Ideas Working Group - OB in 3--6 Months II - 16 May 2012

= Ideas WG Meeting (5/16/2012) =

Introduction
The topic of tonight's Ideas WG meeting was "Where would you like to see Occupy Boston go over the next 3--6 months ... and how do we get there?". Between eight and ten of us gathered in Copley Square to kick around some ideas.

We used a facilitation technique called "talking stick", using a voice recorder as the stick. What follows is a loose transcript of our conversation. (Loose, because it was very windy; at times, wind noise made the speaker inaudible.)

High Points

 * Occupy or repurpose closed/abandoned churches
 * March to Wall Street.
 * More focus, more commitment.
 * A more multi-dimensional view on human liberation
 * If we're not happy with our political leaders, then it's a great time to replace them.
 * Focus on the debt industry (student debt, mortgage debt, etc).
 * Make money, inequality, finance, and indebtedness the focus of the next election.
 * The 1% is really disciplined. If we're going to take them on, we may need to have a little discipline too.
 * Snap actions. Small, fun, and capture people's imagination.

Transcript
I was thinking earlier, what would I share, and what would I contribute to this conversation. I'd hope that first and foremost that we'd find a way to gather together. There's so much disenfranchisement, for a variety of reasons.

First and foremost, are we really willing and wanting to work on this, and to take it to the next place. The working groups with functional jobs are still functioning well. The more issue-oriented groups are floundering. Clarification of things will be really important. And commitment. In three months, I'd like to see us get a big amount of commitment, in a way that people are really willing to buy into.

It seems that many of us are uncomfortable being in a learning position, where we actually sit long enough to learn what's going on around us. There's either a physical antsy-ness, or a mental kind of antsy-ness, or an arrogance. Beyond that, I'd like to see political education, and political analysis. I'd hope that projects would be clearly defined, and that direct actions would continue. I'd like to see more clarification, and lots more commitment. And things that involve people in a way that direct action might not do.

In 3--6 months, I'd like to see us have a really clear anti-oppression statement that's integrated into everything that we do. I want it to be fun again; camaraderie and fun, like we had at Dewey.

We have to have a safe place for everyone. If that means there's a police presence, then there's a police presence, because unfortunately, they're a necessary evil. (long inaudible section.)

One of the unfortunate results of the occupation has been that cities have started to crack down on tent cities of the homeless. I know that's not the most important thing for some occupiers. I've heard (on twitter) that Occupy Wall St. was paying homeless people $25 to protest. For what reason? Because they homeless people are disposable and can be bought?

Someone pointed out an article about a company that hires the homeless, but also supports a ban on camping out at night, so I don't understand what ... (inaudible).

One strategy, for decades, has been to pay unemployed people to walk picket lines.

The whole idea that homeless people are disposable and can be arrested is just gross. An arrest can totally destroy someone's life, or destroy their future, depending on the circumstances.

How can we fold these ideas into what Occupy Boston should do over the next three to six months?

Get more working class Americans involved. In you have more working class, that's good. We have to target towards the voice of the working class, and target something that connects the working class with Occupy.

There are a lot of groups working on a lot of different things. I'd like to see us go back to basics: the banks. Especially with what's happened to JP Morgan Chase in the last week. The foreclosure crisis is related to that.

The Occupy Wall St. Journal had an article about Occupy Oakland. There was a woman who had her home foreclosed; Occupy Oakland helped her move back in. One of the woman's neighbors called the police. There was a long back and fourth between the woman and the police, and the police asked "is Occupy Oakland breaking into the house, or are they helping someone move into the house?" They came to the conclusion that Occupy Oakland was helping someone move into the house, and the police said "that's too political; we don't want to touch it."

(Inaudible section.) Sometimes it's disheartening that we can be so classist and racist. If people want change, they have to be that change. With the warmer weather coming, I don't see a reason why we can't find some other place to occupy. We have to find a way; we have to deal with things. We should be visible, and show the power of change.

We could reach people with consumer-based retail. If consumers aren't very confident, then they aren't spending money. The people that are given a certain pay are the ones most affected by this economy. They're not the managers; they're the salespeople who get shit on the most by the economy. That's just a separate idea about how to reach people. I've been exploring other options, but I'm scared to death of doing anything right now. I need some stability in my life, and I hoped that occupy would have figured something out. But it's always about money, and about visibility. And some people taking over, having their little dramas, and ruining things. I just want to see the movement get back to what it was supposed to be.

