As the #OccupyWallStreet movement continues to spread with more than 1,500 sites we're seeing more and more people are speaking up for a society that works for the 99 percent, not just the 1 percent. In this article Sarah van Gelder of the YES! Magazine staff lay out 10 recommendations for ways to build the power and momentum of this movement. Only two of them involve sleeping outside...

Occupy Wall Street: The Most Important Thing in the World Now

by Naomi Klein, Published on Friday, October 7, 2011 by The Occupied Wall Street Journal

Excerpt:
We have picked a fight with the most powerful economic and political forces on the planet. That’s frightening. And as this movement grows from strength to strength, it will get more frightening. Always be aware that there will be a temptation to shift to smaller targets—like, say, the person sitting next to you at this meeting. After all, that is a battle that’s easier to win.

Don’t give in to the temptation. I’m not saying don’t call each other on shit. But this time, let’s treat each other as if we plan to work side by side in struggle for many, many years to come. Because the task before will demand nothing less.

Let’s treat this beautiful movement as if it is most important thing in the world. Because it is. It really is.

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Turning Occupation into Lasting Change

"Mainstream progressive groups have failed by constraining their activities within legal and regulatory systems purposefully structured to subordinate communities to corporate power. Transformative movements don’t operate that way. Abolitionists never sought to regulate the slave trade; they sought freedom and rights for slaves. Suffragists didn’t seek concessions but demanded the right for all women to vote. The Occupy movement must begin to use lawmaking activities in cities and towns to build a new legal structure of rights that empowers community majorities over corporate minorities, rather than the other way around."

Jon Young: Storytelling, Peacemaking, & Culture Repair (Three Part Series)

Recordings:

Listen to a recording of Part One: Story Telling

Storytelling is a powerful tradition that people have used to meaningfully inform, instruct, raise questions, and evoke the world of imaginative play.

 

Listen to a recording of Part Two: Peacemaking

Peacemaking has a history of success that has largely been overlooked by Western historians, even though many traditional peoples have successfully maintained sophisticated systems of peacemaking over centuries.

 

Listen to a recording of Part Three: Culture Repair

Culture repair: Jon Young has been studying traditional cultures for the past 30 years. As an expert tracker and nature mentor who has worked with children and adults throughout the US and Europe, he intimately understands and has seen the effects of our disconnection with nature, ourselves and each other. From this disconnection a degenerative cultural system has emerged that has led to competition, strife, alienation, isolation, and rapid environmental degradation.

 

 

Tim Hartnett: Consensus Oriented Decision-Making

Recording: Watch a recording

A new model for facilitating group decision making is now available. The seven steps of the CODM process offer groups a way to reap the benefits of a participatory, collaborative process while maintaining clear and efficient progress toward final decisions. This new model marries the dual goals of generating widespread agreement and keeping meetings enjoyable and productive. After decades of experience using traditional consensus models, Tim Hartnett, PhD developed the CODM model by combining best practices from the fields of Group Facilitation, Conflict Resolution, and Non-Violent Communication. Described in the recently released book form New Society Publishers, CODM is flexible enough to be used by large or small groups with close-knit or diverse memberships. 

Open letter to the 99 percent

By Steven Liaros October 21, 2011 at Transition Voice

Excerpt: 
Build your world from the bottom up. Build a small self-sufficient and democratic community and then another and another. And then connect these with social networking tools. Yours can be different to all previous revolutions because for the first time in human history, we can create communities first before even considering building the physical city.

We can organize communities online. Form a group, or circle or network online with the people you get along with. Document your agreements and store them in a shared location. Work out what your needs are: food, housing, clothing, healthcare, IT needs, whatever, and decide who in the group will provide them. You are forming a team, a team of complementary players that collectively can satisfy everyone’s needs. You won’t be fully self-sufficient but strive towards self-sufficiency, at least for your basic needs. Have a look at Mother Earth News for heaps of ideas about how to be more self-sufficient.

For needs that can’t be met within the immediate community look at the Collaborative Consumption website for ideas around sharing and collaboration. Just be wary of the idea of “consumption.” Consumption should apply to food and little if anything else. Anything that uses up resources should be durable. It should last as long as possible. It should be designed so that, with some maintenance, it can last for generations. This is the true definition of sustainable development; the building of something that, if it must be made at all, can be sustained forever. Once again, though, you have to come to agreements about who does the maintenance.

Transition towards a better world

1. Transition, or steady change, is our process for creating a better world.
2. Our better world will be a global network of intentional local communities.
3. The network will be forged through, and bound only by, the free sharing of all human knowledge.
4. Each community shall regard all other communities as their equals and is responsible for sharing knowledge to achieve and maintain that equality.
5. Each community shall strive toward self-sufficiency with respect to food, water, energy and material resources.
6. Each community acknowledges that the right to use any part of the Earth is accompanied by a responsibility to maintain or enhance the health of the Earth so it may also be used by all future generations of all life species.
7. Each community shall maintain itself at a scale where all its members can meaningfully participate as equals in the development of agreements that bind the community together.
8. Each community shall allow and encourage the free movement of individuals between communities.
9. Each community shall allow and encourage the continual review of its agreements so that those social contracts are suitable to the present participants.
10. Each community acknowledges that all individuals are unique, and therefore different.
11. Each community shall encourage all individuals in their pursuit of self-knowledge, which is the pursuit of happiness.
12. Through the pursuit of self-knowledge, achieved by accepting change and allowing personal growth, we can each discover how we can contribute freely to the creation of a better world.

– Steven Liaros, Transition Voice