 So I'm here in the shipping kind of warehouse of Occupy Wall Street with Lisa Fithian. She's been here for a little while at Occupy Wall Street and so we're going to ask her a series of questions kind of directed for the audience of occupiers themselves. So hopefully if you're watching this you're an occupier and you'll be learning a lot about you know what a really skilled and learned activist of many years has to say about what she's seen here and at other occupations. So just to start with Lisa maybe you could give us a little bit of a brief background about yourself. Sure. Hey everyone. So again my name is Lisa Fithian and when I was a young person the age of many people here today in high school I learned two really important lessons. One was that people that there was injustice and that people working together organizing together could actually make a difference and make a change and I've been spending my life doing that and I've worked with many different movements many different communities over since 75 with a focus primarily on mass nonviolent direct action and and it's really exciting in this moment because so many communities that I've had the honor of working with are everyone's rising up so it's a great great moment I'm very excited. Yeah I feel I feel as I'm very excited but also really quickly how many occupations have you been to? Sure I have been to Chicago Los Angeles DC Austin and I was here in New York on the 17th I did big trainings the night before San Francisco as well so yeah. Okay so she's been around the block you know it's really amazing so I guess I've been amazed at how like kind of insightful you've been about what's going on here even though like you just kind of got here and you revealed so much that I didn't know about what was going on and I kind of want to know like what questions do you feel like we should be asking you what questions do you feel like what do you want to tell us what do you want to tell us occupiers like what advice do you have just off the bat? That's actually kind of a tricky setup because you know every generation starts where they are and evolves and creates and I have as much to learn from what people are doing now as I think maybe I have to offer and so I also believe there are no shoulds it's like what can we ask ourselves right what can we ask ourselves about this moment and I think often in any organizing there's some basic questions like what are we actually trying to achieve right what are our goals what is our vision for an alternative world I mean we know that we're here to occupy Wall Street we know that there's an economic collapse we know that the system is not working and hasn't been working and we know that people organizing together have a lot of potential power so the question is how are we using the power that we're building the relationships that we're building to actually create fundamental social change so we need to know what we're trying to achieve in order to measure whether we can be successful or not so I think that's one of the big questions to ask ourselves you know beyond occupying what are we actually trying to achieve here so a lot of like media outlets have been critical of us because we haven't created a list of demands and I don't think that's what you're asking for so what would a goal a reasonable goal to you look like for a movement like this well you know it's I don't even know that this movement knows you can get there because there's some foundations of building some community some common analysis some common values that I think we're in the process of evolving and until we have some of that commonality it's hard to come up with with what's your collective vision but I actually do believe that at some point we have to be able to clearly articulate what it is that we want whether you think of it as a demand or a vision you know demands are often things that you we understand those things that we make to the people in power that are opposing us that we want them to do in order to right remedy some injustice and in fact in this moment there are some things and there are issues out there that community-based groups and unions have been organizing on for a long time around Wall Street that we haven't completely achieved particularly on the foreclosure crisis and so I know that they're community-based movements that have some clear demands around concrete campaigns that we could be adding our energy to at the same time if you look at some mass movements I mean there's an organization called at poor that was the movement that overthrew Slobodan Milotrovich and they came out of the same lineage and learned from Jean Sharp who has a paper out today called from democracy to dictatorship no from the dictatorship to democracy and it's a lot of what informed how the Arab Spring organized as well and they had three things that were really I think important to understand one is they actually developed a vision document about the world that they wanted to see and how it would work and they basically printed up hundreds of thousands and said if you believe in this if this is your vision you can identify with this then you are at poor right so it was but it was around a particular concrete vision and then the second piece they used the image of the fist the white fist which became this iconic image that began showing up everywhere and I think visuals are actually really important and that might be a question is how are we visually communicating what we're doing a good friend David Solnit you know when he was quickly in town you know I asked him to offer some of what he knew around because he does a lot of art and culture and puppets and visuals and he says you know if you dominate the space visually then you dominate the space and so and as our visuals that can also communicate a lot so again back to art poor they had the image of the white fist and it began to show up everywhere and that's sort of what I call permeating the collective consciousness right we're visually putting it out there so I think that's another piece and then the third main piece I mean they had lots of pieces but was their model was recruit train and act so every week they would do an action they would recruit people at the action to come to a training the next week they would train people what they needed to know to organize the next action to recruit people and then get them to the next training and that was the model to get to scope and scale because the truth is is that we have tens of thousands of people being active occupying around if you added us all up you have maybe a hundred thousand or so that support us and maybe even more but how do we get those numbers of a hundred thousands half a million millions actually out and engaged in action so I think as we are organizing we have to think what is it that's going to enable millions of people to step into the streets which takes organizing how are we organizing all that being said and I think those are some pieces that again we can learn from other movements that were vital for actually success at mass transformation that's awesome thank you for saying that I think that's really