Ideas Working Group - Anti-Oppression, Consensus, Tactical Diversity 18 April 2012

= Ideas WG Meeting - Anti-Oppression, et al (4/18/2012) =

Tonight's meeting was held in room 401, 38 Ash Street. Eight people attended.

Handout material for tonight's meeting: [[Media:Ideas Meeting Handouts 20120418.pdf|Ideas Meeting Handouts 20120418]]

Particulars, Particulars, Particulars
Steve spoke with the BCNC earlier today; they are booked, and cannot accommodate our May meetings. We meet the first and third Wednesday of each month, which would be May 2nd and May 16th.

We can meet outdoors or look for another indoor space. Of those attending, folks want to meet indoors.

There is a list of indoor meeting spaces on the Occupy Boston Wiki: We could also try to reserve a study room at a library. Joe will try to reserve a study room at the BPL for May 2nd.

Steve will be out of town until the end of April. It would be great if someone could take point on scoping out a topic for the May 2nd meeting, announcing it GA, and getting a listing on the calendar.

OB Anti Oppression Statement, etc.
A few days ago, someone asked "What is ideas doing in terms of OB's anti-oppression statement"? We began the meeting by talking about the anti-oppression statement.

I have a question about the first paragraph in part 2:


 * We speak only for ourselves, and commit to hearing each other and
 * creating opportunities for all voices to be heard, especially for
 * those that have been historically marginalized or silenced, and for
 * those that continue to be oppressed.

Is that apply to how we speak to each other within Occupy Boston, or is it about how people in Occupy Boston speak to those outside the group?

I believe it's talking about communications within Occupy Boston. But that's interesting -- you could read it either way.

Sometimes we have heated arguments, and those can be divisive. If you have a group made of the 99%, then you'll have all kinds of people, and there will be differences of opinion. It would be scary if those differences of opinion weren't there.

Loyal dissent is normal. For a movement that tries to be democratic, differences of opinion are normal.

We have to be careful of divisiveness and of fighting amongst ourselves. Someone pointed this out at the last GA. Numerous occupy groups have collapsed because of internal divisions. Last weekend, we saw evidence of internal divisions with the Mass. Tea Party. They held two rallies (Boston and Worcester); each rally had a different focus, and there was condemnation between the two groups.

Toleration for diversity is healthy. It's a way to hold the group together. We all have biases, even if we think we don't.

It would be nice to have a workshop on organizational communications. Not about politics or policy, just about group communications. This could help us learn how to communicate effectively, and move forward as people. There's a whole psychology about coming together. We seem to be stuck on methodology. Sometimes it's like we're at war with ourselves.

We shouldn't worry about being co-opted. Instead, we should focus on who we can co-opt. Have you seen how quickly ALEC changed their positions in the last few weeks? That probably would not have happened without the occupy movement.

In the past, we've worried about endorsing candidates, and we've worried about being co-opted by political candidates. We don't have to endorse anyone. Instead, we should identify the ones that are not on our side and censure them.

We're too large and diverse a group to endorse anyone. But we're not too large to call someone out. Elected officials only care about one thing, and that's getting re-elected. We can leverage this. Occupy MBTA was putting together a third-rail list; that could be an effective way to apply pressure. Call them out.

It's okay to disagree with each other. I hope that we can build some kind of governance structure, identify a few objectives to pursue, and then go out an pursue them.

There was a large meeting at UMass Amherst. They spent a day presenting agenda items and positions. People listened and debated. They identified (and voted on) a set of things to work on, then put together a schedule and a plan.

That sounds nice, but consensus and voting are not the same thing. Voting requires everyone to respect the outcome of a vote. Consensus means that everyone is already on board. Consensus is a lot more ambitious. Putting your hand up in consent isn't the same as voting. We do use a form of modified consensus, to avoid some of the problems with voting schemes; like tyranny of the majority.

This makes me think of the Polish Commonwealth. They ran on unanimity, and it was not democratic at all. There was a lot of bullying. But it lasted for a few hundred years. A silent minority can be intimidated into going along.

