Last night, Sept. 27, a couple hundred people turned out for the first Occupy Boston General Assembly. We’re very excited with the progress made last night, which was, all in all, a very productive beginning. Tonight, only more progress will be made.
Highlights from Yesterday:
– We heard from a number of diverse and passionate voices on issues we hope to face head-on with this action. Some of these were personal stories. Others were cries of outrage for the status quo. Others were statements of solidarity with our brothers and sisters in Tunis, Cairo, Madrid, New York, and all over the world.
– We broke into working groups and each of these made some headway with organizing contact lists, choosing facilitators to represent the voices of the subgroups, and plans of action. To work with any of these groups, give what you can – skills, advice, and input are invaluable. Find the group facilitators tonight to get involved.
- Legal (Training, safety, and the law of the land)
- Food (Everyone needs to eat)
- Arts and Culture (Occupation can be boring – the entertainment committee!)
- Outreach (Boots on the ground, flyers, and liaise with Boston communities and colleges)
- Media (PR and media relations with news organizations – external. Social media and blogging – internal)
- Medical (In case of emergency)
- Tactical (Who, What, When, How)
– Though a place was decided by majority vote (Dewey Sq. near South Station), a time for occupation has yet to be agreed on. Occupation will likely begin either this Friday, Sept. 30, or next Friday, Oct. 7, depending on consensus at tonight’s General Assembly.
For more information, follow on Twitter @Occupy_Boston and check the Facebook page as well as Facebook event. Come tonight, at 6 p.m. at the Bandstand on the Boston Common to join the conversation.
7 Responses to “Recap on Last Night’s General Assembly”
An open letter to Occupy Wall Street, the media, and to defenders of liberty everywhere:
– A LEVEL PLAYING FIELD –
We the People are DUSGUSTED WITH POLITICS IN AMERICA! Recent polls are showing
that over 75% of Americans feel that “our system of government is broken.” It’s as if we live
in a de facto two-party plutocracy of the rich where our illustrious ‘leaders’ have abandoned us
to the clutches of the Wall Street Barons who have sold the world’s economy down the toilet
with their unregulated greed and recklessness!
Would campaign-finance reform fix things? After all, most of the world’s problems — injustice, corruption, hypocrisy, fraud, etc. — can be traced back to a dearth of moral leadership.
Yes, WE NEED BETTER LEADERS…but how are we going to elect them when many of them
are not even in the running — because the Free World’s election systems are inadequate, broken,
self serving, and often rigged. Allow me to explain:
HERE’S A SIMPLE EXAMPLE OF WHAT’S WRONG WITH OUR ELECTION SYSTEM*:
Your large group wants to go out to a restaurant together. The three options are Mexican food, seafood, and pizza. Half the group loves Mexican food but hates seafood; the other half loves seafood but hates Mexican food. Everyone, however, likes pizza. Where should you go?
Did you intuitively say “pizza”? If so, then you don’t believe in using our outdated and inadequate
‘single vote’ method of voting, where either Mexican food or seafood would have won—
much to the extreme dismay of the other half, who might likely split off from the group
(*Thanks to RangeVote.com.).
Our ‘single vote’ method of voting did not select
the obviously “most generally preferred” option!
Here’s another big problem: Five similar candidates in an election equally split 75% of the vote and get only 15% each, losing to their polar opposite who wins the plurality vote in a ‘landslide’ with 25% — even though the electorate preferred one of the other candidates three to one!
Our ‘single vote’ method of voting dilutes candidates and parties that are too similar,
forcing us into a de facto two-party system, each party trying to undermine the other!
HERE’S WHAT WE NEED TO FIX THE PROBLEM:
(1) mathematically, the best voting method known to give the greatest net voter satisfaction : “Score Voting.”
(2) simple, inexpensive fraud-free touch-screen voting — to safeguard the credibility of our electronic voting process as well as save our country many billions of dollars.
You’ll find both in a straightforward 3-page treatise at http://www.VotingInSanity.com — a simple,
not-for-profit, free, global humanitarian initiative.
…and that is how We the People will fix what’s wrong with the politics in our government and get
A LEVEL PLAYING FIELD.
G.S. – a Simon & Schuster author
“Could there be anything more important to human civilization
than the way in which We the People allow ourselves to be governed?”
I second George’s comment. I can’t make it to the GA tonight, but I wanted to chime in. It seems difficult to come up with a list of demands, or “one demand”, because it IS difficult. One would have to think of every conceivable policy that allows the corporations and the super-rich access to our government processes, AND every conceivable future policy that might get piggy-backed on other policies.
When you trace most of the problems in our current system back to the “source” it always leads to the concentration of our country’s wealth to a few. We need a total separation of corporation and state, and we need checks and balances within the financial system. Demand this. The rest will begin to sort itself out as more power is restored to the general population.
Is the only way to organize this via being present at a general assembly? I personally have some ideas to throwout to the Arts and Culture committee (being an artist myself I find the purpose of ‘entertaining’ the occupying members a little…well…). I need to communicate to someone and there doesn’t seem to be a place for it except in real life (and even then there isn’t a record of what actually took place last night). How can there be organization when the “HUB” of communication (which I’m assuming is this wp site) has no information on how to do so. I can’t make it tonight as I just learned about this yesterday and have to work. Please put your efforts into methods of communication. I’m baffled and want to get involved. I just don’t know how. Thank you.
Second on what Callie says – we need to be able to communicate effectively. General Assembly left a weird impression with me, especially the guy from Brooklyn who kept coming up with new signs to express one’s opinions. Shaking fingers high for “yes” and low for “no” looked pretty stupid. Peoples mike killed the other half of fun. Other organizers were rad though.
I hope this site becomes the information hub where we can reach the organizers and offer our support and ideas. All instructions should posted here. Everything people need to get up to speed should be posted here.
And lastly – thank you for organizing it! It’s been a long period of silence, it is a perfect time to make our voices heard.
Hey everyone, we’re here working to get the methods of communications under control. We are aware that there’s not a ton of info on this website, but we’re working on it… Thanks for your patience!
We are begining the Occupation at 6PM Friday Sept 30th
The past two nights of meetings have been organizational. That means that the message of the Movement have been second to the practical difficulties of organizing a large coalition of people.
Bearing that in mind, from my observation of the General Councils the following appear to be guiding principles behind the movement. (some not all)
*It is clear that we the people of the movement are members of the “The 99”, or the work force that provides wealth to the top 1% of earners.
*We are upset that our “democratic” nation gives more weight to the vote of a dollar than a person.
*We desire a political process where every person is equally valuable.
*The process of the council requires the involvement of people with all backgrounds. Without diversity, the actions of the movement will not properly reflect the expectations of the People.
*A corporation is not as valuable as a person in reality nor in politics
Each of the above points are my personal inference from discussions and are in no way the official position of the general council at large.
on October 19th, 2011 at 8:33 pm #
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