GA Meeting Minutes • January 4, 2016 Occupy Eugene General Assembly Minutes

In Solidarity with #Occupywallstreet January 4, 2016 Occupy Eugene General Assembly Minutes

Agenda

1) Committee Reports (10 min)

2) Kesey Square (15 min)

3) State Of The City Protest? Re: Homeless? (10 min)

4) Lane County Free Speech

5) Sanders’ “Political Revolution” and Occupy (10 min)

6) Malheur Wildlife Refuge Occupation (10 min)

7) John Trudell (5 min)

8) Announcements

13 People present (eventually there were 15 people present)
John Abe facilitating.
John Thielking taking notes

Committee Reports:

Newsletter – Beatrice has assumed Ralph’s duties of layout and publishing.

Com Com – Still active and updating @occupyeugene twitter account. Would welcome new members.

Finance – We have stable finances for now, but we can’t do any actions with existing funds. We have a Steinbeck book for sale (East Of Eden) that is worth a few hundred dollars.

Library — We are talking about having formal meetings again. Book sale needs to happen soon.

Kesey Square:

Gwen wanted to have us take a position on the sale of Kesey Square.

The Eugene Mayor is not admitting to wanting to sell to a private developer.

Gwen formed ‘Save The Square’ group (on Facebook) independently of Occupy Eugene.

‘Troublesome Square’ of Occupy Eugene has a small e-mail list. Connor can add people to it.

Davis owner has been helping the homeless.

Starbucks @ Broadway and Willamette is very inclusive of homeless people.

The Eugene City and Chamber of Commerce are promoting ‘discouraging panhandling’ programs.

Question of having a quorum: There is precedent for having people vote by phone at a GA.

Rick objects to having a vote by phone.

Motion: Occupy Eugene supports preserving Kesey Square as public space.

Sub-quorum agreement with 13 people present.

State Of The City Protest:

Will people stand there with signs?

Inside of the Hult Center they do allow signs.

What did the city promise the last time they shut down a camp (in 2012)?

They promised $325k of money that never materialized, and other stuff. There were a total of 6 things promised, which should all be mentioned in the December 2011 City Council minutes.

Media coverage isn’t everything.

Art will write an alternative State Of The City column for the Weekly.

Lane County Free Speech:

Background – There was a recent RG article that suggested that low level county employees would be formally delegated the authority to ask people to leave county property if the latest rule change were to pass the County Commissioners. John T did a little research and found that low level employees have had this power over county parks for at least 2 decades.

The question of having county employees act as Peace Officers limits free speech.

Is that a power grab?

Some discussion was had about the lack of due process and unequal protection under the law of different groups under the Lane County and City laws governing park rules and exclusion zones, such as prostitute free zones.

Do we want to do something to do a test case to have the law thrown out? Anyone want to do a test case? Do a records request to see if there is anyone who has been excluded from a park.

Sanders’ Political Revolution and Occupy Eugene:

Sanders is offering to support a movement to put pressure on Congress even after the election. Sanders will organize people to pressure Congress.

He is talking about it all of the time.

Is Bernie Sanders going to push Occupy’s agenda?

Talk to John A after the meeting to find out more.

We now have a quorum of 15 so we will revisit the Kesey Square question. The Kesey Square motion was adopted with a quorum of 15. No stand asides, no questions.

A subcommittee will draft a press release and send it out.

The next city council meeting is next week (1-11-16).

Malheur Wildlife Refuge Occupation:

Is it only 18 people or 150 people? The attorney for the 2 prisoners (Hammonds) advised against accepting support from the protestors.

This has been a 20 year battle with BLM over grazing rights.

“This is a legit fight between the BLM and the people – regardless of some racist statements by supporters.”

A local Indian tribe is pointing out that they were here first.

John Trudell:

Sioux Indian who died December 9, 2015. He was a true visionary. There is a Trudell video available on Youtube.

“In order to dominate a people you must first destroy their spirit.”

Announcements:

January 20th Race, Police and The Supreme Court at UO Law School at 7PM.

Jan 18th MLK March

Jan 23rd there may be a Sanders march.

Meeting adjourned at 7:35PM

Statistics: Posted by pagesincolor — Mon Jan 11, 2016 11:00 am — Replies 0 — Views 1

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Source: https://occupyeugenemedia.org/discussion/viewtopic.php?t=1567&p=3343#p3343