State meeting

So here is something that a delegate from Occupy Orlando sent me. I'm also in a group of other occupies around Florida. Occupy Orlando has officially decided by consensus to begin the process of hosting a founding-father's style People's Convention here in Orlando with delegates from all the Occupations around the state. It is tentatively scheduled for the weekend of Dec 9-11th. The purpose is to decide as the larger Occupy Florida movement what we want to have happen in our state.



Reasons:

1. Greater Solidarity - imagine if we spoke with one voice instead of as just Tallahassee or Miami or Orlando, etc.



2. Greater visibility - it will be very difficult for the Media and the State government to ignore us if we come together.



3. Better Direction/Focus as a movement - we will finally have a clear message as to what it is we want. Thus making it easier for the general public to support us.



4. We can start a trend- Oakland had the first General Strike since the 50s a few days ago. We can be the first to have a People's Convention since 1789!



5. Why Orlando? We are a central location in the State. It will be easier for people to get here than say Tallahassee.



The politicians have failed us, it is time for We the People to decide what we want to have happen. No matter what a politician says to get your votes, once they are elected they base policy off of the wants of their campaign donors.



We need to give our supporters a look at what the next step will be in this movement. Protesting and occupying is good, but being proactive is better. Many people don't know what to think of us because we have no clear goals. The average person is not going to spend time researching all the problems in our economic and political system. Creating a list of wants will make it easy for the public to support us.



Once the Convention comes up with a People's Plan, we will have a symbolic march in Tallahassee on January 10th to bring the People's Plan to the State Legislature. This march also reached consensus at Occupy Orlando's GA. In addition, Occupy Tallahassee was already planning on having an event on that day so it works out.



Each Occupation in the state will have to decide at their GAs whether they want to join us in this process.Occupy Brandenton and Occupy Tampa are officially on board. Occupy Ft.Myers/Palm Beach/Tallahassee/Sarasota/Gainesville/Ft.Lauderdale have expressed interest and will be presenting the proposal to their GAs soon.




Clarifications:

- This is for our list of what we want to happen at the Florida State level, not about federal or local city demands.



- This will not be an end-all be-all list of what we want. It is meant to be a starting point, but we can amend and add to the list in the future.



- Delegates will be anyone who decides to come from each respective Occupation as well as anyone from the general public who wishes to join us.



- Just because some or all of the demands the list may be satisfied does not mean that we will be satisfied as a movement.



- We will NOT accept any form of political or corporate sponsorship. If a group wishes to donate to us then they must do it anonymously for the good of the movement, but we will not advertise for them, such as "this convention is sponsored by xyz." We are against politicians being bought and we do not want our convention to be bought. We do not want to be beholden to a certain group or corporation's wishes.



- We will NOT have any political or other type of affiliation. We are NOT creating a political party. This will purely be decisions by the people.



- There is to be NO ADVERTISING of any kind by any group that comes to the Convention. This means no pro-life pamphlets, no political campaigning, no unapproved petition signing, etc. The only printed materials distributed at the Convention will be information about the process, the itinerary, etc. The only exception to the rule will be Voter Registration.



- NO POLITICIANS OR THEIR EMPLOYEES ALLOWED AT ALL. I had spoken with a few people about possibly letting politicians come, but not participate. That is, letting them passively observe the Convention. However, after speaking with other people, I think that any politicians showing up will be spun as us supporting them. Let's be honest, the Democrats are more likely to come than the Republicans and the last thing we need is to be co-opted by the Democratic party like what happened to the Tea Party with Republicans.



- This is NOT a party or a festival. This is about the hard work it will take to fix our state. No one is to bring any illegal substances of any kind. I suggest we give people who are caught with these substances a friendly warning once, but if it happens again we should report them to the police.



- Members of special interest groups such as unions are welcome to come, but only as individuals. For example, there can be no AFL-CIO delegation.





Possible Critiques:

1. A list of demands will make us a target; We shouldn't pander to those who say we have no direction.

Answer: We should just call it a Plan instead of a List of Demands because Plan is not a loaded phrase. In order to gain more momentum, in order to convince the general public of why they should support us, we need to have a clear focus. For example, the teacher's unions have not decided to back us although they share many of our goals because they do not know what we represent. In addition, we will focus on proposals that will have broad public appeal. We will not be pandering to special interests.



2. This will be ineffective, it won't change anything.

Answer: We will be much harder to ignore if we show the powers that be that we are well organized, that we are serious about wanting change.



3. Keeping the movement City by City is best. We do not want to lose our individual movements because there is a lot of local policy that needs to be addressed.

Answer: This is not meant to replace local Occupations. We will still focus on local issues. This is will just be a way to communicate and work on State-wide policy as well as show our strength as a movement.


I'm going to bring this up at my next GA.

So if I'm reading this right, our GA would have a month from today to reach a consensus on what we think is important to us on the state level, then any Jax delegates would go to Orlando for the meeting to represent our GA. From there, in one weekend, a new state-wide consensus would be reached and the following month (January) anyone who's interested would go to Tally to present the plan. I am skeptical that an undertaking like this could work in such a short timeframe - maybe it can, I don't know. I like the idea though and I think it's worth a try.
I'm definitely in favor of giving it a go.
Angela

Kennie,
Thanks for posting news regarding state-wide efforts of Occupy Jax. For all, I encourage a close relationship with their efforts.