Last weekend Occupy Raleigh hosted a statewide gathering of NC Occupations which included a General Assembly. A small group from Occupy Raleigh spent weeks planning and preparing for this gathering. They made contact with the various occupations. They got permits to use the State Capitol grounds for the main portions of the event on Saturday. They contacted local progressive groups with two general goals. The first was a meeting that happened on Friday evening where Occupies and other local activists groups gathered to connect and coordinate. There is a feeling that we all need to start making each others fights our own fights so we can grow an even larger coalition of resistance and change. Secondly the planners secured financial support to help pay for the meals during the Statewide GA weekend.
The planners figured out a schedule, set up the Occupied NCGA website, and tirelessly made sure throughout the weekend that everything ran smoothly. And smoothly it ran. Saturday was one of my favorite days since I started with the Occupy Movement. Lately at Occupy Raleigh we have been struggling with some conflicts which bred division, negativity, and pessimism. The Statewide GA was the exact opposite. It overflowed with enthusiasm and positive energy. People were excited to connect with one another, listen to each others concerns and experiences, and carry on a dialogue exploring possibilities.
Saturday for me started bright and early at 8am at the Occupation for a facilitation meeting to prepare for the General Assembly later that afternoon. Since as an Occupation the early morning has never been our strong suite, I told my girlfriend when I left that I bet that I would be the only one at the meeting. When I got to the Occupation people were already up preparing for the days events, but I had been correct, I was the only one there for the facilitation meeting.
I had already spent time leading up to the weekend thinking about how the schedule of the GA would look and what adaptations to process we might need to make to handle a group larger than we are used to so I spent part of the morning going over some of those ideas in my own mind. While I was doing that the morning breakfast arrived so I got some coffee and bagels and spent the next hour sitting around the fire pit talking with others.
Throughout the morning people began arriving from the various Occupations. The first part of the General Assembly later that day was to give 5 minutes to each Occupation to give a report back of whatever they wanted to rest of us to know. We had report backs from Asheville, Boone, Chapel-Hill, Charlotte, Durham, Fayetteville, Greensboro, Occupy_Homeless, Hendersonville, Occupation-Nation, Occupy NC State University, Raleigh, Wilmington, Winston-Salem, and even one from outside the state from Gainesville FL. So lots of people were showing up throughout the morning with a count of 118 of us during the actual GA.
The first official events of the day were teach-ins. I know at least one on De-colonization occurred. There was also a workshop on Occupy the DNC in reference to the upcoming Democratic National Convention in Charlotte in September. I think there was another on avoiding kettle-ling by the police. At 2:30pm we marched from the Occupation to the State Capitol. Earlier that day one of the event planners and myself spoke with the police in regards to our plans and schedule. The police let us know that they would arrest anyone who marched in the street. However, they also let us know that they planned to block traffic at the intersections we had to cross during the march to avoid any safety problems.
I am pretty sure you normally need some sort of parade or march permits for the police to do that. It felt to me that the Raleigh PD was trying its best to meet us half way. Before our march I spoke to the gathering describing what the police had said. I made clear that we are not telling anyone they can or cannot walk in the street. Each person can make their own choices. However I and some others felt like the police choosing to block traffic for us was a show of solidarity and that I planned to respond to that by staying on the sidewalk during this march. That approach seemed to get a very positive response.
Soon after the march began and it went perfectly. No one went in the street and yet we still stopped traffic because the police blocked off the intersections we needed to cross. Conceptually I have always understood that the police are part of the 99% but during the march was the first time I have felt it personally since the positive arrest experience I described in the first post of this diary. We chanted our way to the State Capitol and marched three times around the State Capitol grounds before gathering in the main area we had permitted for the rest of the gathering.
For the next hour and a half we had more teach-ins. There were teach ins on the privatization of education through charter schools, on anarchists, and I think a couple of others. I spent my time at the charter school one so I may have missed others that occurred. The teach in on charter schools was excellent and very timely as that effort is picking up steam in NC. So far the efforts to promote charter schools have been winning the battle here even though they undermine our public school system and lead to a re-segregation of our schools based on income.
Shortly before 4pm I called an impromptu meeting of facilitation to get the agenda set for the GA. People from the various Occupations joined me and we began discussing how the GA would work. I mentioned that due to time constraints we would need to disallow direct responses, points of information, and clarifying questions. Instead everyone would just need to get on stack to speak. Everyone seemed fine with that so we moved on to the agenda.
We set aside 5 minutes for each report back which would be followed by proposals. At first there was a concern that we could only bring proposals that all the individual GA’s had already consensed on. Quickly we realized though that would mean we could not pass any proposals at this GA so we took a different approach. It was decided that this GA would only speak for the voices of those actually there participating, just like any normal Occupation GA does, and that proposals that were passed would be taken back to their individual GA’s for consideration.