The first thing I think when I listen to everyone, I think "great ... I hear concerned people, and those are the people I'm looking at to do something about those issues." Right now, I'm really pissed at the Boston Police department. I just wrote a letter to the (BPPA newsletter?) editor, and I'm going to go in and talk to them. Those are things that I can personally relate to, and can do something about. I'm not good at bringing in other people. We worked so hard on the Open House, trying to bring in new people. We even put an ad in the paper, and only 50--60 people showed up. Only one or two working groups got new people.

I know zilch about some of the other issues, like homelessness. So I look to others to take leadership (or non-leadership) positions on those issues. I try not to worry. I hear lots of worrying. All we can do is to do our best and move forward. I'm all for doing stuff that's off the wall, like the May 1st funeral. I can back people on those things, and push forward where I can.

Since Dewey Square, there's no single space where we can all gather, recreate, and eat dinner together. I think we should occupy some properties, and give them back to the people. Last night, I Googled "empty churches in the Boston area", looking for churches that were closed down, mostly by the Catholic church. There were at least fifty of them in the Boston area.

Some churches have an ethic and and social responsibility. We wouldn't ask for the church to hand over the title, but we could ask them for the use of their property, while they decide what to do with it. We'd tell the church that we'd be holding meetings and gatherings, and feeding people, and giving people a place to stay. We could have workshops there, the radio station, and the TV station. Anyone could drop in, and find a dozen occupy people just hanging out, carrying on conversations.

If we found the right place, we could hold all of the occupy meetings there. That could save money, and make meeting locations more predictable.

I believe it is legally permissible to film policemen during the course of their duty. (transcriber: Yes, see BPD vs. Glick.) What about filming on private property? Does anyone have any knowledge or advice in that area?

I want to add to the church idea. Doing social service and social outreach would help gel that idea with the Catholic church. And I think you can sleep in churches. They cringe on some social issues, so we'd have to tread carefully in that area.

Finding a way to go forward, and coherence are the biggest things we have to work on. It would be a tremendous loss if we decentralized. Together, we can capture the interest of a wide swath of people, and help pull them together.

We can't make people come together. I'd like us to come together around some core set of values, but I don't know if we'll have enough coherence to come together around a single action or campaign. So what are the other things we could do to come together. Once is having a space -- that's how we came together in the first place. We can also find common actors (actions?) that galvanize us, that we'd all want to work on.

My favorite wild idea of the moment -- organize something serious around the first anniversary of the Wall Street occupation. I think it would be great to gather all of the local occupys, and march down to Wall Street. Like the way that Ghandi did the salt march, where people came out of all the villages, and thousands joined him. It would be a huge job to organize, and we'd probably have to march in shifts (because people have lives). I'm not totally committed to this specific idea, but I am committed to a big idea that would grab people. I'd hope that regular people would join us, because we'd be doing it for the 99%. It would be a concrete organizing thing.

I think we've been developing a thread of things that fall under the heading of anti-oppression, rather than just being focused on banks. I'd to find a way to make that network more coherent, and use it as a way to bring us together. I'd like us to be more dimensional, rather than narrowly-focused on economic issues. A vision of human liberation that includes more than re-dividing resources.

(inaudible section) During the great depression, we had the Bonus Army that marched on Washington DC. Instead of Washington DC, we could make the destination New York, and even the financial district in New York City.

We have to make jobs, and pay someone to do them. We have to count on the government to do that. Corporations won't, because they don't want to lose their capital. Too many jobs are private, and maybe we have to change that.

I went to a Citizen's United forum last night. One of the speakers said something that stuck with me. If you're not happy with your leaders, then now is an excellent time to replace them.

With the election coming, I think there's tremendous pressure to see the 99% as for Obama, and to subvert other issues. We need to look for things that keep us from being lumped into the Obama campaign.

I'm really focused on student debt. Mortgages and student debt could be a huge focus. Someone just told me about Occupy the Graduation. At graduation, students are taking their caps, and writing the amount of their debt. If you look at it from above, you see all of the money that the graduating students owe.

They're now collecting college debt from people on social security. That was very striking to me.

I'm on a fixed income, and they take $200/month out of that, to pay for a 30 or 40-year old student loan. So I get $1100 a month instead of $1300/month.

I have about $80,000 in student loan debt, only have a certificate, and can't get a steady job with that. Employers aren't hiring, or they're only hiring from within. The employers aren't giving people a chance to work.

Student loan debt is owed to a bank. There are issues about housing and unemployment. Debt forgiveness is a common theme here. We need to remind both parties to keep their eye on the ball. I know that occupiers don't favor electoral politics, but we can still put pressure on candidates.

