Wear Clean Draws  (because there’s 5 million ways to kill a ceo)

home sick with stomach flu, catching up with email from the Demands Working Group. They’d decided upon a Jobs for All demand, gotten support from other working groups such as the Jobless Working Group. Still, for a second time, the proposal was voted down.

What I’m not grasping is why they, the Demands Working Group, doesn’t seem to do things to build consensus. It looks like all they do is find other WGs to support a proposal and then rely on them to get the General Assembly filled with people who will vote for the proposal - even if those people don’t normally attend the General Assembly. And yet at the same time, what happens is that even with the endorsement, they aren’t getting agreement to come to the GA and help vote for it!

What the fuck kind of idiotic politics is that?

The way consensus works elsewhere is that you keep addressing the issues of concern, altering the proposal until you’ve got something lots of people can agree to.
It’s not easy to do that, but when done with respect for the positions of those who disagree with one another, when done on the assumption that people are disagreeing for reasons that can be worked through, then it can be a very rewarding process. You might not get what you want, if you’re someone who backed the original proposal, but if you don’t even try to work with others to figure out why they object and what can be done about those objections, you won’t get what you want either.

On the other hand, one of the respondents to the initial discussion about the latest failure said that they were simply going to go create their own General Assembly. Once they got the General Assembly they wanted, they would get the Jobs for All Demand voted on and passed. And to hell with all the anti-democratic anarchists in OWS!

Nice!

Elena:

I’m sorry it did not pass but I think we should all agree that the GA that voted it down has been relegated to irrelevance, as has been the case in some OWS’ around the country, but have then been re-formed by more sane, forward-thinking individuals. As I stated earlier, however, we shouldn’t let our demands vanquish with the irrelevance of this GA. I think a new city-wide GA would be more effective in passing demands and getting rid of this idiotic 90% consensus model that has never worked. To not have demands is to cut the movement off at the knees and we don’t have time for such self-righteous, needlessly doctrinaire approaches that benefit NO ONE.
I’m 100% on board with moving forward without the GA that voted down our first demand.

From Mexico City,
Elena

An interesting response to some of the debates:

Brothers and Sisters in Demands WG,

I cannot be there tonight it is a Jewish holiday.

But you can all feel free to articulate that I will formally resign from the Demands Working Group (as many others have) if:

a) Jobs for All goes to the GA again in the way it has now done 3 times.
b) If other Demands Subgroups think just going to the GA is acceptable or productive without getting (A YET TO BE DETERMINED, but surely more than 5 OWS WG endorsements.) There are after like 100 WGs.

As I and others have said for over two months: SPOKES COUNCIL PARTICIPATION IS VITAL, and, MOST OTHER WORKING GROUPS (HATE) OR DISTRUST THIS GROUP.

I think some of you have basic political views incompatible with my own, and that I can accept. But talk of ‘obstructionosts, of ‘Citywide GAs’, and A TOTAL lack of respect for fellow occupiers is making it a little hard to be in/ defend this group to the rest of the movement. Which some of us SPEND TOO MUCH TIME DOING.

I think some of the JFA Subgroup sabotage the effort of all of us to achieve Demands. I dont think they represent us well publicly. I think they yell and cry and shout and couch authoritarianism in some kind of faux-vangardist elitism. And that’s worked SO fucking well for the last 100 years. lol.

I propose amending our charter to make it impossible to formulate a demand and go straight to the GA without a much broader levels of consensus. I also think we ought to send a delegate to spokes at least once a week. Someone presentable and sane.

I really appreciate the hard work you all have been doing. Even those of you in JFA Subgroup whom I disagree with tactically. We ALL have put in work. I think if we do this through Solutions Cluster and clean up our groups image a bit more we will get JFA (NOT AS IS)and other demands passed in the next three months. But obviously not the way we are going about it.

Some people act like “OH MY FUCKING GOD, IF WE DONT GET IN A DEMAND THE MOVEMENT WILL IMPLODE!” I assure you that doesn’t have a realistic understanding of the poltics in play. And a gross misunderstanding of anarchists, the Anonymous, Global Revolution, and the reality of the political epoch we are now in. Demands also are a little silly when the whole movement is in retreat.

I believe that Demands WG is an Operations Group, it has a functionality to articulate demands. To do so we still have work to do to make OWS see us as allies no co-opters. I encourage all of you to think hard about standing our ground as Working Group, but drastically changing tactics toward inclusion and transparency.

I wish you all the happiest of holidays. It is time that we emerge from our bunker and work in solidarity. If you can all embrace that tacticallly I promise you that 3 months from now we will have demands. But if JFA Subgroup cannot be more humble and less old guard sectarian. Then I’ll quit this group and join Visions & Goals, or Call to Action, or Poltical and Electoral Reform or any of the 30 or 40 other WGs that were having the same conversation as us, but also with others.

And I get like 8 people yell some sectarian horseshit at this. But really folks, three long months. What exactly did we contribute as a WG to OWS?

Walter Adler
Deamnds Working Group
Money Out Subgroup
NYCGA
OWS