Ideas

Working Group Meeting Times

Ideas Working Group meets at 6pm on Wednesdays at the Boston Chinatown Neighborhood Center, 38 Ash St., Chinatown. We also meet at 2:30 pm on Saturdays at E5, which is on the 5th floor of Unite Here, 33 Harrison Ave, Chinatown. The Saturday location is subject to change. To sign up for text updates of meeting locations and times, text "@OBideas" to 23559.

Cooming Soon: The ideas working group will be holding topic-focused open political discussions at 7pm on non-GA nights - Monday, Wednesday, and possibly Friday. We need indoor space for these discussions! If you know of any, let us know by emailing ideas@lists.occupyboston.org

• Ideas working group meeting notes

Stay Connected and join the conversation

• Join the Ideas email list - email your ideas, join the online conversation, and view the archive of discussions

• Join the wiki. Have some ideas you are developing? Consider putting a link to them in the group workspace: User:WG-ideas You can also create your own user page by clicking on your name in the upper right.

Ideas Working Group Materials

Public Meetings/Public Discussions

Concerns Data

The Ideas Group has begun the process of surveying occupiers from all over Massachusetts to get answers to the question, "What are the concerns/problems that brought you to the Occupy Movement?" This is a preliminary outline of the data we have collected so far. If you share a concern on the outline, please add an X next to it. If you have a concern not listed on the outline, please add it. The Ideas Group would like to begin to prioritize these concerns based on your responses so that we can start holding concerns-based open discussions. It is our hope that working groups will form out of these discussions, and that from there we can start to build solutions.

Government Concerns

• Tax Reforms
  • Progressive Reforms xxxxx
• Small vs. Big Government
• Campaign Finance Reform/Get Money Out of Politics xxxxx xxxxx xxxx
  • Corporate Personhood xxx
  • Publicly Funded Elections xxx
  • Lobby Reforms xxxx
• Horizontal Participatory Democracy xx
• Criminal Justice/Prison Reforms xx
• Disfunction b/w Branches xx
• American Ideology x
• Military Reforms
  • Diplomacy vs War
  • Spending xxx
• Infrastructure Spending x
• Social Programs xxxx
• Justice and Equality xxxxx

Economic Concerns

• Capitalism xxx
  • Hyper-Capitalism/Greed xxxx
• Sustainability xx
• Privitization xxx
• Wall Street/Financial Regulation xxxxx xxxx
  • Housing Crisis x
  • Debt Crisis x
  • Bank of America/Too big to Fail xxxx
  • Criminal Activity/Unethical Behavior xxxxx xx
• Unemployment x
  • Outsourcing
• Wealth Inequality xxxxx xxxxx x

Socialization & Behavioral Concerns

• Value Based Accounting x
• Violence
• Anti-Oppression xx
• American Exceptionalism xx
• Wasteful Consumer Behavior xx

Environmental Concerns

• Air x
• Water xxx
• Degradation x
• Global Warming/Climate Change xxx
• Sustainability xx
• Waste xx
• Food Supply xxx

Education Concerns

• K-12 x
• College xx

Healthcare Concerns

• Healthcare Reforms xxxxx
• Universal xxxx

Workers Rights Concerns

• Unions xx

PROPOSAL PASSED at GA 11/29/11

Proposal for the General Assembly at Occupy Boston from the Statement of Purpose Working Group November 29, 2011

Declaration of Occupation

We, the people of Occupy Boston, have occupied Dewey Square in the heart of the financial district, in order to express dissent over the state of our political and financial systems. We are practicing a form of horizontal participatory democracy in the shadows of anti-democratic institutions that dominate our government and our lives. Through our occupation, we are creating an exemplar society in which no one's human needs go unmet.

The Occupy Movement has started a nationwide conversation about the realities of economic inequality and the meaning of Constitutional rights. We are committed to living the values of transparency, equality, accountability, awareness, sustainability, and compassion as we struggle against corporate predation, injustice, and oppression. We are actively seeking to include the diverse voices of the 99%. Together, we set a precedent and provide a foothold for people to demand a truer, more horizontal democracy, in which greed has no influence.

Regardless of media spin, police brutality, or sub-zero temperatures, we will continue to peacefully exercise our first amendment rights by occupying, holding general assemblies, and planning for the American Spring. Our goal is a society that prioritizes the needs of all before the profits of the few. We are the 99%.

