Agenda Requests for 10/16

[Emma]

The basic structure of this week's meeting will be as such:
- Intro/welcome
- Report-back from working groups which are not bringing proposals
- Report-back from working groups which are bringing proposals
-- Discuss & vote as necessary on working group proposals
- Other business
- Closing/feedback/set date & time for next mtg

It is "Other Business" for which you can make suggestions here. If you want to bring up an issue from your working group, talk to the WG and figure out who's going to be the spokesperson and make sure they'll mention it.

If you have something not related to your working group, which you would like to propose for the agenda, go ahead and post.

This online forum will not *set* the agenda, but the facilitators will review posts here before the meeting and try to set appropriate agenda items based on this and other input.

There will also be a brief pre-meeting (location TBD, I believe) at which people may request agenda items in person.

**Please refrain from involved discussions in this forum. If you have an issue you wish to discuss with others online, you can start another thread.**

[epaul]

I would like to add to the Agenda a discussion about a Direct Action working group.

[rebecca]

Cool. Is this a proposal that we add one? If so, I'd suggest that you be ready to start the conversation by telling the group what you propose and briefly why. Thank you!

[dylan]

Working Groups can be made autonomously and are outside the scope of the general assembly. If you want to make a Direct Action working group all you need to do is find some people to join you. You may use the ga to make an announcement but you do not need its approval.

If you want to find other people who share your interest in forming a DA working group beforehand you can go to the Working Group Proposal message board and start a DA working group thread.

[demodave]

Not sure if this is the right place to post the question or what exactly has been decided, but in trying to make signs I'm curious about the discuss & vote as necessary phase.

Will we be discussing and then voting on each cluster of related proposals one by one, as in, "working group a proposed b, c or d to address issue e, we will now take f minutes to discuss & vote" followed by "working group g proposed..." etc or is it going to be more of a freeform discuss and vote on everything at once?

[rcdrake]

During the intro/welcome, can we add an announcement of the availability of childcare? The Kid's Stuff working group has not been officially made yet because we don't have the required-ish four members and one meeting. We'd just need to say:

"It has been great to see so many young faces here. Please feel free to keep your children involved in the meeting. But, a noisy room with a babysitter is available across the street for children ages seven and under who are having difficulty being quiet in the meeting space. Directions to the space are on this poster, which I am now posting in the front entryway of this building."

[hz]

PR would like to make an announcement as to its existence, what help it may need from the general community, some quick general advice for the GA about personal Public Relations, and would like to open a quick vote on a general statement that the GA would be comfortable in supporting as a summation umbrella statement of OA.

Also as part of the Political & Electoral reform Working group at OWS I would like to do a quick report of what is going on down there & request that someone from OA (rotating) could make it down there once a week for the P & E group liaison.

-Hezzie

[dylan]

I would like to propose that people involved in Occupy Albany be encouraged to engage in direct actions of their own design outside of the main occupation as long as it is in line with the general will of the group, respects the safety of all occupy Albany participants, and adheres to agreed upon norms, which at this time includes adherence to non-violence. Examples would be occupying other spaces and marches to banks to protest them and close accounts, etc.

I don't think that direct actions should have to be discussed at ga since discussing them there could compromise the action, but I also think with that trust and autonomy comes a certain responsibility to behave in a way reflects who occupy albany is. Of course the discussion would be to fine tune how this would work.

[joshred]

Can we set aside some time to define the working groups and offer working group proposals? I think there has been some confusion about that. I know for certain that the board admins are completely confused about whether or not we're acting undemocratically.

[Emma]

I like Joshred's idea. Working groups have had no discussion at GA, including which ones we would form (I'm not sure how it was actually decided which ones would start after the previous GA, but it was never discussed at GA despite having been mentioned numerous times). A brief discussion about what kind of autonomy a working group has, how one can form, what resources are available to working groups (such as the free xeroxing access that some folks have), suggestions for WGs to have contact people and somewhat organized presences on these forums... Requests from working groups for support they might need (such as a facilitator if a wg doesn't have someone internal who feels comfortable doing that role)... This obviously needs some fine tuning, and we might even need a meta-working-group rather than a whole-GA discussion of it. But the conversation should be had one way or another.

[matthew]

Formation / recognition of WGs should definitely be an agenda item for the GA.

[rebecca]

Noting here that on the tasks thread Bhawin requested time for a brief announcement during the introduction to the meeting from the POC working group.

[rebecca]

demodave, I think the plan is to discuss and vote on one issue at a time. Ideally a working group or individual comes to the assembly with a proposal and we either reach consensus on it (as is or amended) or send it back to working group for further development / revision. In a case where there are multiple conflicting proposals on the floor to address the same issue, we'd need to narrow it down (taking comments pro/con for each and/or "taking temperature" for support level for each) until we could focus on one proposal. Did I understand your question right and does this answer it?

[dylan]

I would like to add on the agenda, if it is appropriate, a Group Withdrawal from Banks. I would like to organize a day where we get a bunch of people together to withdraw from a specific bank, most likely Bank of America. it would be more of an announcement than a proposal and would take maybe one minute.

[Emma]

Thanks, Becca, I just came over here to post about that.
Note, though, that it's a "caucus" not a "working group." A suggestion was made on some thread in here a week or so ago for interest groups to form caucuses. I forget what the examples given were, but it sounded like a good idea to me. Anyway, afaik POC is the only one formed thus far.

I suggest that caucuses are lumped with working groups for report-back and proposals. It makes sense logistically & conceptually.

[joeseeman]

I suggest that the working groups meet briefly, for 15 minutes before the general assembly, to allow the working group members to be clear on what their spokesperson will be presenting to ghe general assembly.

I would also like to add to the agenda a discussion on how Occupy Albany communicates online. I question whether this message board is the best way. It doesn't seem easy to navigate. Not sure what would be better. Should working groups have email listserves? Should there be an email listserve for discussions? for announcements?

[dylan]

I didn't notice that someone already brought up a direct action wg proposal here. I'm sure all of the questions I posed above will be brought up during that discussion.

[joshred]

joe, the biggest reason to use proboards is to allow communication across groups. I agree that proboards is kind of clunky, but it meets all of our needs.

Once you figure out how to bookmark threads and setup notifications you'll have a much easier time using the board.

[sgoldman78]

Please add community teach-ins as a working group. This is about doing popular education around movement building and leadership development as a way to build this movement on a neighborhood level. We have met once so far.

[joshred]

If we talk about formation and recognition of working groups, should we place it ahead of working group report backs, or should it come afterward?