We, the facilitation group, were asked at our facilitation meeting today to respond to questions regarding our General Assembly process that were brought forth at our morning meeting. We were told that a representative from City Hall came to our morning meeting and requested details about the process, specifically pertaining to ones ability to speak freely at our General Assembly. Following our meeting we drafted the following letter and delivered it to the concerned party(s).
Upon delivering the letter we made it clear that persons attending our General Assembly do so as individual community members, not representing an institution.
Due to the desire for full transparency at our occupation and to help resolve the confusion fueled by the media, we are emailing the letter through email to everyone in addition to posting it on the website (which should take place with any letter written on behalf of Occupy Oakland).
The following is the said letter:
To whom it may concern:
Based on the inquiry addressed at our morning meeting regarding our General Assembly process and the desire for an individual(s) in our community to speak at our General Assembly, we, Occupy Oakland, want to detail our process.
We, as Occupy Oakland, have come to a consensus regarding the refusal to allow any individual in our community to be granted preferential treatment. Our community is composed of individuals with equal ability to participate. Therefore we place time restraints on the various portions of our meetings and have cultivated a process in which community members are able to participate within our predetermined General Assembly format.
We now wish to detail the various portions of our General Assembly in order for the concerned party(s) to understand how their voice(s) may be heard.
Prior to the official start of the General Assembly, we provide community members the opportunity to speak freely on the microphone. The speak-out portion of our process begins at 6:00pm and closes at 7:00pm.
We allot two minutes for each speaker during this portion of our gathering. Those who wish to speak must stand in line within our stack. Our stack is simply a line of community members who wait their turn to speak.
Our official General Assembly begins at 7:00pm. Our General Assembly format allows our facilitation team to welcome the community to our General Assembly and follow by a brief overview of our modified-consensus-decision making process. We then discuss and decide the future of submitted proposals. Then we proceed with updates from our various committees, followed by autonomous action announcements and finally proceed to general announcements from community members.
The general announcements portion of our general assembly allows the community to present any announcement to the assembly. Interested individuals from the community are allotted one minute to speak freely on any announcement.
Therefore there are two portions of our process that allows community members to speak freely. First being the speak-out and second during general announcements.
If you would like to know the intricacies of our General Assembly or the proposal making process, please refer to our website detailed on our letterhead.
Thank you for the inquiry,
Occupy Oakland
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