Announcements:
Catherine: Occupy Benefit concert at the Jefferson Warehouse on March 1 at 8:30pm. The proceeds will go to Occupy The Midwest Regional Conference. It is a live art and music show. Door fee is ten dollars, two art supplies to go to needy schools or five canned goods for the conference. THere will be artists creating their art live. Need help finding bands; send them my way!!
Chuck: Clarification–Occupy the Midwest (OMW) has 30 different cities involved.
Occupy St. Louis can’t pass anything that affects OMW . If we still had a camp at Kiener then our policies of safe space would apply, but the OMW space is a temporary space and everything needs to pass through the OMW GA. OMW is temporary and dissolves afterwards, along with all it’s official statements, until there is another regional conference somewhere else.
Reese: finances are $65. Please share the donation link. OSTL money is on a separate WePay account from OMW. OMW has $300 in it.
Douglas: There is a Quaker Peace exhibit, “Eyes Wide Open” which will be in Peoria, Il. February 29 through March 7.
Proposals:
Paul: Statement of tactical non-violence for St. Louis. This is adopted from Occupy Pittsburgh:
In solidarity with Occupy Wall Street and other occupations across the country, Occupy St. Louis has adopted the strategy of Tactical Nonviolence.
We are calling this approach Tactical Nonviolence because it limits itself to actual tactics that we will be using, at this time and in this place. It does not demand acceptance of any specific religious, philosophical or political world-view, and though compatible with the ideas of nonresistance and pacifism, it does not ultimately require them; nor is it taken quite so far as those sometimes are. Tactical Nonviolence does not, for instance, rule out all forms of personal self-defense, civil disobedience or direct action, and there is no simple formula covering every possible set of circumstances.
However, Tactical Nonviolence does remain a practical and effective way to empower the disempowered in asymmetrical conflict by concentrating all our efforts toward addressing the real issues, where violence tends to obscure them, and itself becomes the issue.
THEREFORE, to foster unity across the broad spectrum of views held by those here assembled, to promote the safety of every member of this community, and to help reduce the distortion or dilution of our message to those of the 99% who are not yet with us, we agree to the following points, while at or near Occupy Pittsburgh’s encampment or actions:
• not to initiate physical violence with members of the police, Occupy participants and supporters, or public,
• if attacked by either, to respond in ways that seek to minimize harm to persons, and
• to abstain from provocative destruction of property.
The General Assembly retains the power to clarify or modify this statement as needed.
Brief discussion ensued from clarifying questions and points of information:
Question about actions that could impede safety.
This doesn’t address that issue.
Does this cover whether or not spray painting is an act of violence?
This is a statement of principle that as a group we will encourage. This is not saying we can control the autonomous acts of individuals.
What’s one person’s act of expressing themselves and being empowered is another person’s offensive or violent act. We can’t tell anyone what to do. We can just agree what we do in an Official capacity.
We have a safe space agreement in place.
PASSED second GA, consensus minus one
Many people were comfortable passing the above proposal only if an amendment was accepted. Since this was a second GA no new language could be attached. Everyone agreed as to what the new language should be and Susie brought this as a proposal.
Susie: The legal definition of destruction of property is to render property useless.
PASSED first GA
Paul: “Bright Line” an amendment to our proposal of safe space. Passed 1 GA already, this is the second GA.
Majority Blocked.
Vibe Check:
Susie: Do we need to have a “buy-in” where the type of march or action is expressly stated right before the march/action takes place?
There are already marshall’s for Official actions and marches that defines what each march is about right before the march takes place. This needs to happen again, kind of got lost in the shuffle.
There was also a proposal passed that the marshall also states clearly that this is the end of a march/action so if anyone who wants to can continue on, but it is no longer official.
Chris: Procedures and requirements for things change often. Is there somewhere on the website where these things can be found without wading through other stuff? Catherine will take this to the admin.
Chuck: Chuck was looking up the legal definition of violence towards property during GA. All the definitions he found didn’t match what we defined as legal. Chuck proposed we change the “legal definition” to “the definition we’re adopting,” but we’d lost quorum so he vibe checked it.
Vibe checked positively. Will need to change the wording in next two GA’s.
John David: No matter what we do, we need to work within the spirit of OSTL rather than the letter of OSTL.