If you declare bankruptcy, you can get rid of a lot of debt ... but not student loans. Student loans stay with you through bankruptcy. Today, college is almost a necessity; and during the last few years, college costs have risen very quickly. There's no way for most people to pay tuition without taking out loans. Between student loans and mortgages, you have to wonder if someone is trying to turn us all into indentured servants.

Homeless youth tend to be a higher percentage of LGBT. Homeless people are more likely to be minorities. This whole thing is targeted specifically towards these groups.

I'm going to say this with as much love as I possibly can. What's happening right now (in this meeting) is one of the major frustrations for me. If we are to move forward, from my perspective and experience, then we have to find a way to be more focused, more intentional, more disciplined and committed. In most working groups, this culture of "stack" causes us to raise a bunch of points that aren't connected to each other. It's very difficult to circle back, finish a point, and stay on topic. It's hard to access people and mobilize resources. If we're going to survive, we have to get more deliberate, more focused, and really hunker down.

We called a meeting to talk about where occupy Boston should be in the next three to six months, but we really haven't stayed on topic, and there hasn't been a thread of cohesiveness, even in the conversations. That's not bad or wrong, but it breaks down when you're trying to build something that can sustain itself. I don't think we can afford to do this anymore. Stack is part of what creates that. It's not that the issues aren't important, but when do we ever flush out all these ideas, and mobilize for action.

I'm frustrated as well, and I've stopped attending working group meetings that are unproductive. There has to be some fruit of our labor. We should be seeing some sort of progress. I think we should do fewer events, which are more organized and more focused, bringing in as many communities as possible. There should be a sense of occasion to them. When you begin something, you need to have an end goal in mind.

Different people do have different issues, and we should spend time figuring out where those issues intersect. That takes time, but I see people walking away in frustration. I also feel like we're at a shedding of skin point. A lot of the work is hard, and mundane, and slow. We have changed the conversation in this country, and it's easy to forget that. The ability to influence is important.

Going into the election season, I think we should be louder, and more focused on issues.

I don't think we should be frustrated with this meeting. I have a different way of looking at it. We're at a point where it will be easier for some of us to continue; those who are willing to take the good with the bad, and hang in there for the long haul. In the ideas group, we should be able to throw things around. I don't think this group should consolidate on decisions, because there aren't that many of us. We can come up with things, and leave them for someone else to resolve. I'm excited about hearing other people's ideas.

I'm nervous about the idea of discipline. There's an activist group I've been working with for years. We never had fights, no rifts; we all got along, and we shared a really complete politics. That isn't true here. On the other hand, we have a much broader range of people, in a very good way. I don't know if we'll get super coherent or super focused, or agree on a coherent analysis. We may need a way of being together that doesn't involve all of those things.

The key word here is austerity. In economic-speak, it's what the republicans like to do -- to cut spending in areas that can't afford the spending cuts. This is why France elected a socialist president. They elected the wrong people, who modeled their finances after the American lie. Wall St. deceived Europe, and I'm sure Europe deceived itself. Not everything is going to be cured and fixed in four years. We should talk about how long a presidency should be. Our presidents spend close to two years campaigning.

The whole sub-prime mortgage disaster hit the fan before Obama took oath, and we have to remember that. People don't want to remember that, because there's a deep seated racism. We should give Obama another chance.

It's an election year. Although many people don't want to touch electoral politics, we can still use the election as a way to get focused. Occupy's anti-politics should address some issues.

Dewey square was a project where there were a lot of different groups, but there was a common piece of territory. The election could provide a common project, where different working groups approach it in their own way. We make the election a focus on money, inequality, finance, indebtedness. I think there's coherence here -- there's nothing right about the way our financial system works. This could make us more visible, and help us with recruitment.

I agree with some of the points made about focus. At times, we are very reactive. There's a demonstration tomorrow; everyone show up. I'd like to pick really specific things, plan them out, and execute them well. Actions should be focused on very specific things.

I'm new to this activism stuff -- I've only been doing it for a few months, and I still stumble around. So, every once in a while, I pick up a book. In one of the books I read recently, the term "militant non-violence" kept coming up. It took me a really long time to get my head around what militant non-violence meant. Maybe it's another word for "discipline" (with a little bit of militancy).

