Proposal for 2 GA’s to twice a week, on Wednesday and Sunday, starting Jan 18, 2012.
This proposal is being brought to the GA by members of the facilitation committee. It is in response to feedback from members of the community, and observations made by facilitation team members in response to decreased attendance and fewer proposals being brought forward. The objective is to improve attendance and achieve quorum at the GA’s, and free up time for people who are already devoting so much time to preparing for upcoming big actions.
Upcoming actions include the move-in, J20, the port action in Longview, and the day of action in support of prisoners. With so much activity and time being devoted to these actions and other Occupy Oakland actions and projects, the facilitation team has been receiving feedback that spending 8-10 hours per week at GA’s is too much. This is especially from people are very involved and participating in committees that meet frequently. We have also received similar feedback from people who work full time and/or have families with small children. Some people have developed a pattern of not coming to GA’s or only 1-2 GA’s a week. Some attend only when a proposal that is of particular interest comes up. Over the holidays, there was an expected decrease in GA attendance. However even into January, attendance remains low and we frequently have difficulty in achieving quorum. In addition, there has been interest in the development of neighborhood assemblies. However there are concerns that adding those assemblies, without also decreasing the number of GA’s, will further decrease attendance at the GA and affect quorum.
Since the volume of proposals being submitted is currently low, we will be able to keep up with them with 2 GA’s per week, if we achieve quorum at those GA’s. So we propose that it would be better have fewer GA’s that are better attended. Passing this proposal will make it more feasible for full time activists to devote to time to committee work and upcoming actions, and still participate in the GA process. It will also encourage greater participation by those who cannot devote as much time to the movement, but want to remain involved. We need all of these voices at the GA.
Comments are closed.