Mirror, Mirror - Many Reflections (Photo: Michael D. Dunn, flickr)
So it appears extremely unlikely we will be approved to set up a camp at Avery Upchurch Park. Two home owners associations for two buildings nearby already sent letters to the city council requesting we not be allowed. My personal belief is the city council was already not inclined to approve the request so I imagine this seals the deal. I realize most other occupations just go in and set up their camp where they wish and if they suffer arrests and eviction return again for more. We have very few people willing to risk arrest and at best a handful that would risk repeated arrest. They arrested 19 of us for remaining on the Capitol grounds at 7:30pm on the first day we were there, just for overstaying our permit by three and a half hours. I don’t think forcing our way onto parks will get us far, and unlike at some other occupations, our numbers do not double when some of us are arrested.
One positive note is the city does seem it is seriously considering offering us an unused parking lot near the now empty old police station. This site is also downtown and only a couple blocks away from the sidewalk we occupy now. It has elements that are both highly visible and also more hidden from view, both of which I think can be useful to us. We would be able to set up tents, have a porta-pottie, and likely have access to electricity. It also pushes up against a parking deck that has a large open entrance onto the parking lot that would make it easy to use as temporary shelter when environmental elements come into play.
I know there are members of the occupation that would prefer to not work within the system at all and just take what we want and adapt as the city tries to deal with us. If the city doesn’t end up offering this, we will be left with little choice but to try it that way. I don’t see much harm in testing if the city is willing to work with us at all or if they are just stringing us along. As I have mentioned before, our occupation is filled mostly with people who have jobs, families, and other responsibilities. Its not surprising there is a tendency to want to at least try to work within the system. Its easier to be obstinate when you have little that can be taken from you. One of the most radical in beliefs among us has a young child and that alone stops them from doing as much as they likely would otherwise. The state could take their child. That’s an overwhelming risk to take.
I’ve started asking myself exactly how far I am willing to go. Early in this diary I said I had gone all in. That is not remotely true. Now that I have had time to experience some level of occupation, take time to consider the long road ahead, and see the various levels of commitment one can chose, I find myself conflicted. Before the Occupy Movement began I had grown cynical to the prospect of change but also found appeal in the idea of just making myself comfortable enough while I entertained myself as the world burned. I have lived quite happily making $26,000 a year or less. Perhaps even maintaining my simple lifestyle on that level of income was short sighted given the way things are headed but in another 10 years once my mortgage was payed off, I would need even less.
But now going all in looks different to me. I could turn my home into a rental or sell it. I have few possessions of any real value. I could store the few that matter and get rid of everything else. I love my cat but I am pretty sure a neighbor I have whose cat is best friends with my cat would take him in and my cat already spends half the time over there anyway. Hell my “all in” would still be more comfortable than many in the sense that I would still have some financial resources available. Other than my mortgage I have no debt while I do have savings. It would take some time to prepare but I’ve come to the realization that I could truly go all in. Even if the Raleigh Occupation did not survive as a true 24/7 occupation I do think this movement will continue in the cities where large numbers are already involved. I keep telling others to get off the sidelines but how far am I willing to go?
I hadn’t really planned on talking about that. I guess its just been on my mind a lot lately. Back to the occupation.
A few GA’s ago (General Assemblies) I brought up a proposal to have us be a little less deferential to the police. Myself and others felt that it had gotten to a point where we had started to do the police’s job for them. In particular, the Capitol police have taken to harassing us about the supplies we brought back to the sidewalk. If we have only a couple folks there in the morning they demand the items be removed. This prompted frantic seeming calls over twitter, Facebook, etc for people to come with vehicles to store the supplies. When we haven’t had people to do it and the supplies remained, the police have yet to carry out their threat to take the supplies. So my general point was just for us to stop sending out those calls to have people come and get the supplies. If the police want to waste their time taking them then its easy enough for us to go reclaim them. And if we can’t get the stuff back (or even if we can) it makes for excellent PR for us. We can now use twitter, Facebook, etc to broadcast that the police are being draconian thugs and taking our stuff.
This sort of thing has brought other occupations more sympathy and more support. Also it takes a behavior by the police that is designed to harass us and turns it into one that harasses them. I kinda doubt they would be collecting our stuff too often but regardless it was high time to force them to carry out their threat and stop doing their work for them. While we were discussing the proposal in the GA, which unsurprisingly brought about a lively discussion, the topic shifted to discussing the process of Consensus Democracy itself. All but one or two of us, including myself, are very new to this system of decision making so it makes sense we would stumble over how to express ourselves through it. Eventually the proposal did pass but afterwards I heard different grumblings about the use of this system. One saw it as inefficient and thought having some sort of executive committee would be valuable, which they had proposed at a previous GA to be met with 23 blocks. Another wasn’t completely against it but thought it was an unrealistic way to make decisions except in very small groups. I can imagine philosopher Derek Jensen arguing that the problem wasn’t that Consensus Democracy of this nature struggles in large groups but rather that as societies we live in groups that are far too large and therefor require the importation of resources which leads to all sorts of bad things. If we just lived in communities that were sustainable by the land they lived on then we would probably be in group sizes that could function to some degree under Consensus Democracy.
