CG wrote: "This is a very good essay to read and learn from. It captures various and unconnected thoughts I've had and forgotten The basic message is to `organize' in your immediate and surrounding space..."
FM: Agreed. Here is my frenemy's account of what he experienced when he and his discussion group attempted to bring up the topic of Neighborhood Assemblies at last Tuesday's OWS General Assembly:
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Tuesday, Oct. 12th.
Tonight's General Assembly split up into small discussion groups to formulate suggestions on how to improve the GA structure itself.
Around 12 of us formed a small group and a nice man named Gabe stepped forward, pulled out a pad and pencil, and offered to take notes and act as our spokesperson.
But before we could start brainstorming a man with glasses and a baseball hat held up a badge that had the letters "NVC" written on it.
"Nonviolent Communications" he said, "It's a communication process developed by Marshall Rosenberg in the 1960s." He was a certified trainer in NVC, he said, and he wanted to propose that the GA adopt NVC as a communications process.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonviolent_Communication
The NVC guy's proposal didn't go over very well and our group ended up consensing on three suggestions:
The first was to form a translation working group so that that the website and OWS could attract more non-English speaking visitors. The second (my own) was that since the GA had grown so large and because people weren't able to hear anything, we should propose that smaller General Assemblies or Neighborhood Assemblies could take up the overflow. The third was a suggestion that went along with the second, that Neighborhood Assemblies would allow people to speak longer and in greater depth.
When Gabe stood up before the GA to read our suggestions he got through the first but then oddly erased the other two. So no mention was made at tonight's GA of Neighborhood Assemblies. Perhaps Gabe lost his nerve. Much of the other suggestions had been very supportive of the GA status quo and no doubt it's hard to face down a large group and tell them that they may need to split up in order to continue a genuine spirit of horizontalism. Breaking up the GA into smaller groups is certainly up for debate unless, of course, it's never up for debate.
>From the LA Times:
"As for planning, Occupy Wall Street has reached a delicate stage at which what may have been born as a ragtag protest is being infused with professionals from groups with organizational skills such as Moveon.org and labor unions. Those groups helped plan the attention-grabbing march Thursday, but the change may produce internal dissension over the participants' conflicting agendas... Yet grass-roots movements rarely achieve much until they're yoked to movements with specific goals and the wherewithal to achieve them. After all, Rosa Parks was not just another seamstress angered by racial segregation on the bus system in her hometown of Montgomery, Ala.; she was the secretary of the local National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People chapter..."
Yours in the yoke,
Andy Podell