I'd like to back up, and talk about discipline. The word has a lot of negative connotations. There's a wonderful, important, essential part of this movement that can be explained as a "cloud energy". It's creative, uncensored, and from the heart. That's what we tap for that kind of militant non-violent thing. There's also a time to sit down, focus, create a plan, stick to it, and monitor ourselves. Discipline isn't the word I'm looking for. More committed focus, intention, and sticking with it.

The 1% is disciplined about everything they do. If you're planning to fight them, there has to be some unity and follow-through. Think of media -- there's pre-production, production, post-production, and promotion. Lots of pieces. If you can work on getting all of those pieces in place, you'll produce a better product than just pointing your camera and posting a couple of pictures. Part of being an organizer is being a team player. Organized, focused, committed, productive -- those are all components of discipline. Anything worth doing is going to be hard. People get frustrated, but that means that this is important to them.

Someone said that about Dewey Square. He thought that things were one the verge of busting out and being wonderful. Then we all woke up and realized that it was going to be marathon rather than a 50-yard dash. That can be hard for a community that's really focused on individualism.

At Dewey Square, the whole point was to show the world a different way of living. Right now, we aren't showing the world as much, because they're not watching. We should take lessons from other progressive movements, that have found ways to organize and structure themselves for the long march. I hope this is quicker than a 15-year project, but it might not be.

As I'm listening to all of this, I have the feeling that we're doing a lot of really subtle dumping on people. I'm only willing to talk about me, what I'm doing, and the people that I'm working with. I worry that we do ourselves a disservice about thinking about potential problems, hypothetical situations, and what-ifs. We're not those other groups. We're this rag-tag motley crew, and we'll never be disciplined. That's not us. Our strength is in our randomness. Take things as they come, a day or two at a time. That's really weird and uncomfortable, but that's where we're headed. I'm just going to participate in the actions that I'm working on, and push ahead.

You know the horse in Animal Farm? Boxer, the dumb one. I just keep pushing myself, saying "I will try harder".

I think we should be working more with all of the other occupys, and learning from what they've done. All of the talk about working with different community groups is missing one very important aspect -- how many difficulties there are in that process. Some community groups have to take things in front of their board of directors, or they're working on grants, or trying to make sure that their own agenda is protected. That makes it harder. We've talked about working with different groups, but we haven't done a serious analysis of how things have worked.

We don't learn from what we've done, and how we could have done it better.

I think debriefing is absolutely necessary, to acknowledge when we get stuff right, and when we get stuff wrong. Everyone in occupy should be totally cool with having people look at their work, and give constructive criticism.

People are driven by different things. (inaudible) Some people understand unity of purpose, and don't feel threatened or territorial. You can't control that. Some groups resent the fact that we're so fluid, because we don't have to go through lots of channels of authority. But we might have to create some of those channels, for tax liability and such.

The energy behind occupy is probably what got people freaked out, or intimidated. If we can keep that energy in mind, there's a lot that can be done with it.

We have autonomy and spontaneity. A lot of community groups don't have the luxury of that spontaneity. (inaudible).

We do snap actions well -- quick and dirty small actions. The ironic march was a great example, or what Queer DA did with Victoria's Secret. We could do lots of smaller things like that, to draw attention to bigger issues. They're small, not hard to plan, fun, and really capture people's imagination.

We could do a quick and dirty action with Bank of America. People gripe about how Bank of America doesn't pay their taxes. You can figure out how much B of A should have paid, and break that down into some number of dollars per taxpayer. Organize a bunch of people to go into B of A customer service, and ask for their share of that money back.

I went to City Life meeting. A guy was priming the pump for an action. He had a handout about the CEO of State Street. Some of the statistics were absolutely mind blowing. If the bank was taxed at a 35% flat rate, they would have owed billions. But they got a tax refund of $781 million. That's just mind blowing. We could bring attention to these numbers, and call them into question.

Question: is there anything that could happen which would make you say "Occupy has done its job"?

Bring down one of the big banks -- like Citibank or Bank of America. And nationalize them.

There's a credit union in Washington State. So many people were taking their money out of big banks, and putting it into this credit union, that they had to close shop for a couple of days, in order to build the capacity to service all of these people.

Some groups have made a lot of noise at shareholders meeting. In one case, the CEO couldn't speak, because he was so overwhelmed. (inaudible.)

Bank of America -- that could happen this year. They're really shaky. Another "take your money out of Bank of America" campaign might help push them over.

I can't imagine stopping unless there's a worldwide revolution. Why would we stop? I understand the idea to focus on one bank, but they're all bad.

We can focus on democratic and republican conventions. Those are more traditional targets for demonstrations. (inaudible.) Do something for the DNC and the RNC.