Sent in from OBBC #1 member Nic:
Our first Beer Committee meeting was a great success and a solid first step to creating a stronger Occupy Movement. There were eight of us who came together last Wednesday night to discuss the issues surrounding the movement that were on our minds. We talk on specific topics like the Occupy Berkeley camp and about more personal broad issues like why we support the movement. It was a fantastic conversation and we had several new and quite intriguing ideas come to light.
As we hoped, the first meeting brought together people with a variety of ideas and visions for the movement. We even had the pleasure of having a visitor from Great Britain share his thoughts for the organization. Some members were interested in instigating change on a local level and others were interested in national policy change. Some had specific skills they wanted to use to further the Occupy cause and others were more geared toward planning projects and actions. For example, one idea that was shared was that of using the Transition Town Movement as a model for Occupy to build off of. Another member would like to see the movement become more politically involved by communicating with local progressive leaders. We even had some progress on the notion of using the Grassroots House in Berkeley to assist us with office space if we grew to need it.
The meeting went for about two hours and was beautiful representation of the possibility of the Occupy movement. The discussion was cordial and had the potential to really incite social change through inspiration and vision planning. We hope that it grows in the coming weeks and we continue to give our community an outlet to discuss and act on the change that each of us want to see in our society.
List of visions and topics that were brought up at the meeting:
- Engaging city officials about local change and the city’s relationship with Occupy
- Creating a more grassroots and community level projects for a sustainable future
- A push for creating a multi-party democratic system in the nation
- Rethinking of capitalism as the foundation for our economic system
- Moving the location of the camp to in front of old city hall
- Desire to improve health food accessibility and acceptance in our culture
- Solidifying the movement around getting money out of politics
- Producing a video or television segment that will really help to market our vision for change.
- Actively supporting the Occupy Berkeley camp and providing more services
- Looking to the Transition Towns to get ideas for projects and organization ideas
- Partnering with the Green Party to use their office in the Grassroots House
- Supporting local and individual agriculture projects
I love the “beer committee” thing!
I’d really love to join you guys: maybe in Jan…
Couple questions:
What is the relationship to the GA? Will proposals be coming out of this?
Also… is consensus being used for decision making?
And last: just in response to a topic: “solidifying the movement around getting money out of politics” … while I agree with the sentiment, I think we should be careful about solidifying around any one thing. We are looking for big time change: not just political change. Societal change. So, I would hope that the focus does NOT solidify around one single idea, but continues to grow in the organic, multi-branching way that is has been.
Beth
Hi Beth!
There is no formal relationship to the GA. It’s not a working group or official part of the OB GA. As such, it obviously can’t make decisions for the OB as a whole and doesn’t have access to OB’s finances, supplies, etc. without GA approval. Proposals may get discussed in these groups that will eventually find their way to GA if the group thinks or wants Occupy Berkeley support for it, but actions can (and might regularly) operate without any specific GA proposal being passed on the matter.
We’ve had one meeting thusfar, and it’s really up to each Beer Committee what sort of decision making process they want to use. I would like, in general, to use consensus-based decision making in the BCs that I’m a part of. But BC #1 is a relatively open (we advertise and meet at a public location) type of beer committee and right now we’re just having good discussions on a variety of issues. It will likely turn out that some individuals have mutual interests and that some others want to do something different. In this case members will likely split off and create their own beer committee which works on the specific issues that they’re interested in.
As for the solidifying the movement around getting money out of politics, that may in fact be what one beer committee decides to focus on. But other beer committees who feel differently can focus on other issues, or be multi-faceted in their approach. Hopefully, as each BC develops what it thinks it important, the best idea will win out by getting the most traction with others. So no, there’s no artificial limiting of the scope, just a possible organic limiting