”

?: “My vision — I would like people to wake up on the 18th and get
it, and get why we’re doing this. That’s a vision; I really like the
where’s wall street thing — could make cartoons with businessmen. I
really like the idea of making a space to connect interconnected
issues to wall street — maybe make a campaign of “Where’s Wall
Street?” I would like to see OWS get back to our roots and shut down
the FiDi — on N17, when we attempted, I remember thinking, “This was
the first try; we’ll keep trying.” “And I’d also like a clear message
of why we’re doing this — not just running in the streets locking
ourselves to things because we’re bored, want to demonstrate dual
power.” “I don’t know — I think a lot of people have said shutting
down wall street is a goal they want to see. I know there’s technical
ways to shut it down” — WILD UPTWINKLES — “and then we’ll work on a
street strategy. Let’s really plan ahead, and we know there’ll be a
huge police presence, so how do we overcome that?”

Dicey: “ o I’ve been hinting a lot about dual power also. Wheres Wall
Street is actually being developed already – so thats great and they
need a lot of help so thats great. So yeah Wheres wall street and its
tentacles and the intersectionality. Ive been thinking about how we
lop off the tentacles … how bout we block a grocery store and give
away food in front of it? Blockade city hall and have a ga in front of
it – this is the new govenerment. Do you actually need these
institutions??”

Paul: “I think one thing OWS did so well was, getting people to think
about how corporate power affected their lives.” People who have been
getting by, their lives haven’t changed much in a long time. “We don’t
need to educate people who have been fucked over, we need to provide
opportunities for them to have an effect beyond voting.” “I like to
shut shit down; I’m good at it “ — but I think we “ need to use the
time”… I mean “it’s an election, we need to know people’s eyes will be
there, and we should focus on how this is an election that’s been
bought by corporations.” “Let’s provide opportunities for our friends
and neighbors to get into the streets as an alternative to the
electoral process.”

Billy: “I don’t think we really have to point out the issues anymore
– people know the issues — what people want to know is, “what can we
do? How can we change it?” On the 18th, people need to know how to
take an action we’ve led them to.” Notes there is a group that is
working to pass anti-corporate ordinances. “Give them somewhere,
something to go with all this information we’re going to drive up.
We’ve changed the national dialogue; now we need to get working people
involved.” “Let’s give them something.” “Move your money was great and
empowered people — I hope it’s not over; we should be doing it right
along. “If we have 100,000, we can have 5 actions at the same time.”

“This is the one time these suckers are vulnerable — we should have
little actions leading up to educate people, educate people, and then
give them something we can do with the emotion we stirred up.”

Andy tries to synthesize — “the biggest thing I heard is shut down
wall street — a bunch of times. There’s a question of mass versus
direct action; didn’t hear a lot about weekend, which is a little sad
to me, because I think that’s a space that can meet a lot of people’s
different ideas and goals. That’s its use. So, I just want to — I
would think that a productive direction — to come to consensus, and
put the proposal forth to try to shut down Wall Street on September
17th — does that make consensus from this group? Not a big step at
all, but it’s something we can say we got out of this. And then to
move from there to big groups.” After we finish stack.

Marisa: “What do we mean, shut down wall street? The actual physical
street, or the tentacles, and how do we do it?”

Andy clarifies; “The financial district. Not the tentacles of wall
street, not capitalism. The financial district. Hopefully the stock
exchange will close; not sure I want that to be the goal. That would
be great, but…”

Tess: “And not all the banks that just happen to be in Midtown?” Andy
agrees, and notes that “a lot of people just know to go downtown.”

Charles: “It’s a traffic thing. Streets are skinny.”

Andy asks if that’s clear, to shut down the FiDi, and notes that
there’s expertise and committed people who could take that on.

Folks don’t look inclined to push to consensus on that; Yates notes
tho that that has been an agreement for a long time within DA and
other groups. “So I kind of feel it’s a little bit redundant.”

Anyway, we’re going to finish goals stack. Marisa suggests we just
slowly move towards specific action ideas.

Michael: “So, the idea of shutting down the FiDi doesn’t really excite
me that much; it feels really expected for one, it feels like
something we’ve already done, and it seems really obvious. I really
like the meme of “Where’s Wall Street?” and I think that the call for
everybody to come to New York to shut down the Financial Center, we
might succeed, but people might say, “Yeah, of course we did that.”

People are really amped about “Where’s Wall Street?”

