Video of Strategizing Beyond Occupations event at the Wooden Shoe, Dec. 1st

Submitted by Suzy Subways on

Suzy Subways's picture

Part 1, remarks from Mark Engler:

Part 2, remarks from Cindy Milstein:

Part 3, open discussion:

On Dec. 1st, less than 48 hours after the police eviction of Occupy Philly, about 70 people gathered for a previously scheduled event at the Wooden Shoe bookstore to talk about what the Occupy movement can do next.

Part 1 has remarks from Mark Engler, and Part 2 has remarks from Cindy Milstein. Part 3 has the discussion, which was the main focus of the event.

Mark Engler's work can be found at http://www.democracyuprising.com/mark-engler/. A brief quote from Mark's talk: "This issue of strategizing beyond the occupations was not created by the police.... We've given ourselves the ability to escalate.... It's when you have a very broad base of support that you can do things with boycotts, with bank sit-ins, on up to strikes and general strikes."

Check out Cindy Milstein's blog at http://cbmilstein.wordpress.com. A brief quote from Cindy's talk: "I think we actually have to ask for whole social transformation... fundamentally move beyond capitalism, beyond states, beyond identities that are isolated and estranged from each other, and that's actually OK to say now.... The Republican governors met and said, 'Capitalism is the number one word we have to avoid now, because people get that capitalism is the problem.'"

Visit Wooden Shoe Books at 704 South Street or at http://woodenshoebooks.org.

Since Dec. 1, there has been a series of discussions that take "Strategizing Beyond Occupations" from here. The next one is Monday, January 2nd from 7 to 9pm at the Wooden Shoe. The focus for this discussion is Growing Occupy Philly, or Building a Movement of Movements.

Sorry about the jerky moments in my video every once in a while.

1 Comment

Iden's picture

Great Material

Submitted by Iden on

<p>Thanks so much for making this available. Very interesting discussion. Among the key points raised in the group comments were the balance between formal structure (aka process) versus more improvisational flexibility in working as groups - which includes a lot of people&#39;s apparent sentiment that the GA method as currently run has some big problems. The dynamics of small group interactions as it relates to large group decision-making are a core topic that people could use a lot more careful study about. Another implicit topic this discussion raises is what are we doing here: are we a social movement for a transformation of the world or what exactly? If we think we are a social movement to rebuild the world then it&#39;s pretty clear there are not nearly enough people involved at present. So how about a little perspective everybody? I&#39;m not trying to discourage anybody but I would like to seriously pose the question: how big would the Occupy Movement have to be to make possible the kind of foundational shifts the people in this room want to see happen? This is in part another way of posing the same question that Ms. Milstein is putting out regarding attention to the big vision.</p> <p>What is missing from this picture is what has happened to this discussion since December 1? There have been some changes in the GA process as practiced in Philly. Have there been more talks about vision in this large a group? Are there any talks about vision that are going to include people whose dreams are not as gigantic as replace capitalism entirely? If we are only going to talk amongst ourselves about this topic we wind up in the same place we started: echo chamber. If one is serious about this discussion, it makes sense to broaden the circle of people included in the conversation. It&#39;s about perspective and not falling in love with the sound of your own voice. It&#39;s about how to listen to each other constructively and openly. I mean listen to mainstream people not with half your brain trying to calculate what to say to change their mind but really openly listening.</p> <p>Of course how many people with a perspective significantly different from the one prevalent in this room will devote a lot of time to talking with the people here about alternatives to Captialism? Catch 22?</p>