Occupy Cafe

Click on the logo to enter

Connect 2012 is a mass-mobilized initiative to support people coming together to create positive change.  Share your stories, your visions and your ideas for making the world work, then collaborate to move forward together. The time is now...

We're taking a break from our calls today, and invite you instead to offer some reflections here on the OC.org forum about what Memorial Day evokes for you.

What is your compassionate witness, on this day filled with so much jingoism and denial?  

Please share your thoughts here.

Image from the GroupWorks pattern language card deck.

On this Occupy Heart...
What's Driving What?


Click Here For ALOHA Practice & Collaborative Tablecloth


What's driving what?  This question presents an inquiry into the basic mechanics of our world structures. We have our obvious assessments around how the "0.1%" controls financial flows, markets, governments, etc.  Is there more to it than meets the eye...or any portion of the cerebellum?

Throughout history, there have been uprisings when the balance of power (and equity) becomes unacceptable for too long, for too many. 

•  How might this time be different from our known prior history? 

•  Where are we, as individuals & as a collective, on the scale of influence?  (How might we have any...influence, that is?)

•  To what degree might there exist deeper drivers behind the obvious [0.1%], i.e.- "forces of nature" beyond human influence at play in our world?   

We'll open  our exploration into territory of belief between those that believe: 1.) It's completely up to us to make a change; 2.) It's hopeless because "They" have too much power; 3.) There is a higher power driving driving a transformation that cannot be stopped; 4.) any number of combinations of all these perspectives.

Join Friday's Occupy Heart call as we explore the mystery behind drivers of influence—and what it might mean for you personally, and as part of a movement. 

A Story of Awakening and Getting Into Action


Monday's Vital Conversation 8-10a PDT | 11a-1p EDT | 3-5p GMT


Podcast Available Here

Occupier 
Michael Harris offers us the story of his personal journey. Michael  has been part of
 Occupy Shoreline in Madison, CT and is also a facilitator of
  the Awakening the Dreamer symposium  and the Getting into Action workshop.  He describes his appreciation of some essential truths as a child and teen, his "forgetting" of these ideas as an adult in the corporate mainstream, and his mid-life (re)awakening into a new vocation and a powerful sense of both the urgency and the opportunity of the current moment.


As always, we invite you to 
join our discussion thread for this conversation on the Occupy Cafe Forum as well.  Please post your thoughts in advance of (or following) our Cafe Call.


We are applying the C2012 process to Occupy Cafe itself, as a way to collaboratively redesign the Cafe and to become skilled at this mode of inquiry so that we can apply it in broader contexts going forward.

How might Occupy Cafe evolve to better serve and expand the movement and to more fully embody our own brand of "Occupying?"  We start with the "Discovery" phase, which is based on appreciation and an articulation of positive visions.

• What are your best experiences with Occupy Cafe?
• If you had three wishes for OC, what would they be?  

Join the conversation today, or share your answers here on our forum.

(Image from Ezra Magazine)

On February 1st, Occupy Cafe Steward Ben Roberts hosted a conversation on "Occupy as a Leap of Faith" at Trinity Church on Wall Street, as part of Trinity Institute's Wall Street Dialogues program.  Video streaming is available here.

This conversation, which began as part of Occupy Cafe's Monday Vital Conversations series, continues here on the OC.org forum.  Please join us and offer your thoughts on the question: "How has the Occupy movement shifted your sense of what might be possible now?"