“Could build solidarity actions everywhere off of that meme.” Could do
“reclaim Main Strreet, or rebuild Main Street” — going off weekend
idea, “or on same day, not sure, we could do actions to feed the
homeless, paint subways, that kind of thing — get all people
involved, people who came to ZP to build something — I was one of
those people; I’ve never been involved in activist work before ZP, and
what inspired me to be there wasn’t the marching but that I was
involved in building something new. And I really think we need to
build on that on S17.”

“And then I’m also hearing this debt idea, and we’re weaving that into
it — I mean, I can see new tumblers, of just — you know, holding up,
how much debt we owe — I saw an app on Facebook recently — and I
could talk to the developer of that app. and what that does to me is,
obviously it exposes things, but it also addresses this issue of
personal shame over debt, which is how our power is being squashed at
this point.”

“So, I guess I’ll leave it there, but taking a few of these memes and
letting local occupations build off of these memes collectively/
autonomously would be cool.”

Alvin: “The Federal Government spends millions of dollars on military
research and like nothing on” medical research. Found that “almost
everybody wants additional medical research,” and for example are
willing to pay additional taxes for it. The press won’t discuss it.
“So I think that we should go out and find the things people are
interested in, and make signs, and hold them up.” “People can see this
– nobody’s going to argue with you if they see something like this.
So the point is to take things that people are interested in, not just
that OWS is interested in.”

Dicey: I forgot that one of the things we haven’t talked about is the
weekend is — someone already made a call on behalf of OWS to Occupy
everywhere to show up that day. We’re going to have a lot of people
showing up wanting to do something. One thing i realized during natgat
is that a lot of people who are organizing for the movement never saw
the park except filtered thru media. id love for those people to come
and see what i saw in zuccotti park and see what we are doing together
– that understanding maybe a weak point around the country. What kind
of space do we create for people to join the efforts in other cities?”

Shawn: “I’m not going to be at any more of these meetings, so I’m just
going to say what I think. I’m not for, really consensing on an action
– I’ve just done way to much of that in the past year and realized,
you know what, people are going to do what they’re going to do.” No
consensus will include everyone. “But, I’d like to create a container
for actions.” “We had a really good structure, and we practiced it
really well on May Day — didn’t turn out the way we wanted, but I
think the space was good to allow different groups to organize
different actions.” “And when I say container, I’ve learned that it
really needs to be a tight container. A too open convergence just ends
up not going well — so I would like to see the containers very
clearly defined, and we do have the organizational ability to do
things. The more I think about it, I think I would really like to see
us clearly define what we are going to do — and I don’t know if it’s
been a desire for secrecy to make sure actions happen, but… we have
really good things going on. And I think about, what does OWS do best?
OWS does best getting people to think about direct democracy and their
relationship to politics in this country, and wall street’s
relationship to politics. And I think OWS is good at getting people to
think about what their money’s doing, and the debt strike campaign –
and we’re pretty good at shutting shit down.

But I think that there are very clear things going on, so when I say
“create a container”, I would like to see on the website: actions !
These are the actions that are happening. And see a schedule set out,
and be very clear to everyone what’s going on — and there should be
plenty of space to do work, and tell the press what’s going on — not
wait and see, but what we’re doing right now.

I think our best actions have been of the format — breakfast, lunch,
dinner — N17 was like that — shutdown in the AM, lunchtime we spread
out in the city, education, cultural arts kind of thing, and then
there’s dinner, and maybe dessert.

This format is pretty simple, organizes things nicely and neatly, but
still lets you jam pack it with things. N17 was a well-organized
action, I think. Morning was organized really well, color blocks was
good — lunchtime was good — people have said they want different
zones of safety, so dividing in that way — very finely cutting out a
space that if you want to do this, this is where you go.

Shawn: “I like the idea of a tight schedule, too. And I might be
fantasizing, but I might be hearing something gel here — people are
working on different things; there’s space, for the 3 days we have,
where these groups can show up — like, maybe the container on 15th
and 16th is the park; there’s a concert; I heard people talking about
local GAs and networking happening with that — different groups,
debt, money out of politics — and then Monday being a day of actions.
I like this breakfast, lunch, dinner, dessert thing – and the red
actions are going to happen in affinity groups, and those aren’t going
to be planned in meetings like this, so the weekend is great for that.
And I like the idea of shutting down Wall Street Monday.

Andy: “I think we’re moving towards a a framework; sorry this meeting
wasn’t better-organized, but that framework is what DA and others have
decided on. But again, I made a proposal to focus more on S17 — like
on that day of, that action — do we want to tighten this up to
speaking just of action day?”

