GAPaP/2012Mar12

GA Process and Purpose, March 12 2012

Location: City Place / Transportation Building

Time: 5pm-7pm

Participants: 4

When can we meet?

The calendar's hard.

Meet Monday, or Friday, or both, or alternate?

CONSENSUS REACHED: Let's alternate. Tonight's the first Monday. We'll meet again this Friday at 5pm, then alternate Mondays and Fridays at 5pm from there out.

How are we different from Facilitation Working Group?

Some people from facilitation aren't here.

Some people not on facilitation have expressed interest.

Should we send a notice asking people if they're involved in setting a time to meet, or if they just want to be aware of what's going on?

Consensus working group seems to not really be meeting...

As I see it, the purpose of this group is to directly look at the data and concerns from the GA about GA's, to draw from those to propose potential changes to the GA sturcture.

It would be odd, if we're all on facilitation, to propose things directy to the GA and not propose things to Facilitation.

I'm sensitive to that -- it seems like spokes, consensus, and others are covering similar territory.

I'm interested in not just decision process, but also the other things that happen in GA. Have fun, discussions, maybe change the number of GA's per week. We could talk about the purpose -- why do we have GA's? And ideally, what we'd like them to be?

What is the role that GA is providing for the community? Is it more a social experience, or a decision making place? Does it make sense to leave the 2 coupled?

If we only had 1 or 2 GA's a week... one on Tuesday, one on Saturday... the weekend could be longer, a pot-luck dinner, and have discussions built in. Small group breakouts, and a sequence of events, and proposals part of it, but maybe not the main thing. What would hep that is having different process for different kinds of proposals. Maybe a short quick proposals as part of a long sequence of events, and then another set for longer, ideological proposals. Facilitation was talking about posting agendas in advance to see if people feel like they want to come.

I'm wondering what this will look like when we start meeting outside. Now that weather is getting warmer, there are going to be lots of events booked. No-one wants to go back to Dewey.... People have talked about temporary occupations all around. Is that where the GA is? If so, we'd have to be on top of it, because the GA would keep moving around. I don't know if we could pull off a potluck without knowing the space in advance and what it would look like.

Do we need permits to go to commons or parks?

No -- but if people there have reserved space and we try to use it, they're going to get on our case.

Facilitation has become like a job to me. I'm feeling burnout. I see a lot of burnout right now. Everyone things the spring is going to change everything. I hope it does; but if it doesn't, we'll have some really disappointed people.

If we could figure out the problem of where to do this, does that sound like something that's worth thinking about?

(General agreement).

• Drop to 2 general assemblies per week, one of them a longer meeting on a weekend with a putluck brunch
• Have different formats: discussion, quick proposals, longer proposals
• Figure out a way to post agendas in advance, so people know if they need to come

Looking at OWS's early proposal process...

I wish we could do a pop-up occupation like OWS does. I've been thinking of where a good place to do that would be...

I was annoyed that even at Dewey, we didn't know what was coming up that night.

Arguments against advanced notice:

• Things come up late.
• Where do you post it?
• It doesn't fit with our process of temp-checks and proposal ordering.

Is there anything like a "request for comment" as a precursor to a proposal process?

We've been talking about it...

There's the priority process, which people rarely use, but there's a public meeting required. Some people send things out sometimes, especially to facilitation, and ask for feedback.

One thing I've been complaining about is that we don't have a forum on the website. If we did, anyone can read it and go there. There could be categories and such, but we don't have anything like it.

This stuff is all very hard -- figuring out who has access, keeping trolls out, etc.

Do we want to focus on anti-oppression?

The concrete things I hear about is that the facilitation could be more diverse, or the tools could be more diverse. Also, progressive stack and how it's used during GA's, and collective acknowledgment of oppressive behavior in the GA.

There's also the safer spaces thing, which was brought to GA and passed.

(Longer discussion about anti-oppression, and looking at report-backs from GA about GA's). Maybe we can talk to the PoC, anti-opp, and women's groups to get their input into possible structural changes.

The proposals group mostly talked about whether we need to hear all the proposals that are brought. If there's money to disperse, can't it get dispersed outside GA? There are too many menial tasks that require GA approval.

My feeling of how to make changes within OB is to get a small group together, come up with a proposal, and bring it to the GA. I'm a little wary of the working group structure, even though I get excited by thinking of what can come of it. I think the best thing we could do is to agree to meet informally and come up with how things could be done better.

What are our next steps?

We could also do data collection -- surveys, etc., asking people what they think, and using that to inform a proposal.

One of the problems right now is that the proposal process isn't very good at that kind of data gathering; that's exactly what we want to figure out. People can bring proposals.... but is there a way to talk about things without it being a proposal? A proposal puts it into an adversarial tone.

We could ask the ideas group to come.

We could do a more formal survey, and collaborate with Occupy Research.

A possible way forward: do a 3-step approach. First, survey people and collect more data about what people want out of a GA. Second, as a small group, brainstorm and come up with a solid proposal for how to change things. Third, shop this proposal around various groups and individuals, particularly those we expect might not like it, and find out how we can change it to make it stronger. Then bring that proposal to the GA.

Next steps for Friday

• Ask people on the mailing list if they're interested in mostly just listening, or if they are interested in coming to meetings. Send out these notes, and invite them to Friday's meeting. Say we're trying to look at structural issues that FWG isn't directly working on.
• Start working on a possible survey to circulate among people who are not coming to GA.