Towards a participatory model that preserves autonomy, enables collective action and inhibits sectarian division and lack of accountability.
The general assembly model (with empowered and active committees and caucuses) implies that
each participant acts as an equal individual;
each committee acts in consensus (or modified consensus) to fulfill the mission/tasks delegated to it by the general assembly;
each individual mobilizes on behalf of their political, cultural, artistic, or vocational affinity via a caucus that reflects their experience, industrial sector, ethnic identity, gender, sexual orientation, age, geographical or national origin or other identification;
and each caucus carries forward its own autonomous activities in parallel to the work of the assembly as a whole.
When a constituent part of an assembly (whether an individual, committee or caucus) seeks to act on behalf of or in the name of an occupation in a shared geographical locus, it requires the consensus of the whole assembly. When a constituent part of the assembly (individual, committee or caucus) determines a course of action or shares a perspective on its activities, it has the right to act autonomously on its own so long as it does not violate the consensus of the whole.
Instances of caucus type formation in Oakland include the People of Color Caucus, queercupation, and the poets group (which has been coordinating poetry readings and the Oscar grant Plaza Gazette) Other affinity based groupings have also begun to naturally emerge. There is no formal process yet in place for the designation of caucuses. Some loci of activity, such as the free school, library, children’s space are seen as committees, though they also tend to reflect certain types of affinities.
In NYC they have begun discerning how to better organize actual decision-making via a spokes council model. Understanding the relationship between the parts and the whole is the crux of the challenge before us.