People like this.

Andy: “There’s a midtown – downtown split — we’ll need tof inure that
out, whether we want to spread this out even more.” And lastly,
“Lenchner’s ideas about using tech tools to organize AGs,” Lisa
Fithian wanted to make sure we started doing this. “I think that’s the
decentralized model we usually follow anyway, and it’s simple.”

Andy asks us to focus on shutting down wall street versus shutting down midtown.

Yeats: “I thin kthe DA consensus thing around shutting down Wall St
int he morning was done with the explicit point that that would still
absolutely make space in the rest of the day for people to do stuff
whenever “– likes B,L,D structure, wants to know if there’s a way to
coordinate even more so there’s “a rolling set of actions.” Asks if we
should focus on the big action in the morning as the mainstream CD of
the day, and trying to get high-profile arrestees to commit – -having
conversations w/ people in academia, culture industry, arts, allies –
“here’s thec hence to do a large-scale civ dis that will get lots of
media coverage, not just a melee with police but a historic act of
civil disobedience that really resonates, and that people feel
confident and empowered to participate in,” and that you only need an
afternoon of truing on Sunday to get in the right mode. “Sit-down
assembly, maybe, like #O15 in Times Sq.” Scaled big, boom, everyone
sits down. “There’s a large risk of arrest, but the more prominent
people there are, and the more staged as a media event, might lessen
brutality exercised on the arrestees. I don’t want to sound naive
about that, but if you have Joseph Stiglitz there, or Cornell West, or
others who are sitting down with hundreds of people committed to doing
that — I think there is value in spending a lot of energy to make
that big thing in the morning happen. Not to the exclusion of anything
else, but some kind of sit-down thing that’s really simple and would
be hard for the police to pre-empt.

Brooklyn Bridge had surprise value; this probably wonldn’t have
surprise value,b ut still, big arrests.

Marisa: “So, I think that people — we were talking about having
different zones, color-coded, risk level — maybe breakfast, lunch,
dinner — and I think the assembly is maybe in the yellow category,
and is actually really good for people coming out of town — you can
just sit down, and it’s mobile. Wherever we can actually get to in the
FiDi — the fact that it’s flexible and mobile is good. Tactically,
that’s how we should be thinking for the day.”

“I really like the ‘where’s wall street?’ meme; not everyone’s coming
to New York; maybe there’s structure for people coming in and for
people who can’t or don’t want to come and will do things in their own
cities; WWS is compatible, doesn’t have to be one or the other.”

Marisa is imagining the assembly would be more a soapbox than
anything. “And then also targeted tentacle shutdowns. And maybe that’s
breakfast, and then lunch is… and then people join as they get off
work, and then there’s some big support thing that happens.”

Billy; “The biggest problem facing us — let’s address global warming.
Let’s target the biggest polluter in the city.” “I think our real
challenge is to be able to give them something that empowers them.”

Andy times-out. “I don’t see this going — I asked the group to focus
on midtown versus downtown; there was no focus on that. Folks are
leaving at this point; there was some sort of tech organizing that I
was hoping to get a little bit out of this meeting.”

Continuing stack:

Paul: “The idea of shutting down wall street — I think the way I
think about is really disruption, like stopping things from happening
or really delaying them — not arrests, but to shut things down from
happening, and you can do that and not get arrested. I agree with
going after Midtown targets; it’s been a long time since anyone was
able to shutdown the FiDi, and without knowing what our numbers are
actually going to be — if we don’t know what our numbers are — we
may not stop anyone from actually getting to work. SO I think
targeting 7 to 8 to 10 corporate targets, biggest of a bunch of types
of bad actors — taking over lobbies — red yellow green actions may
be able to happen in overlapping space. But we might be able to get
community organizations to focus on single locations; that way we
might have multiple targets, some will be hard core, people ready to
take arrests, and then elsewhere there might be other things… but I
don’t thin shutting down the FiDi is going to happen and we shouldn’t
say it. we’re attacking capitalism that day.” “Messaging around
demands could be complicated, but I think the overall thing is occupy
& the 99 percent — and also tho it’s not picketing. I do think we’re
building takeovers with various degrees of red-yellow militancy and
arrest potential.”