developing ideas

Occupy Boston Summit Notes

Occupy Boston Summit Notes - Overflow Room

Public Discussion Minutes & Notes

Friday, 18 November

• Went through the new process for GA meetings put forth by the facilitators group. The mock topic was a proposal to add a values statement to the Statement of Purpose.
• Here is the feedback from the procedure:
  • Facilitators need to be the ones writing on the whiteboard
  • Process needs to keep going and sometimes be changed in order to figure out how to move forward.
  • It may be that the best model for GA is not for people to propose a document that should be ratified, rather to propose the discussion of a document.
  • Some people were lost during the discussion due to the new nature of the process.
  • There is confusion in the new process of what happens after amendments had been made. This seems like a delicate point in the process.
  • We still do not have a way for the GA to create a proposal.
  • It may be beneficial for the facilitator, in the fly, to guide the synthesis of what GA is saying, and change the process as it needs to happen. This is tricky because the facilitators cannot help being biased. Another way is to have a very polished process that can handle many scenarios, but how to find that process?
  • The new method does activate people's minds more - it tapped into the "creative capitol" of the GA better.
  • we found that at one point the process did not fit the need of what we needed to do anymore at one point.
  • There was a desire from many to keep the procedure fluid and adaptable somehow. Hopefully that fluidity can be written into the process (catch-22?)
  • the facilitators need to have and be trusted with an extensive toolbox of process that will allow the fluidity of the discussion.
  • It was noted that you are always giving your freedom up to the process, or a facilitator, or the loudest voice in GA. We are picking.

Wednesday, 16 November

• Announcement/Get the word out about Occupy Declaration: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/99_Percent_Declaration
• Proposal to create an information card for how to discuss the Occupy movement with families on Thanksgiving.  The information card could give suggestions on how to talk about Occupy, but also remind to collect ideas from family members which can then be brought back to the camp for discussion.
• Discussion of possibly wording statements so that they are not as inclusive, by using words like "most of us", etc.  Debated whether this is a good strategy, no position was taken.
• Discussion on the purpose of statements of purpose, and how it can guide its development. Mention that it can act as a guide to how we live responsibly with each other in the camp (internal purpose), and how we may bring people into solidarity with the movement (external), or how it will guide our actions as we move forward (intermal/external).
  • Also it is noted that most of the good work that is done within Occupy Boston needs no Statement to happen, and that a multitude of different occupy movements have a wide range of different statement sizes, breadth, meaning, or do not have any statements at all.  No position was taken, however it was consented on that if we did draft a potential proposed Values statement, it might mention the internal and external purposes. (Note: google doc of all Occupy statement's movements here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1RsPuWV2D8UjB-N5WrmxZM7QxGJIABHON-ya3YtGawx0/edit)
• Discussion of what the proposal that we will raise at the facilitation testing of the new GA process on Friday.  We decided that it will be to propose that a values statement to be added to the Statement of Purpose.
• Discussion of what values to start off the discussion will be (Tess has the list, i forgot to write it down)
• Decision to set the date of the GA for the real proposal is Tuesday Nov 22.
• Decision to table the discussion of the whitehouse.gov/petition discussion of what petition to create until Sunday's Ideas meeting.
• Decision for a topic of discussion for an Ideas Public Discussion sometime after the Summit:
• Discussion of all of the Authors that have drafted Mission Statements, Declarations of Occupation, etc. to offer their ideas to the public and garner feedback in a discussion format.

Friday, 11 November

VALUES that came out of the meeting:

• knowledge
  • education
  • awareness
  • information
  • transparency
• unity
• change x2
• respect
  • diversity
• making "freedom" bigger
• non-violence x2
• peaceful
• consensus
• horizontal democracy x2
• solidarity
• equality
• fairness
• concern for others x2
• freedom
• positivity
• generosity
• compassion
• sustainability
• honesty
• unity
• cooperation
• mutual aid
• resistance to oppresion
• kindness
• empathy
• dialogue
• civility

SENTENCES that came out of the meeting:

• In an effort to create a more just and sustainable socitey, we will strive to embody the values of: inclusivity, honesty, non-violence, comapssion, cooperation, and ecological integrity.
• We seek to foster a cuture of inclusivity, a practice of sustainability, and a spirit of compassion.
• We beleive that in working towards change, we need to pread knowledge while maintainin a unity based on respect

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Original word cloud that was used to start the evening's discussion (word coud data collected from surveying the camp to answer the question "What values do we, as Occupy Boston, all share?"

see all Ideas working group values data.

Friday, November 4

Facilitator: Marty Facilitator: Forest Minutes: Mallory Stack Taker: None

The discussion followed this format:

• Introduction (10 minutes)
• Breakout Group Formation (individuals on stack) (20 minutes)
• Group Discussions (45 minutes)
• Group Stack/Presentations (10 minutes per group x 3 groups = 30 minutes)
• Conclusion/Summary

Breakout groups were formed after an opening discussion about what people wanted to talk about. The three breakout groups were:

• Local Issues
• Occupy as Paradigm Shift
• Functional divisions in the movement and occupy boston (i.e. offline/online, onsite/offsite)

Some noted questions/comments that resulted at the end of discussion:

• How does occupy reach into rural areas? Also, what about occupy gardens/farms?
• How to include people whose time is filled with work obligations (i.e. how to occupy time the same way we are currently occupying space)?
• "laboratory space" to describe our ideas discussions.

Two functional issues with discussion format identified by facilitator (Forest) were:

• Breakout groups for the most part lacked facilitation, stack taker, timekeepers, or minute recorders. In the future groups should ideally follow an established process for discussion.

• People who tended to agree seemed to clump together in the smaller groups. Maybe experimenting with starting groups with members randomly assigned and *then* applying law of two feet would be worthwhile? Also, instructing group initiators to make sure their group has someone taking stack?