Announcements:
– W. has been having people associated with Occupy kicked out of Peachtree and Pine and threw coffee in someone there’s face. This was considered unacceptable violent behavior in violation of OA’s pledge.
Committee Report Backs:
– Web Committee meetings moved to Sunday at 6:30 with meetings on the second and fourth Sundays of each month taking place via IRC at irc.indiemedia.org #OAwebsite. All other sunday meetings will take place at Peachtree & Pine.
– The OA website was “blacked out” on Wed. 18 Jan in solidarity with the internet PIPA/SOPA day of protest. All site contents were available after clicking through the information about the protest that Andrew craftily posted.
– Arts and Literature is reorganizing and working away with hopes of having more fun events soon.
Proposals:
– “Removal of W. from position as liaison for Occupay Atlanta with Peachtree and Pine.” Discussed whether it was appropriate to proceed with this without him and others involved present and concern expressed for following process. Proposer agreed it would be better to delay vote on the proposal until the next GA.
Tabled
– “Wiktionary.org will be the standard dictionary for arbitrating the meaning of words within Occupy Atlanta unless an explicit definition has been formally adopted for a specific situation. Should any concern arrise about malicious editing of a current wiktionary definition then an acceptable previous definition from wiktionary or -failing agreement upon that- the Dictionary.com definition will be used.”
Discussion about whether it was necessary to have an official source of word definitions when people should be able to use common sense. Historical GA events brought up to justify proposal.
Passed
– “Each proposal to be voted on by the General Assembly, GA, will be submitted to the Process Committee and made available on the Occupy Atlanta web site at least one week prior to the proposal being brought before the GA for a vote. Modifications to the proposal during this one week lead time shall be made available by the proposer in a timely manner -including updates on the web site and final submission to the Process Committee of the proposal as it will be presented to the GA by the time of the last Process Committee meeting before the GA at which the proposal will be presented. Should the Process Committee or members there of who are facilitating a GA at any time deem the proposal to have been substantially changed to the degree that it constitutes a new proposal the proposal may be subjected to a new week of lead time before the proposal my be voted on.
In situations where the Process Committee recognizes a pressing need for more rapid consideration of a proposal the Process Committee may add the proposal to the agenda for consideration by the GA -waiving the one week lead time. The Process Committee will maintain a list of proposals and the dates of GAs at which the proposals are scheduled to be presented and will make a good faith effort at making this list available for perusal.
Responsibility for posting of a proposal to the web site lies with the proposer and may be fulfilled by a third party on behalf of the proposer. The proposer also holds responsibility for getting on the stack to present the proposal.”
Discussion about the duration of the lead time being long at one week and possible better to have a shorter time. Agreed to try one week to promote more engagment in dialogue and possibly modify to a shorter time at a later GA. Concern expressed about how an emergency proposal would be handled. Agreed that it was appropriate to trust Process for judging when a proposal should be allowed to short circuit the lead time and come up for immediate vote. Clarified that this only applies to proposals and no other OA information would need to be made publicly available on the web site.
Passed
Other Business:
– Concern expressed about getting clothing and bedding of the park occupiers dried out during rainy spells like we’re having. Any help that can be provided in the form of dry clothing, washing & drying of occupier’s clothing, and other creative means of keeping folks in the park warm and dry will be greatly appreciated!
– Violet joined the Occupy the Courts protest today and being so impressed with Occupy Atlanta wants to join the occupation of the park. A tent and sleeping bag are needed to support this! Any leads?
