Author Archives: SaraA

GA minutes 2/8/12

Big Softy facilitating. David moderating. Sara taking minutes.
Misty read pledge. Hand signals.

Announcements
Tim – Planned action at AT&T next Tuesday, rally 11-2 Help save working class jobs
Misty – Welcome to all the new people! Free school at the Teardown, posted on Indymedia. Videography/editing class
Sara – Labor issues affinity group. Bringing proposal to call for repeal of exceptions to NLRA of 1935 on Saturday. Also some of us went to Mitt Romney’s campaign stop today.
Colin – Bike shop open Mon 1-5, come in and help. Seeking donations.
Big S. – 451 affinity group wants books. The ‘zine wants submissions, print version and website, outreach for Glen Iris house and other things.
David – Event at PnP on Saturday, possible press coverage, positive representation of what is going on there.
Ed – Have been occupying in the park, approached by three different GSU professors who are sending students out to interview. I will be speaking at GSU tomorrow night at 7 pm for the Student Union. We are getting visitors from all over the place, including Germany.
David – Proposal for modification of the pledge coming up. Will include correction of grammatical errors and a phrase about diversity of tactics.
Big S. – Occupation at PnP: Task Force will have to continue legal battle. This may mean that Occupy Atlanta may have to move out.
Copper – We need more original occupiers out here because yesterday people walked away with four tents. If you have time, please come occupy.

Committee report backs
Legal – Shayna: Copper had court Monday, all charges were dismissed. Copper: I appreciate everything Occupy Atlanta has done for me. We need to remember this is a non-violent movement. Sometimes tempers flare and we forget what we are really here for.
Action – Robert AT&T action, talk to me or someone on Action about our plans for that.
Misty – Conflict mediation working group exists! contact me, Andrew, Daniel, etc…training available from Sacred Space. Restorative circles.
Q from BS: Would it work for other Occupations?
Misty: I think we should try it.

No committee related proposals. Other proposal which was previously tabled:

PROPOSAL TO CUT GAs to 2 times a week. The time limit for ga would be rescinded.
Friendly amendment to go to 3 per week due to the anticipation that there will be much more business to deal with in the spring.
Response: The proposal can include a provision to add more GAs as needed at the discretion of the Process team. Also people don’t come on Mondays and Fridays, so there’s no point in having meetings people don’t come to anyway.
Friendly amendment to go to just one per week.
Response: People have different work schedules, and if we only have it on a week night or a weekend some people will not be able to attend at all. Twice a week is manageable.
Friendly amendment to have a think tank on a day that there is not enough people for a ga.
Response: This seems like something Process or somebody could just decide to do, doesn’t need to be part of the proposal.
Point of information that it is discouraging when there are not enough people for a ga.
Concern that there are not enough committee report backs at ga.
Response: That’s not so much part of this proposal, but I have a plan to address that.
Proposal passed that the ga would just be on wednesdays and saturdays without the strict 2hour time limit.

Other business
Adam – There was no Free Market on Sat. Tried to go to Gardening meeting and Education and Training meetings, neither one happened
Copper – I would like to see more up to date pictures, etc on the website. We need more conflict mediation at the occupations here, I have heard the same thing from travelers. This is a young movement and we will have conflicts, keep it peaceful.
Daniel – Firedoglake.com had a vote about which Occupations were the most successful and Occupy Atlanta was voted into the top five. We won a tent. We have a few options of what to do with it, but I feel strongly this should be an open discussion

Sara – read text of proposal for Saturday: “We, the General Assembly of Occupy Atlanta, call for the repeal of Georgia’s statutes which suppress worker’s rights in favor of employer’s rights, specifically the ‘at-will’ employment law and all laws contravening or allowing for exceptions to the National Labor Relations Act of 1935.”

Emelle – Will and I have been in Haiti, we are doing a report back Feb 12 6-8 at the AFSC building about the work we are doing. Will: There is no Occupation in Haiti, we would like to galvanize one. The youth there are very displaced morally, I would like to change that.
David- we had an informal meeting with Task Force. Anita feels confident that an appeal will be accepted. We think we should have a plan B, C, etc and contingencies. We also need to prepare in case we need to “Occupy” the building. We need a group discussion and a plan for action.
Misty – I’m sorry that things fell through, that happens some time. I’ll give out my phone number to the new people. Larry had mentioned that he can dry blankets, I know another guy who runs the Bread coffee house at Emory, if the foks in the park need that. We do have a conflict resolution working group, come get training.
? – I was on the de-escalation team at OWS. We would get training in non-violent communication and would be on duty at given times. If there was a conflict, you would call the person on duty and they would try to address it.
Will- We have some blankets, I’d like to bring them.

Announcements:
– Next Saturday, 28th Jan, 1-4PM at the park there will be a General Assembly and march to CNN in solidarity with the arab communities on the anniversary of army and police attacks on the protesters in Tahrir Square in Egypt.
– to submit to the OA Zine email occupyatlzine@yahoo.com
– 100% consensus amendment tabled until next Saturday

Committee Report Backs:

Home Defense:
– need to bring in a whole new layer of people engaging in community action
– Mon 11AM, press conference about the Pittman house at Chase offices 1215 Caroline St.
– Tuesday, training at 60 Walton on how home occupation works for home owners and would be home occupiers
– Jan 27, March on Chase Bank following a rally at the Pittman house 404 Glen Iris Dr. with the goal of getting 100 people to participate
– Thursday 5PM, regular Home Defense Committee meeting
– Feb 7 10AM-4PM, at steps of the courthouse will be another auction protest

Action Committee:
– Tue 24th 11:30AM, at Wells Fargo offices 2 Peachtree St. will be a protest against their investments in commercial prisons encouraging people to pull their money out of Wells Fargo
– Sat, 28 Feb starting 9:30AM with speakers all day, at Ebenezer Baptist Church there will be a summit calling for the abolishment of the death penalty
– 14 Feb (Valentine’s Day) 11AM-2PM, there will be an action at AT&T offices, 675 W. Peachtree St. NW protesting their laying off 740 employees after making record profits in 2011
– 22 Jan at 3PM, at 60 Walton a meeting to form a working group to start planning a SE regional Occupy conference (tentatively planned for March 8-11)
– Tues 6:30PM, at 60 Walton there will be an Action Committee meeting
– Action needs people to spread fliers!!! The Fliers will be provided. If you can post, hand out, or otherwise distribute fliers promoting OA events please contact the Action Committee. Remember, as part of Occupy Atlanta, “We share burdens by taking initiatives to fill roles and relieve comrades.”

Finance:
– Current funds = $4,530.07
– spent $800 for yard signs
– provided $700 for sending folks to Occupy Congress

Proposals:

– Proposal tabled at yesterday’s GA was tabled again.

Other Business:
– concern expressed by the same speakers as at yesterdays GA about a person at Peachtree & Pine kicking out others, calling police to remove others, and assaulting another person

– people willing to come in and train occupiers in NVC, Non-Violent Communications, and Restorative Circles available this week (will try to make a class happen)

– OA bus: We may be able to acquire a bus for OA. The offer is for the donation of a bus (and its maintenance) to OA not money or funds that could be used in some other way. If it works out it would likely be arranged through Jobs for Justice and the Georgia Peace & Justice Coalition. We will need art for the bus (along the lines of making it a “traveling billboard” for OA.) There would likely be three or four folks in OA sharing responsibility for the bus for the sake of insurance.

– When problems with folks or situations arrise lets bring in the concerned parties to clarify accusations. Some of the events described concerning the actions of the person [referred to above] at Peachtree and Pine are incorrect and distort the situation.

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?