It does seem clear though that Consensus Democracy is being adapted by occupations in reaction to size. When Oakland reached 3000+ and were reaching consensus on whether or not to call for a general strike, they used modified consensus procedures. Oakland also had a proposal that passed regarding when people would inappropriately claim they spoke for the occupation and built into that proposal was the use of only 60% consensus on the message the occupation would issue to denounce the one falsely representing them. I also read that OWS had begun delegating certain decision making that previously went through the GA to the working groups themselves. Its not surprising people are reacting to perceived issues in functionality as the group size gets large by trying different things. I am sure there are some purists who think these are very bad developments. They could be right but I doubt it because I think its just to become better at resisting under changing circumstances (in this case, size).
When people comment that you could never use the Consensus Democracy method on a large scale I agree with them. I point out that certain underlying values of it could still be embraced by elements of the wider culture but that a US-wide GA with 350 million people is impractical at best, and likely flat out impossible. But I don’t see the use of Consensus Democracy as an attempt to build Utopian societies in parks. The Occupation Movement is a resistance movement. This is a form of organization that is used in part because it helps it achieve its goal of resistance.
In a nation where many feel they have no voice the GA gives people one. That helps bring people in and keep them interested and engaged. It symbolically challenges the notion that the US government is democratic in any fashion now and reminds people what real democracy looks like. The fact that this allows a “leaderless” movement has clearly been troubling to the power elite. Many stories came out from OWS of under cover cops wandering around the camp asking people who was in charge. Turns out its pretty hard to decapitate a leaderless movement. This also helps the movement itself avoid Cult of Personality issues. I am sure there are plenty of loud voices or strong personalities at the different occupations but Consensus Democracy helps keep them in check and that is a good thing. I have a fairly strong personality and have already felt the push back from our GA. I admit at first it was a bit jarring but I’m glad for it. Among other positives, it protects me from myself at times, even when I don’t initially realize it like when we passed some occupation guidelines last night.
We have been having ongoing problems with a small number of occupiers. The issues range from theft, harassment, to simply not cleaning up after ones self. During the facilitation meeting prior to the GA one of our most consistent occupiers was demanding we do something. The issues had been brought up to the GA other times and there seemed to be general consensus that these negative issues needed to be addressed but each time we stopped short of really doing anything. So the consistent occupiers who behaved responsibly where forced to deal with it, and this dutiful occupier had reached their limit. If we didn’t do something they would walk, and I couldn’t blame them. So we hurriedly put together a list of general guidelines including things like no theft, no harassment, no evangelizing (you can talk about your own spirituality, but you can’t tell people they are going to hell), you must clean up after yourself, and that in order to have access to occupation supplies you must participate in the occupation in some way (holding a sign now and then, adding voice to the GA’s, helping around the occupation all counted…was meant to be pretty general). Failing to follow these guidelines after repeated warnings would mean denial of occupation resources.
One member of facilitation was very uncomfortable about bringing this before the GA with such little preparation and hasty wording but the rest of us pressured them into agreeing to put it on the agenda. I didn’t think it would bring much dissent. We had already talked about most of the issues at previous GA’s and the guidelines seemed pretty lax. Turns out I was mostly right. There was some discussion during the proposal but no one present seemed overly bothered by the list of guidelines, except the person in facilitation who had objected to bringing it up so soon. They commented on how we had just written these one hour before and that they didn’t feel the guidelines were ready to be passed. At the time it bothered me that they didn’t voice an issue about any particular guideline, but rather just the way they had been prepared, but later I realized that was a perfectly intelligent and valid concern. At the time however I let my exasperation with his concerns show, though I did stay out of the discussion. In retrospect I am glad I was toward the back of the group. I really need to control myself better.
In the end it was the occupier who had threatened to walk that bridged the gap. He offered a friendly amendment that the guidelines be temporary, only lasting 72 hours. This would give us the opportunity to try them out, more time to develop them further, and give them the flexibility to better deal with those causing the occupation so much trouble right now. You have to understand, the occupier who was ready to walk is one of the more welcoming and kind people I have met at the occupation. He wasn’t looking for the authority to just turn around and force someone to leave. After the GA I went and approached him and asked him if he wanted to speak to anyone right now and wanted me and others to be with him. He replied that it wasn’t necessary but that he was glad that he had a consensus based position on which to stand when dealing with any more issues over the next few days.
Because of that friendly amendment the person from facilitation did not block it. While I was huffing and puffing, the two had used the General Assembly process to take two positions that stood somewhat in opposition and found a third position they could both agree on. They had built Consensus. I am a very debate-style argumentative person. While conceptually I realize that consensus building is not about that sort of confrontation, actually getting comfortable with it in practice has been trickier than I expected. My saving grace is that at least some of the time I do recognize my failings and learn from them. After that its just a matter of swallowing my pride and apologizing. Oh well. Won’t be the first time since I joined the occupation and knowing myself, it won’t be the last.
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