We also had proposals from two different Occupations that had to do with ending corporate personhood so they talked for a little bit and settled on the language of one of them to use since we didn’t want to spend our very limited time during the GA hashing out two proposals that were so similar. In the end we had about 14 report backs and 8 proposals and about 2 and a half hours to get through it. It was going to be tight.
At some point during the meeting I was asked to facilitate the actual GA and the group consensed on that. Another from Occupy Raleigh co-facilitated which worked well because we have facilitated together often and we work very well together. Pappa Bear from Occupy Wilmington took stack while Rachel from Occupy Raleigh took minutes on a small recorder. Because of how tight we would be on time it was absolutely necessary to have a diligent person keeping time and Clark from Occupy Raleigh offered before it was even asked.
We convened the NC General Assembly and shortly after the report backs began. Occupations talked about the sorts of actions they had taken along with the different problems they had. During the report backs one gentleman approached facilitation and asked if he could report back on an effort he spearheaded called Occupy_Homeless. We were going alphabetically so when we got to “H” he was called up to speak. He had come with Occupy Winson-Salem but he commented that he didn’t really consider himself as having a “home” or “city” as the homeless are largely faceless and forgotten in our society. The report backs went well and after about an hour and a half we moved onto proposals.
Before we started a couple others from that impromptu facilitation meeting explained what we had decided about passing these proposals. This Statewide General Assembly was not here to speak for the other Occupations but rather just for itself. Also early on in the process I decided to not allow friendly amendments partly due to time constraints and also because some of the proposals under consideration where already passed by other Occupations and I did not feel comfortable changing the language.
The following proposals passed (though the following is not the exact language):
-A proposal that calls for an end to corporate personhood.
-A proposal to ease ballot restrictions in NC so that its easier for third parties to get on the ballot.
-A proposal to call on NC officials to establish a one year moratorium on foreclosures in the state to allow for proper investigations to occur into all the fraud.
-A proposal to encourage all NC Occupations to conduct and promote teach-ins on topics related to the Occupy Movement.
-A proposal to start a facilitated coordination conference call once or twice a month that anyone can join to improve communication between the various NC Occupations through a mechanism that did not require internet access.
There was a proposal to create a Occupy NC Spokes Council that would help spread a more focused message on things all the Occupations consensed on. This proposal was withdrawn by the proposer as it became clear it would be a difficult and long conversation which our time constraints would not allow.
The final proposal was one to use a facebook page with 5 admins from each Occupation to help with coordination and information sharing. This proposal did not achieve consensus once we called the question. My impression was that too many felt that we already had good mechanisms online for communication and coordination and we would be better off using the ones we had then creating another.
We only had about 10 minutes to spend on each proposal and each person that got on stack had up to 2 minutes to speak. Even with those restrictions it felt like everyone was heard and the vibe throughout the entire GA was very positive, even as the temperature dropped as it got into the evening. After all the proposals we had a few announcements and then called the first NC Statewide General Assembly to a successful close. One announcement I do want to mention is a gentlemen named Skylar who had taped much of the days events wanted us to recognize in general the efforts of so many who tape and document the Occupy Movement. There was lots of taping by many throughout the event and his announcement received a hearty applause. Its hard to understate how important those efforts are.
As the GA ended the pizza’s for dinner arrived. People broke into small groups chatting as they ate. Some left straight from there to go back to their home towns. Some returned to the Raleigh Occupation to spend more time socializing. Some went to an Occupy Colleges meeting that happened a little later that evening.
I returned to the Occupation and shortly afterward home. I would have stayed longer but my body was aching from a long day on my feet. It had been an amazing day. It reminded my why I fell in love so quickly with this movement. I had been surrounded with people hungry to connect with each other. People were eager to hear how others resisted and to tell their stories.
To me there was one constant theme that seemed to come up; People felt empowered by the act of participating. There was less concern about whether a given tactic had been effective, especially since its often impossible to know, and more focus on that it had been done. The gentlemen from Fayetteville commented that 5 of them were at the Statewide GA and that sadly that was half their number but they were still there in Fayetteville. At the DNC workshop it was unclear what could be done under such a heavy security presence but it was clear people would try.
That is what real hope looks like. You don’t know the effect. You can’t see a clear path forward. You don’t even know exactly what the obstacles will be. But you know you are going to fight anyway and that there are others who will fight along side you.
NC is Occupied. We are not going away. We are going to support each other and be the change we want to see.
We are Occupy NC.
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