really helpful and kind of picking up on the theme of kind of moving towards consensus like jet like finding common ground from which to start to propose visionary statements or goals what kind of questions should we be asking each other as occupiers that might start to like develop that dialogue so again what kind of conversations ought we be having which is actually really important Daniel because I actually do think that conversations is one of the pieces we need to be much more seriously engaging and I'm really excited that the New York occupation has just chosen to a spokes council as a way to coordinate a lot of the operational work because I actually think that's going to open up the general assemblies to have more of the political conversations and there are huge systemic questions that we need to talk with each other about because talking enables us to learn from one another it begins to build a common language we begin to see what values we have in common or we don't have in common and generating ideas for solutions so you know problems we often think that problems are what move people and they don't problems create bitching apathy you know complaining but it's when you get to solutions and the possibility of something other the third way is when people actually start opening up and coming back to life problems of the space of death right solutions of the space of life and opening that up and so and that's what enables people to move because there's a sense even though you may not as specifically there's a sense that there's something that could be other than what it is right now and that's where you start getting movement you know consensus is a process for making decisions you know it's actually humans use consensus naturally all the time it's really how we make decisions but we're living in a culture of power over that uses hierarchies and uses Robert's rules of vote Robert's rules of order and voting those are all systems where there's winners and losers people with more people with less and that's not the basis of a culture we want to build if we really want to have collective liberation consensus spokes councils affinity groups right those are the structures and processes that we use to build horizontal power and it doesn't mean we all have to have the same decision at the end but we all have to be willing to go forward with what the plan is and knowing that we also the ability to step out of that if it's not exactly what you want so you know in this moment I really think that some of the key questions to have conversations on that can then seed proposals that you would bring to the decision-making processes are things like how are we going to defend our camp if we're going to be evicted do we have a collective vision and strategy how are we going to survive the winter right how do we project beyond the winter so that we know where we're going should we have to dismantle this space questions like how do we live in community when we're when we're coming from a multitude of perspectives and values when we are all damaged right that's something we need to understand we live in a society that's creating damage to all of us and those with less power and privilege are more impacted by these systems because they have less access to resources and so in occupations across the country we're finding homeless people people with alcohol and drug abuse problems people who may have come out of gangs who have issues around violence and that's real and you know we have to decide how are we going to deal with this and you know it's funny I talked to a man in the park the other night because we're coming into this space with different privilege and somebody said you know we have all these problems over here and someone said you know the truth is we're having a lot of problems with privilege to that's a whole other side of the coin that's creating as many problems in some ways as those who are as you know most impacted so the questions is how do we choose to work with this in a way that's not mimicking the dominant paradigm so I believe in a friend of the book and I think we have to understand that food is vital to life and as long as we have food we should be not denying no one food you know one story was you know the homeless and the drug addicts are coming as they can get food you know we need to stop the foods like no they need to eat to that's vital to people survival and if they're gonna heal they need to be supported and nourished right so we can't turn people away I believe we need to begin to look at creative processes for healing and so a lot of people this might not be so linear but that might be okay the way our our society deals with problem people as they throw them away they put them in prisons they used to put them in mental institutions but now with no money they can't so we have a lot of people with mental health issues as well so are we bringing in what other resources exist in our world to support people are we accessing those resources and inviting them to be a part of our community to help support the greater good I wonder do we start Allen on meetings in the park right so then you have the issue of well what if people aren't taking advantage or we've talked to them and they're not doing it I believe part of where we need to go you know there's a there's a whole realm called restorative justice it's being used primarily by communities to deal with sexual harassment and abuse and often what it means is bringing together the parties to talk about what sets of behaviors need to be engaged in in order for people to move forward to remedy the the problem and for lack of a better word the perpetrator is someone that has to be a part of making the solution because at the end of the process you almost need to be in contract with one another and part of that contract is yes I'm willing to do X Y and Z and then if you don't or if I understand I violated these agreements I understand I need to remove myself from the community so it's not about other people imposing their power to remove it's about engaging people in a process of accountability agreements that they buy into and an understanding that if you don't buy into this you need to remove yourself from this community until you're in a place where you can actually come back in right because ultimately we need if we talk about where the 99% we're all part of that we need everybody so I think those are some of the things that we could begin to ask ourselves what are the other resources what are the other processes what are the other tools that we can bring in to help us deal with some of these critical problems and the General Assembly might be a great place to just start having the discussions yeah I think that the spokes model will really open the space up for that I kind of want to push a little bit on the the topic of what you're just talking about like forming these contracts with problematic people people with problematic behaviors that's kind of the way we've been framing it what about in the instances where people are here that aren't here for the community but are here for like the resources that we can provide for them and