GA Minutes Sun Oct 14 2012

= Minutes for 14 Oct 2012 =

Details
Location: Copley Square Time: 4pm - 5pm Note taker: Steve Facilitator: Rich Stack: Carolyn

Summary
Around 10 people attended. Since SAA was canceled, there was (I gather) some confusion around whether GA would be canceled.

We passed one proposal: to hold the Tuesday Oct 18th GA indoors, at City Place.

WG Announcements
FAWG (Linda). We're still working on the fiscal sponsorship proposal. We're planning to have meeting on Tue. to discuss details; the outcome of this meeting will be a proposal that we can distribute to the community. Proposal will be distributed at least five days before it's discussed at a GA.

Oct 28th is a potential date for GA discussion of the FAWG proposal.

Carolyn: I'd like to discuss this at a Tuesday GA when we have more time. Sunday GAs are short.

Steve: I support discussing at several GAs, and posting notes after each discussion. That way, there's more time for people to get involved.

No Room For Wishing (Carolyn). On Fri - "No room for wishing" will be performed at the Community Church of Boston. This is a special performance for Occupy Boston. Pay what you can. Doors open ~ 7pm, and the play starts around 7:30pm. Check the calendar for details. A bunch of us have seen this performance; it's really worth going to.

Community Gathering (Carolyn). On Oct 29th, there's some kind of community gathering, showing a film about Phil Ochs.

Debt Action (Carolyn). Kendra and I are trying to pull together a community gathering about debt issues. This will be be a precursor to more organizing around debt. See http://strikedebt.org for background information. You'll hear more about this. There will be a planning meeting before the community gathering.

Mantle Project (Linda). This Thurs, YMCA theater, Cambridge at 8pm. The Mantle project is a storytelling project created by a former MIT student. Alex and I will share stories about Occupy Boston, and a few tea party members will share their stories. There will be a facilitate discussion after the storytelling.

Cryptoparty (Dana). Next Sun, from noon--6pm, there will be a Cryptoparty at the Sprouts in Somerville. This will be held at 339R Summer Street, near Davis square. There are classes about encryption, tor, etc. If you're interested in learning, bring a laptop. Several OB people (Rene, Ross, Steve) are presenting. See https://cryptoparty.org/wiki/Boston for more details.

Linda: Will there be a short orientation, so non-tech savvy people like me can choose which ones to attend?

Steve: I'll talk to one of the organizers about this. As far as I know, there will be two presentations going on at once: one upstairs, and one downstairs. Several of the presentations will be done twice.

OBIT (Steve). We're planning to start cleaning up old/unused mailing lists. This is just standard IT maintenance stuff. We have 110 mailing lists; it will probably take us a few weeks (or months), to complete this process.

Justice for Johany (Kendra). On Oct 18th 5pm, Harvard Holyoke Center, 1350 Mass Ave. Demonstration for Johany Pilar, a Harvard worker who was sexually harassed. She experienced retaliation when she tried to report the harassment. Her union contacted the IWW, and the IWW are organizing the demonstration. JusticeforJohany@gmail.com.

FAWG (Linda). I've been paying monthly bills. We're paying $312/month to store logistics stuff in a 10x20 space. Rene is interested in thinking about ways to do things with this stuff. Talk to logistics if you have ideas about what to do with the stuff. They'd like to see the materials used. Maybe bring it up at SAA.

Maybe get a group of people together to spend a weekend working on it?

Voices (Dana). We created a web forum, http://voices.occupyboston.org. We'd like to get more people using it. We invite you all try having discussions on voices. If you have questions about how to use voices, ask us and we'll help you.

Carolyn. A fellow from Atlanta is moving to Boston, and wanted to get in touch with our logistics group. Has anyone been in touch with him?

Steve. His name is Ryan, I'm trying to put him in touch with logistics.

Proposals
We have one proposal today: to move Tuesday's GA indoors. (This proposal is from Carolyn.)

Carolyn. This is something I'd like to bring up as a discussion. As the weather turns colder, we should think about moving GAs indoors. This Tuesday, it will be 39 degrees outside. How would people feel about moving the GA indoors to the Transportation Building (City place food court). At that GA, we can discuss plans for future meeting space.

POI: this is short notice. We should change the location on the calendar, and put it on the web site. Maybe distribute to the everyone list?

There's agreement. Put it on the website, and send an announcement to the everyone list.

Proposal passes in consent bucket. Tuesday's GA will be held at City Place (Transportation building food court).

Individual Stack
Linda. I'm really exited to have a community gathering around debt. In NYC, Strike Debt group is blossoming as one of the cutting edge areas of the movement. Look at strike resistors handbook from http://strikedebt.org.

Carolyn. Some of us went to AIPAC actions this weekend. Something very interesting happened today. We got to the Seaport hotel, and were told by the police that only 8 people could protest; four people on each side of the door. The police said that the sidewalk was privately owned. Originally police said we had to stand a block away. Then, they let us march around the block, as long as there was no chanting in front of the building.

The seaport area is public, but rented. Since it's rented, the tenants can decide to prevent it from being used as public space.

Someone went to court over this. The decision about eight people around the door was a compromise that came out of that court case.

I've been to past anti-AIPAC demonstrations. The (pro) AIPAC folks were very aggressive, and tried to rush us. The police served a protective role. They didn't prevent us from demonstrating.

Anon. Several of us put 400 AIPAC spoof flyers under room doors in the Seaport Hotel. I hope people will show up tomorrow at noon.