Allan Appel Photo
Occupiers review hand signals as a dramatic debate gets underway.
What’s to stop five Young Republicans from infiltrating the Occupy New Haven encampment and launching an embarrassing demonstration in the movement’s name?
Well, what’s a Direction Action Committee for if not to take direct action?
Well, why haven’t we taken any action then?
All right, and why shouldn’t the Young Republicans be allowed to join up if they wanted to?
Those arguments flew as the Founding Fathers and Founding Mothers of New Haven’s new “occupation” of the upper Green held an “emergency general assembly” Monday night.
At issue was how the New Haven movement can make its decisions in a genuinely democratic way without allowing small bands of people to hijack and destroy it.
Occupier Jennifer Lopez convened the first emergency general assembly meeting of the three-day-old encampment. She tried to convince fellow participants like Tommy Doomsday (masked in photo) that any group of people, not just the encampment’s Direct Action Committee, should be able to take up signs and organize a march or demonstration on their own.
Arguments were exchanged with emotion, humor, many involving sophisticated parliamentary finesse, over an hour an half.
The general assembly formed up at one of the Green’s benches at 6 p.m. Meanwhile, Todd Sanders of the occupation’s Media Committee said each of the gathering’s 31 tents holds from six to nine people. He said 50 to 60 people slept in the encampment last night.
The group, which formed officially in New Haven on Saturday, is one of hundreds spawned by the Occupy Wall Street movement in New York City. which is calling attention to income disparity in the country, a lack of economic justice, and raising a clarion call about the stranglehold corporations have on the political process.
The spirited debate and efforts to have as pure a democracy as possible in the making of group decisions would have shocked the theocratic Puritans who lay buried beneath the dozens of tents and signs that spread out in organized profusion in the northwest corner of the Green.
In the end, after all the hand signals and mic-checks, 90 minutes of speeches, points of clarification and “temperature checks” (raised-hands snapshots of the consensus in the body), a vote on Lopez’s proposal was thrown into question.
According to the rules governing the general assembly and the committees that were set up over the weekend, 75 people must be present, as well as a 90 percent majority of them voting in favor, for a proposal to pass.
Bummer. By the debate’s end, too many of the 75 people originally present had wandered off to their tents as the night grew cold and dark.
Dead Horses Opposed
Lopez sits on the Occupation Committee, composed of people who are spending 24/7 in the encampment. What prompted her to call the emergency general assembly was frustration that the Direct Action Committee had taken no real action yet, organized no marches or demonstrations, in her view.
She proposed that any committee could do so as long as it met three requirements: At least half the committee members be present; 75 percent agree to an action; and top downtown cop Lt. Rebecca Sweeney be called at least 30 minutes prior to the march or demonstration.
Fellow organizer Ben Aubin noted that even Young Republicans could form a committee and march in the movement’s name.
“We’re a group that’s allowing anybody in,” someone in the crowd responded.
Jessica Ferguson suggested any committee that wanted a march coordinate with the Direct Action Committee.
That sounded too unwieldy to some. What’s wrong with taking up signs and going to shout out the slogans, for example, right on the street corners of the Green? they asked.
Aubin said he empathized with Lopez but said the Direct Action Committee has been in business a short time. He said the committee has been debating questions such as: Do we march against a bank? Or for something?
He added that direct action, by march or demonstration, is not the only way to have an influence. “What if the Education Committee was able to contact Yale professors?” he suggested. “We can do something unique and get national attention.”
Non-leaders demonstrating a “block,” a gesture signifying serious moral objection to the matter at hand.
A woman named Jess, who like Aubin appeared to be a non-self-identified leader, made a distinction between walking around within the encampment or at its corners on the Green and full-fledged marches out into the city.
She said marches are effective only in larger numbers.
Tommy Doomsday asked: “Is it cool to walk around within the encampment?”
“Absolutely,” Sanders of the Media Committee replied. “The media group just asks you avoid profanity.”
Then Sanders, a student at Southern Connecticut State University, added; “If we beat a dead horse into an invisible pulp, we will never get anything done.”
“I am against beating any horse,” an invisible voice called out from the darkening back row of the gathering.
“Congregationalism On Steroids”
When it was his turn, Rev. John Gage of United Church on the Green said spontaneous actions of small committees might obstruct the message of the encampment from getting out into the larger community.
“On Saturday, a thousand people were with us. Where are they now? Now we’re 75. If you want them to help, we need to find ways to work in regular patterns and to tell them about it,” he argued.
Ben Aubin with Lopez.
That said, he praised the debate and the democracy in action. “It’s like Congregationalism on steroids,” he said.
After nearly two hours of discussion, someone raised a point of clarification noting that the crowd at the assembly had dwindled, with many people wandering back to their tents. Without 75 people, a vote on Lopez’s proposal could not be taken.
“Let’s bring them back,” someone said from the crowd.
“They left for a reason, ” said Aubin.
“There are only 58 people,” another voice said after a count.
Tommy Doomsday said he was wearing a mask as a sign of unity. “It’s the anonymous 99 percent,” he said.
“But there were more than 75 here when we started, ” Lopez countered.
In the end, no vote was taken. Lopez said she had mixed feelings about what had transpired but said in general “it was constructive.” She felt heard, which was the point, although she planned to talk among her friends and consider re-proposing.
According to the encampment’s current rules, two regular scheduled general assemblies occur each week: Wednesday night at 6 and Sunday at 2 p.m. Proposals, which must come out of the committees, must be presented one hour before.
Previous Occupy Wall Street/ New Haven coverage:
• The Password (The Password) … Is (Is) …
• 1,000 Launch New Haven’s “Occupation”
• Klein: Occupation Needs To Confront Power
• Whoops! Movement Loses $100K
• New Haven’s “Occupation” Takes Shape
• Occupy Branford: Wall Street Edition
• Anti-Bankers’ Dilemma: How To Process $$
• Labor, Occupiers March To Same Beat
• Protests’ Demand: A “World We Want To See”
• Protesters To Occupy Green Starting Oct. 15
• Wall Street Occupiers Page Verizon
• New Haven Exports “Free”-dom To Occupiers
Am I the only one that thinks the hand signals are just silly? Is it really necessary to invent a new way of group communicating/voting?