aren't really willing to even enter into any kind of basic contracts you know and so and it wouldn't be willing to enter into a contract which said that they had to leave just aren't kind of putting in any good faith into the community it took a long time to get here and it's going to take a long time to get out and so there's no easy answers there's no one answer and it might require trying a variety of strategies along the same lines of the contract and when you have it here walk Occupy Wall Street is there are like the good neighbor policies right so there are already some norms that people are trying to build there's also just agreements again we don't actually have agreements community wide in the camp on some of these larger issues right we have different working groups that might have them but do we really own them and do we embody them maybe not and though folks that have been most impacted it might take walk take a while to get people to understand that they need to be in a different relationship I don't believe that denying support and services is a way to do that you know any revolutionary movement that has been successful if you look at it it's about providing services and support to the impacted communities and the truth is that they may not be connected to it now but over the course of time working eating in community if we're engaging them right talking people become entrained in it and and we have to have the faith and hope that they can move and that they do get the support they need you know and then we also have to understand that we may not have the skills in this moment to deal with everything coming at us and again what are the resources I mean people with mental health issues who may not have access to the medication are going to be engaging behaviors that we might not be able to deal with so again we have to look at de-escalation strategies nonviolent strategies of how do we contain or buffer violent behavior from the the larger number of people we can do that with our bodies it takes time but I'd love to say that we need to go to the mainstream enforcement machine to support us and that may happen at times you know because we don't have these other ways you know I understood that a man who raped a woman here was ultimately arrested you know short of anything else better that happens than nothing happens because at the end of the day we have to evaluate between respect for community for individual freedom and authenticity and autonomy to community safety and health and when things are breaking down it's because people are abusing their power one way or another and so I don't care who you are if you're abusing your power it's destructive and we have to figure out a way to contain that abuse and then offer people another way so I know that the nonviolent communications people folks here are doing a lot of work that um it seems to be breaking ground yeah no I think I I think this is a really important issue that we're talking about right now one of the things that I've noticed about the people that are engaged like on the ground with this issue like day in day out night really in the nights particularly here is that they've developed and this might be because of like exhaustion and not having enough sleep a sort of crisis mentality which sort of I think well I'm just curious like how and I've actually seen that a lot in this occupation is that like you know we're kind of reacting to these situations and we're kind of well can you just talk about that I think you're absolutely right we're because so much is happening so fast we're in a reactive mode we're rarely every day trying to catch up and in the midst of disaster which we're in that sometimes is an appropriate response but at some point you have to turn it to proactive you know whenever there's a problem it's like are you stopping the problem or you are organizing the solutions and so again even on these issues of security like I asked myself do we have security clearly identified with vests do we have security with flashlights do we have security stationed in every corner of the park are they doing rounds are they visible are they doing rounds right and I don't know that we're at that level of our security yet but those simple things could just definitely turn the dynamic because if people know that other people are watching and that people are available it changes the dynamics and it's not about becoming authoritarian or cops it's about holding a safe space being present supporting people and being available to deescalate if something does break out thank you I really that's just wonderful I hope a lot of people see that that answer you just gave so I'm gonna shift a little bit to like a slightly different topic well maybe slightly different but what is something or some things that we should be doing here that you don't see us doing well first of all there may be way more happening than I have any idea about right so I know that there's a lot of people doing a lot of things I think the pieces that I would like to be seen more collectively conscious are around issues of power and privilege around issues of just consciousness and paying attention you know a lot of is those community conversations and all of this is ultimately around culture building right but again you have to have a vision to know what kind of culture you're trying to build so it's one thing to have values it's another thing to have actually concrete things so I related to that is a question I had for you for a while I've heard you speak a couple times about decolonizing the self and the importance of that in a movement like this can you can you talk about what that means to you and like it's it relevance to a political movement it's relevance to this movement as a whole yeah I'm a student of power because I believe power is nothing more than the ability to act but we're looking for organized actions that builds power so we can actually achieve the world we want we have to understand and be conscious that we are have been raised and socialized in a culture of power over which means we have grown to give up our power because we're taught that there's somebody outside of us the teacher the doctor the politician the priest the minister who is in the front of the room or in the center telling us how we're supposed to be how we're supposed to think right and it's a kind of an imposition what we're trying to do is build a culture of power within and power with where we understand we all have power through our ability to act and that collectively we have a lot of power to build build new structures of liberation so understanding that all of this that we're raised in this that we are consciously or not indoctrinated with the way of seeing the world and behaving in the world and this is where issues of privilege come in in particular on race race or gender or homophobic you know sexual preference certain people are endowed or trained that they are inferior superior they're entitled right white men educated people rich people are trained to feel like they are superior and we get this in many subtle ways through our social television again in the classroom