Feed back from 9/23 Meeting

[Dan L]

I was asked to post this message from Ben representing the direct action group. I think he has some serious, thoughtful points that we can understand that will help us figure out ways to decrease the tension and increase the peace (and love). I see this as an opportunity to reflect on all the things we've done well up to the point as well as all the things we intend to do better in the future.


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Facilitators,

You all have done an amazing job. I know your job isn't easy. And I really appreciate your hard work and all the attention to the details. Expecting perfection even from the most experienced people using a well-practiced process would be in error. But we need to be extra vigilant with the most crucial of decisions. I think our linking up with coordinated efforts that are meant to be nationalized or internationalized should be in this category, and given added attention to the process and giving them the amount of time that is necessary.

An important proposal was made this evening by the Direct Action WG to take part in an international action that is going before all the GAs. Unfortunately, the proposal was deflated by an out of order process (it didn't fit within the guidelines for the process in the brochure the WG put together). It was put on hold by the facilitators in the middle of discussing the proposal. This does not fit in with the process. By the time we came back to it, most of the people at the GA had left. I decided to table it because I didn't feel comfortable with 40 people voting on something for all of us and because my daughter was running out of patience. This essentially meant that facilitators who subverted their own process forced a proposal to be tabled against the wishes of both the Working Group and the majority of the people left at the GA (the temperature check showed strong support for continuing talking about it). This should be taken very seriously.

I am the one in the WG that has the most details on the item we proposed. I may not be able to come back for several days because of family, school and work commitments. It's very likely that I won't be able to come back to the occupation until next Saturday - the day of the international action!

I am convinced that we likely could have ironed out the kinks, had (maybe) a friendly amendment and passed it tonight. There were only 5 people who indicated they disagreed with the proposal. I was confident we could work through the issues had it been allowed to be done according to the procedure. Additionally, no matter when this proposal is deliberated, there will be challenges, it will be messy, and it will take time. Tonight we spent over an hour and a half on it. It's likely almost everything that we went through tonight will be repeated again in full before we can move on from the point we were already at. If we want to get involved in an international Occupy Together proposal, we needed to get on it sooner rather than later. We also need someone who understands the proposal and the issues it addresses. That's why I didn't want to table it earlier in the GA, but the facilitators decided (arbitrarily) to stop dealing with the proposal and move on to come back to it later.

I'm worried about this because this is not a new problem. At the 2nd GA, the process for handling the occupation date and location was determined arbitrarily by facilitators and it resulted in proposals by the Occupation WG being tabled for a week. Because of this, we weren't able to make a proposal to start the occupation when most other occupations around the country were started. We were late out of the gate because of arbitrary, out of order decisions being made by facilitators. Nothing about facilitation will ever be perfect, but this can't happen again.

This is where consensus-based decision-making can be trapped in a paradox. One way to avoid facilitators forcing the tabling of a proposal is to make a counter-proposal that we reach consensus to take no stand on the issue. What happens in this paradox is that neither proposal can reach a consensus and things get deadlocked. Not everyone can agree to take the stand on the table, but not everyone is willing to let nothing be done about it.

This is important. Two critical events may be missed because of facilitation problems. I offer this criticism with the utmost respect and solidarity.

Thank you,

Ben

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[rebecca]

Ben, thank you for speaking up about this. Facilitation working group talked about it in our meeting this afternoon - we agree that there were problems with the way it was handled, and planned to acknowledge that at GA today. (I was not able to stay for GA so I don't know for sure that that happened but I expect it did.)

I do not know the most current status of this, but I think we should do our best to come back to this soon enough that we can decide to participate on Saturday if the group agrees. I'm sorry that that may mean you personally are not there for as much of the discussion. But if there's information that only you have, can we get that information into other hands so that moving forward doesn't depend on you being able to be there? If you don't have people identified already who could help with that, I could - I agree it's an important proposal. Message me if you'd like to coordinate.

[dylan]

Two concerns: first, though I have been to each ga and been on stack on numerous occasions I have yet to be able to speak because I have always been 4th on a 3 person stack. I was wondering if progressive stack can work across multiple meetings.

Second I had to leave when the gentleman blocked the use of the word healing in a statement that the women who made the proposal admitted she didn't even know where it would be used. I did not consider this a moral or ethical concern, and when questioned he admitted it was merely a concern, yet it was allowed to stand as a block. I found the nature of this block which was based on the idea that the word 'healing' might alienate people and the inability to handle this very frustrating. If we are going to allow concern over language like this in statements that are not going to be seen it is going to be very difficult for us to get much done. Any word can alienate people. I knew someone who hated the phrase 'nooks and crannies', should we avoid statements with 'nooks and crannies' in them? A line has to be drawn somewhere. I understand people are new. Can we empower experienced facilitators present to lend a hand in these situations?