"Happy Birthday Occupy Wall Street ... thoughts on Year One"
Fifteen years ago, I ran across a book, "100 Most Influential People in History," during one of my dalliances to my local Marin County bookstore. "Influential People" was one man's assessment on exactly that. But how he determined his rankings was the interesting part. They weren't always the reasons you would think. But after thinking about it, they made complete sense. For example:George Washington was ranked in the top 40 of all time. Understandable. But the reason why ... not so much. You…See More
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Hi Raffi, great to hear from you.
Can you tell me more about the context you would invite me in? And when would that be?
With love from freezing Belgium,
Ria
Raffi, happy to connect with you. I feel myself torn to be in action in community and to also be in conversations that matter, here and other places. I would be so drawn to read everything you've written to discover all the great insights you have and to savor the wonderful conversations of others. Yet I find myself pulling back and limiting myself to an occasional visit for now wanting to support Occupy and Mainstream in other ways. Glad to be your new occupy friend :-}
Yes, I go by the Civic Center most days, but I've never stayed overnight. Things are very difficult for the full-time Occupiers and will remain so until and unless we get the right to have tarps and tents. This evening, just as it started to drizzle rain, the police tried to take away the tarps protecting the campers. A 1st Amendment lawyer will be filing for a temporary restraining order on Monday to stop this sort of harassment.
One Occupier today had a sign with the 1st Amendment printed on it and says that a cop looked at it and said, "Wow, that's nice! Did you just make that up yourself?" So I emailed the San Diego chapter of the American Constitution Society to see if they'd be willing to supply copies of the Constitution (they often distribute copies of the Constitution at their public events) to the San Diego Police Department. Apparently the cops here are required to take an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution, but are not required to read it or know anything about it.
Of course as Bush said, the Constitution is just a g.d. piece of paper, and a counterrevolutionary one at that: The Counterrevolutionary Constitution
Hi Raffi--
We've met and talked previously, I think the first time was at City College at a Sustainable Urban Food & Gardening event, and again at a couple of Activist San Diego events.
Hi Raffi! thanks for the warm welcome! more later...
Raffi,
I am one of the organizers of Occupy Cafe. Very interesting to read your blogs about some of the challenges re Occupy process. If you have not heard yet there are now National Calls bringing together representatives from the Occupy sites. In recent weeks there has been a fair amount of interest in setting up a group(s) to talk about dealing with homeless, saboteurs, etc. Thought you might be interested. Thanks, Rob Wheeler
robwheeler22 @ gmail.com
Questions? Email: movementbuildingNY@gmail.com
We will be having our next Occupy inter-occupation conference call on Monday, November 7th at 10pm EST/7pm PST. Occupy Los Angeles will be hosting.
From our previous two calls and from emails received, we have identified a need for certain discussions to be starting among the occupations, and so during the breakout groups for Monday’s call, we have predetermined the following discussions:
Direct Action Working Groups coordination
Media Working Groups coordination
IT Working Groups coordination
Facilitation/General Assembly discussion
Emerging or Struggling Occupations support
When you register for the call at the link below, please select which of those discussions you’d like to participate in. There is a dropdown menu on the registration page that you can select from. This will be a way of getting these specific dialogues started.
Registration Information:
To join the conference call, please click on the following link and register. We will be using the conference service Maestro so that we can keep stack and use breakout groups if necessary.