Stan: “I guess you guys might have talked about the picket, but we are
doing a picket in the morning from 7am to 10… as stated before, we
have 1300 people confirmed going already on S17. It’s gonna be a
picket; we have targets that we want to go down on Lower Braodway,
coming up on Water Street; we want to get coalitions together –
essentially, it’s going to be an action where no one gets arrested.
I’m hearing that people want to have actions to get arrests, but maybe
some people don’t want to do that ,but… I guess that’s up to everyone,
but personally, for me, I wouldn’t want to get arrested for something
like that. So i’m just throwing out this one action for that day, and
hopefully we can have a place to get the other community organizations
to come together and tell us what they’re planning, because to me
occupy is about everything.”

Shawn: “That’s what people are doing — they’re doing their, ‘my
group’s doing this.’ Like, the debt assembly thing is awesome; I think
it’s the prerogative of people coming together in the same room, when
working on different things, to” figure out how to make space for each
others’ things. “I actually did want to say something about
midtown/downtown — I just want to call into question… I think the
FiDi is not really where the 99% work; lots of 1%ers, rich people –b
usinesses that cater to wall streeters. That’s the thing; we either
shut it down earlier or later in the day. i think Midtown has its
merits; it could be really cool. A lot of people work around and walk
in midtown… I just want to add that a lot of people are working on
Judson; that’s in the works. Get in touch with Yeats and Tess about
it. But yeah that’s a cool thing, that people can come.” This would be
for giving people places to sleep.

“Basically, what we’re doing is different things, so, like, Judson is
a thing — it would be really cool if this stuff was organized; Ingrid
who left is the OWS cartography department; we have awesome tech
people. What I would love to see, and what I’mgoing to work on, is an
action list — a tech tool so that everyone in any city can say, “I
want todo this shit on S17.” “I would like to see the focus go, ‘don’t
just come to new york and show up,’ i would like people to have a menu
and choose, because that’s what life is — there’s a whole lot of cool
stuff you can do when you’re not doing capitalism.”

Alvin suggests we go harass the media. “Right away, you’d probably get
some publicity, you see.” At NatGat, he went to a meeting where he
said he should say “stop large scale death and disability.”

Shawn: “Yeah, I want to shutdown downtown for breakfast, the whole
streets, high profile arrests — and then I want to shutdown Midtown
for lunch.”

Charles wants to argue against the ‘schmorgasbord’ approach — one of
the crazy things was that there was no single website that advertised
all of those things. “When you have things on multiple websites by
different groups,” it loses focus. Might be hard to keep focused, but
for after S17, “how many months in advance” must we act to keep people
from planning against each other?

Matt wants to draw a distinction between militant actions and CD. “I
think it’s a dangerous trap where we can end up in this martyr complex
of mass arrests, and all we do is pump more bodies into the military
industrial complex.” Should be more creative with tactics to avoid
everyone getting arrested.

Andy notes it’s 9pm; we need to figure out who’ll bottom-line the next
meeting and who’ll debrief this one, to make sure the next one is
better. Closing stack now… Andy: “Would people like to go around and
say what they might be interested in doing?” OK, looks good.

Tim: As far as the smorgosmboard – its important to give people the
narrative about not just the one day, but the three days. on n17, the
framework worked was really useful – the breakfast lunch and dinner,
and dessert. the three days are really important: people will come on
monday, but if theres build up over the three days, affinity groups
etc will be able to determine where to plug their various ideas in or
something. i don’t know tims gibers are magical”

Marisa: “Someone said something about tentacles, and someone else said
something bout other occupies asking for ways to decrease dependence
on systems they’re fighting against — ‘what do we do now? How do we
actually build these dual-power systems?’ That, for me, could be an
overarching theme — break the chains of our dependency on wall
street! And what does that look like? And that looks different in all
these situations!” There can be many ways that… a schmorgasbord
doesn’t mean it’s disorganized; we can have a very organized disorder.
So maybe we should think about how we do that, going forward.”

Andy: “We’ll go around now and talk about what we’re going to do –
actions we’re going to take after this meeting.” He and Yeats have
been working to secure weekend permits; need frames about who’s coming
and stuff.

Marisa wants to talk about permits in general — “it’s a huge question
– it’s a political question.” Says she’d probably block it. “Setting
that space is something I’ll continue to work on,” asks her to work
with them to create spaces to make those kinds of decisions.

Dicey: “I’m gonna think and talk about this with people.”

Tess: “I don’t know what I’m doing tomorrow, so I don’t know what I’m
going to do on S17.” “One thing Brett and Abigail and others, newly
formed legal / JS team, we’ll need some structures to deal with jail
support and be on top of all actions that are being planned.”