In OB's consensus process, are statements of concern the same thing as dissenting opinions?

I think they are. Maybe we should put more emphasis on documenting dissent. Think of the supreme court. Dissenting opinions are some of the most interesting things that come out of the supreme court. If we document dissenting issues, maybe we can learn over time. Think of this -- pass a resolution, but also note that someone dissents because of X. Six months later, if X happens, we can say "a-ha" -- and maybe we learn something from that.

Minority opinions might seem wrong. But we should be interested in, and pay attention to them.

Last week, we talked about autonomous actions and consent. If we had better consensus, would we have fewer disruptive autonomous actions?

As a community, we need to get back to the point of trusting and respecting each other. Look at Camp Charlie. That was an autonomous action, and it was very successful. But it needed the endorsement of Occupy Boston. It would have looked really bad if Camp Charlie didn't get the endorsement.

We also have silent supporters. These are people who don't participate in the Occupy Movement, and don't come to actions. But they're on the sidelines cheering for us. These people are wearing 99% buttons under their lapels. Could we do more for them?

We live in a fake democracy, where people are chained to their jobs. They're wage slaves. There are lots of people who work for big corporations, and can't get involved politically because of who they work for.

Could we have a regular event for these people? Once a week, OWS has a march down Wall Street. What could we do every week, to stay in the public eye?

What about having occupiers sneak into the park at night, one at a time, being very very quiet. Then, all of the sudden, we jump out and set up camp.

What about concurrent demonstrations? Say we pick a date and a time. Get ten small groups of people, and give each group a tent. The groups go out to different public spaces, and set up tents at the same time. We don't actually need to stay overnight -- just have tents and signage for a few hours. We'd need good security culture to pull this off. But this kind of action might lend itself to security culture. The groups don't need to know where each other will be; they just need to know when things are supposed to happen. This is different from our normal tactics. Instead of a big demonstration happening in one place, we have a lot of (concurrent) little demonstrations happening in several places.

There's a concept called "mobbing". Think of how little birds behave around a predator. They all fly at the predator from different directions, and this overwhelms the predator's senses. If there are too many targets, the predator can't go after all of them.

This is an advantage of autonomous actions: they can help security culture. You put your trust in a core group of organizers; most people don't need to know all the details.

Tactical Diversity Proposal
Our discussion has drifted into autonomous action and tactical stuff. This might be a nice time to segue into the Tactical Diversity proposal. It's on the second page of the [[Media:Ideas Meeting Handouts 20120418.pdf|handout material]].

This is the fourth version of the tactical diversity proposal. The original version opposed property destruction, but people objected to that. The property destruction aspect has evolved, but the element of tactical diversity is still there. Tactical diversity allows different people to do different things, according to their comfort levels. We reserve the right to revolution, but not to wanton destruction.

Last year, Occupy Boston passed a statement on diversity of tactics. The diversity of tactics statement was passed on a document called the St. Paul Principles; these principles were adopted for the protest of the 2008 Republican National Convention. The RNC was a one-time event, but Occupy Boston has been going on for months.

I'm cool with this proposal.

What does "unintentional destruction of property" mean in terms of this proposal?

We're talking about indirect consequences. For example, ruining a sprinkler system, because a bunch of people slept on it. Another example: say you're having a march, and the march stops traffic. Those cars will sit there and burn gas; that's also destruction of property (i.e., gasoline).

Think about Oakland. Would it be acceptable to destroy a fence, in order to prevent a mass arrest? I'd accept that.

There's a need to educate new activists about the potential consequences of direct action. If you do X, then you might be arrested. If you're arrested, then the following will happen.

We had four training sessions prior to Camp Charlie: two were for observer training, and two were for civil disobedience training. We always have briefings if we expect the possibility of arrests.

The proposal ends with three bullet points. These are subject to interpretation. For example, if someone comes up and starts screaming at me, that's assault. If I shoot them, is that a "reasonable action necessary to self-defense"?

It might be good to get a legal opinion on this document. Perhaps someone from the NLG.