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    New Occupy Boston General Assembly Schedule

    Occupy Boston’s July 10 and July 17 General Assemblies were dedicated to answering a series of questions about how OB will make decisions in the future. Specifically: What decision-process we will use going forward? Will we keep the GA or adopt another format? How often will we meet and where? Do we need to create a series of meetings to address these issues? If so, which and why?

    At the July 17 GA, Occupy Boston reached consensus on retaining the GA, but reducing the length and frequency of meetings, and adopting a new meeting schedule. There was general agreement that we needed fewer and shorter GAs and that OB needed to move past this process discussion and focus on more substantial issues.

    Starting immediately, the GA will meet

    • The first and third Tuesday of each month (7-9pm, with possible extension to 9:30)
    • The second and fourth Sunday of each month, at 4pm (in Copley Square, right before SAA, which starts at 5pm)
    • When there is a 5th Tuesday, it will be open for an OB social event.

    The next scheduled GA is Tuesday August 7, at 7pm (location TBD, since Shakespeare on the Common has taken the usual meeting place). Tuesday July 31 is a 5th Tuesday and available for planning an OB social event.

    This proposal was developed through the discussion process, and passed by consensus.

    BofA Bake Sale Recap

    Last week, Occupy Boston held another Going out of Business Bake Sale for Bank of America. It was a small action, but done with theatrics and a sense of humor. Aproned street vendors handed out cookies and brownies; folks in suits passed out fliers; and a few demonstrators held banners and bantered back and fourth, taunting Bank of America.

    I’ve always enjoyed taking part in demonstrations like this, partly for of the theatrics, and partly for the range of responses you get from people passing by. On one hand, I could see that the demonstration really resonated with some people. We got smiles, nods, friendly waves, and the occasional “yeah!” shout out. There’s a lesson in that — even if they’re not taking to the streets, there are plenty of people who aren’t happy with Bank America, and the way that banks have trashed our country’s economy.

    And then there were reactions from the other side of the fence. One fellow dressed in a suit and tie took a flier, took a brownie, and paused for a moment to read the flier. He stood still for a few seconds, grimaced, wrapped the flier around the brownie, and flung it on the ground. We clearly touched some sort of nerve there. I could picture him as someone in Bank of America’s marketing department, trying to sell their crooked business practices to anyone foolhardy enough to listen.

    Finally, there were the mixed reactions to the banter. “Be a patriot and help bail out the United Bank of America” raised eyebrows, while “Bank of America bought Countrywide, and now they need all the help they can get” seemed to make people a tad anxious. “Banks got bailed out, they need more dough” drew chuckles.

    All in all, it was a good afternoon. Stay tuned — we’re planning more bank actions this summer.

    A Revolutionary Arts Festival on Bastille Day

    Anonymous Marie Antoinette

    Occupy Boston will host the Bastille Day Arts Festival on Saturday, July 14 from 1-4pm at Spontaneous Celebrations, 43 Danforth in Jamaica Plain near the Stoney Brook T-Stop off of the Orange Line. The festival will migrate to the SW Corridor Park across from the Stoney Brook Station where a General Assembly will be held at 5pm and festivities will continue. Bring your blanket, a musical instrument, art supplies, your favorite protest signs, and yourself to enjoy food, fun and festivity.

    Join us for an afternoon of live music, arts projects, exhibits, and brief histories of the French and Haitian Revolutions and political prisoners. There will be a retrospective of Occupy Boston inspired flyers, banners, photographs, protest signs and public art.

    We want to remind the general public that the arts and creativity are crucial for stimulating innovation, new ideas and free thinking in the context of a political movement. We hope to see you all there! And yes, there will be cake 🙂

    General Assembly Tuesday July 10 to Address Big Questions About the Future of Decision Making at Occupy Boston

    GA will be held July 10th at 7pm, at the Soldiers and Sailors Monument hill on Boston Common.

    The agenda for this GA is to attempt to make decisions about what decision-process we will use going forward: will we keep the GA or adopt another format? How often will we meet and where? Do we need to create a series of meetings to address these issues? If so, which and why?

    The proposal to have this GA was part of a proposal passed at GA 6/30.

    Why have this meeting? According to proposer Carolyn Magid, this is a chance to address a problem: GA is our current decision process, but we have dwindling GA attendance at the same time that we are trying to consider proposals with very broad implications for OB (about spending on S17, setting aside money for purchase of land, freezing spending, etc.). We need a good representation of Occupy Boston to decide on these important questions and to consider more generally how we should be moving forward as OB. If the current GA plan doesn’t give us a good representation of Occupy Boston, we need to consider what changes we need to make so that we have a decision-process we support and want to participate in. So this GA is focused on the decision-process in hopes that we can move ahead to make other important choices with more buy-in from OB.

    How will the meeting work? GA will use the Alternative Decision Making Process-Consensus (see General Assembly, Passed Resolutions 4/22/12 for more details) which allows us to consider everyone’s best ideas and to attempt to reach consensus in a much less rigid way than the original GA process. This meeting may be the beginning of a longer conversation before consensus is reached.

    All OB members are urged to come and bring your best ideas.

    Still Going out of Business Bake Sale for Bank of America

    On July 2nd, we had our first Going out of Business Bake Sale for Bank of America. After gathering in Dewey Square, we grabbed our banners, put on our costumes, and marched up to the Bank of America building at the corner of Franklin and Federal.

    We spent an hour in front of Bank of America, passing out flyers, gathering petition signatures, and handing out our famous honest-to-goodness, no-money-down, variable-interest-rate, miss-a-payment-and-we-take-your-f’ing-house brownies and cookies.

    And we’re going to do it all over again, this Monday, July 9th at 4:30 pm. Join us! Meet at Dewey Square, march to Bank of America, and exercise your right of free speech to ridicule a truly rapacious financial institution.

    Here are a few photos from the first bake sale:

    BofA July2 Dewey

    BofA July2 Dewey

    B of A Bake Sale

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    Occupy Boston Media <Media@occupyboston.org> • <Info@occupyboston.org> • @Occupy_Boston