Yeats: “I want to work on the weekend stuff, including looping in a
lot of academics who have supported occupy and been vocal and visible
about it but not having done anything other than just announcing their
support. So, be it conferences, summits, assemblies, training,
blending formats together for the weekend to make sure it serves as an
orientation for the weekend up to Monday. So, that, as well as working
on need for spaces. Sympathetic institutions who can offer convergence
centers, media space, or sleeping space.” “How can we bring in the
training component for real on the weekend?”

Winter: “I don’t know. Trying to thin about how debt ties in.”

Stan: “I’ll be working on the early-morning action that is going on
S17; also, Ill be talking with Yeats now about the housing. We have to
get people — people’s cars to be able to be parked, need to talk to
riverside, other churches about housing people. PRobably need to
figure out funds with that Also, I’ll be thinking about how to make
this meeting actually work better. SEems like this should be a place
where people’s actions that they’re doing, people can get more
involved with those actions.”

Shawn: “I’ll do what I always do, but from very far away. so I’m just
going to troll the listserv, do the best I can, work on tech
facilitation, and then come on S17 and I’m going to come and
participate and be a person who walks up and is like, “oh,what’s all
this stuff going on?” Not gonna talk to us. Hates us. Wants new
friends.

?: “Court date; trial on the 17th. Fuck you, Sciarrino.” Oh wait, she
didn’t say that last part.

Matt is interested in question of “dual power, and what that will look
like, and will explore that. And do tactical research, targets, things
like that.”

Brett’s energy will go into the debt campaign, try to figure out how
something seen as a personal issue gets politicized and made
actionable. Using the 17th as a launch pad for an action campaign.
Will use energy towards that, might have ideas for a comms team but
doesn’t want to do it, really.

Marisa: “I don’t know what I’m going to do on the actual day yet, but
I hope — my great hope — is that it is a day in which we deepen a
resistance to capital and the state and provide people with real
alternatives; that we don’t just show up and have mass arrests and a
spectacle and commemorate ourselves but actually push this into phase
2, which i think is a real resistance movement.”

Michael will continue absorbing, mentally, everything he’s heard here
the last few hours, “and be a very introspective person as usual and
think about what it means to me, and i’ll continue listening to
someone, and based on my conclusions i’ll find a way to plug in.” “I’m
going to celebrate S17, because it’s an impressive accomplishment
nationally, personally, and worldwide.”

Alvin will speak to Vision and Goals.

Paul wil lake it all in, if he’s in the country, will think about ways
to get involved in tactics, CDs, that shit. “And if I am around, I’m
interested in engaging people who have drifted off, back in the
movement.”

Shawn will “process everything that happened here tonight, and
interested in how debt can intercept S17. And into leading propaganda
action campaign starting t least a month prior.”

?: “I’ve never been involved in planning this kind of thing, so I need
to process what everyone’s said. I don’t’ think all the campaigns
listed are inclusive. And I want to think about internally, after S17,
this can inspire other occupies that haven’t done so well and can look
to us as an inspiration.” WWS.

Linnea: “I would like to see — I want to talk to people who want to
talk about getting a lot of people here on the weekend; perhaps some
sort of non-arrestable demo on the weekend so we educate people about
NVCD,” especially environmentalists. More than half who did CD at WH
for KP were brand new, huge eye-opener.

Also, will talk to ppl, maybe Yeats, about doing some action where we
embody our power by singing. “Because when we sing together, it’s more
than just our bodies, it’s our voices in unison, and as we saw with
auction blockades, it creates energy cops have a very hard time
disrupting.” Rewrite “mr auctioneer” about wall street. “Would be
awesome to have a singing action.”

Charles: “I’d like to support a website that makes it easy for people
to register for the things they want to do, so everyone who registers
can” have ways to carry the work forward. I want to help with actions
done by collective, rather than actions done by specific groups, and
wants to provide resources that make it easy for public to answer
question “what is this, who’s doing it, and where do i go to get the
info?”

Drew will support charles and be “available to increase the reach and
impact of whatever it is that comes out — the tools needed to collect
email addresses and phone numbers so we can follow up with people and
more deeply engage with them to create places online that explain
what’s going on, and that help people get oriented and have a better
understanding of whatever it is that’s going to be happening.”

Andy asks who wants to “take on this beast for next Monday.” No one
jumps up, so we’ll kick it back to DA — Sandy or Amin. Yeats notes
there is an S17 list up and running.

Announcement that Where’s Wall Street is meeting tomorrow at VVM, 55 Water St.