Occupy Central Vermont

Education & Empowerment Working Group Conference Call 6/5/12
Check-ins: John, Heather, Bill, Jay

Agenda:
1. Reconfigurating the GA/Occupy schedule — E&E Roles: Proposed to have one decision making GA per month, amendments have included ensuring one E&E led activity, followed by further specificity of one DAWG led activity, and one up-in-the-air activity, with a revisit in September. Proposal as it stands with amendments means that E&E as a group would need to commit to some version of a public, monthly event on the 3rd Saturday of the month.

• John — internal educational discussions haven’t been well attended
• Jay — do others want E&E discussions/events/teach-ins / will people come?
• Heather — both amendments asked for E&E to facilitate something once a month during GA time (or on Saturdays?). Is this something we want to do/can do?
• Jay — we should check with others
• John — instead we could just do a teach-in a month, not discussion
• Jay — in favor of doing a teach-in, not clear that internal education is useful
• John — focus efforts on public teach-ins
• Bill — sounds good
• Heather — agreed. Think we need to figure out if we agree to same time as GAs, same days as GAs but different times, or if some flexibility with date/time
• Jay — flexibility with date and time
• John — yes on 3rd Saturday, but flexibility on time
• Bill — sounds good to me, saturdays and flexible on time
• Heather — addresses jays option, clarifying consensus, twinkles

CONSENSUS: Saturday teach-in, public event, not internal education, held on the third Saturday of the month, with flexibility on the time. YES

2. Check-in about Pop-Up:

• Jay–historical moment of occupy (discussion, 15 framing, 15 questions)
• John–banking and crisis (condensed lecture, with smaller time for questions)
• Heather–organizing convos (condensed participatory exercise of some sort

3. Broader Teach-Ins in coming months:

• Wind topic didn’t go over well with those in attendance at GA, but keeps coming up, so should do something
• Broadly about resource efficiency, environmental issues?
• Banking issues are still core issues, Bill’s got a couple of movies. Educational but entertaining. Cartoons. Inside Job. Money as Debt. Film first as retrospective on crisis we got into, and panel about where we are now? Bill sending links.
• Bringing down student or two from Montreal. Revisiting education / tuition. Broadly contextual of crisis
• Know your rights teach-in with lawyer. Police issues complex.
• Affinity groups. Gathering info for group to read. Revisit if necessary.

4. Display & Library

• Display — needs more thinking and some creative time. Madeline and heather.
• Library — Jay’s got it and will look through titles, bring 30 books or so to pop-up. Heather will bring the rolling cart, and can store in garage until we hear about the bike shop. (HP check on bike shop).