what we're taught we're impacted communities whether they're poor communities of color homeless communities whatever it may be the most impacted they're taught and reinforced regularly that they are throwaways they don't count they'll never succeed they are inferior they deserve nothing and it's very subtle and we don't even know in many ways that we're that these systems are operating within us so the dynamics of power acting in a way that is and that's one thing I say is that if you understand power is a choice every choice we make is either liberating or oppressing what do you what food do you eat where do you shop right and that's a huge amount of responsibility so those of us with more power because of this privilege that we have been endowed by a system in order to keep us divided means we need to use our power and privilege to equalize and to raise all boats and it takes consciousness it takes understanding it's about behavior not people and that it's life work meaning that you know it's if I say you're a racist right that person is going to shut down they're not going to hear me but if I say to them when you talked about the homeless people being the problem because they've got food you're packing in there a racist understanding right because most of the homeless people not all but many homeless people are people of color so you're embedding in that orientation a whole history and legacy of racism and you're perpetuating the divide as opposed to what I'm trying to say is that that homeless person that drug addict is as much a part of this they have as much a part of they deserve access food support healing a home education as anybody else so how do those with use it to raise all boats that strategic use of privilege it's a liberating process and it requires us becoming mindful and paying attention to ourselves and in the last thing I'll say on this is the dynamics of power are the same whether they're internally whether they're in our family whether they're in our working group whether they're in our school whether in our government whether they're in our nation around the world the dynamics play out the same and so back to your original question that we carry them let's not be defensive about them let's own it let's learn how to use it responsibly let's use it to the benefit of the greater good and that's where we begin to actually build the foundation of a new world that's really beautiful thank you so I guess I heard I heard words like awareness and mindfulness and paying attention is there do you recommend like a practice or a technique I mean do you what do you think about the importance of like a practice like a spiritual practice in this sort of line because when you say that to me I think like that's what I do when I meditate you know these things become very clear to me and when I'm acting out of fear when I'm acting out of as you say like oppression like oppressive things that I've been taught through the culture I can see that clearly when I'm sitting in silence so what do you think about that in terms of all that's good about what you just said there's no question developing practices create a pattern of behavior and so they're valuable to us when I was younger I made a distinction between religion and spirituality it was very liberating and I do believe that what we are doing and this work that we're doing is sacred work that none of us hold that all none of us have an original idea this is what's coming through what is wanted in this moment you know 2012 people talk about it being the apocalypse but really if you go look back at the Mayan cultures it says that 2012 is going to be a raising moving to a level of higher consciousness and I think that's what the occupied movements are about you know religion has been a a vehicle for oppression and division for generations you know the pagans were practically wiped out by the Spanish Inquisition in the Catholic Church so I'm very careful around religion but as a person who understands that there are forces outside of our human bodies that play here and there are benevolent forces and there are negative forces and that these energies I think of them as energies are available to access I often say to when I train people that we walk in the footsteps of those who came before us our ancestors are present they've laid the groundwork we can learn from them and that we are in the moment of laying down the ground for our descendants they will come after us and what are we laying for them it's like the Native American tradition of making a decision thinking forward seven generations well how will this decision affect the seventh generation from this moment and so if we can begin to root our work in an understanding of we're laying the ground now for our future it will help inform a lot of how we work so I think that meditation is important tool it's not accessible so much for those of us that are kinetic kinesthetic but we can do walking meditation I think that the most important thing that any of us can do though no matter what your practice no matter what your religion your spiritual orientation is to breathe is to keep breathing when we get stressed when we get afraid when we get anxious when we that uncertainty comes can we breathe and bring back and know that the air is our life it's where we get our chi our vital energy we cannot survive without air or water which is the other thing it's like we are often running in a state of dehydration and we need water to keep things moving through our body you know really you know there's the elements of earth air fire water and spirit and all of those elements are vital and can be called upon but if we can just learn to breathe which is the breath is is the initiation it brings us back to ourselves it's life it's just so key so if you can't do anything else breathe breathe deep breathe in the energy of the earth breathe in the hearts of our allies breathe in the power from the skies you know and fill your body with it and from there you're going to vibrate out you know yeah I definitely find the more connected I kind of feel to nature the more powerful I am at organizing and doing things like that so on a related note like how should people when are when should what what is a good sign that somebody needs to like check their privilege because I hear that I hear that term being thrown around a lot here and I wonder if there's like a mechanism for sort of self-evaluating when that might be arising for you well it's important to understand that privilege is invisible so those with privilege often don't see it unless they have extended themselves to pay attention to educate have an analysis or to get some training there's a lot of tools out there um called unpacking the white that a knapsack of white privilege tools for white guys tools for straight people um there are a lot of tools a lot of the more on my website called organizing for power.org under the anti-oppression section liberation so those of us either with privilege who see it being manifesting we can help each other right and so if somebody does something that's an abuse of their power that is oppressive right and if we see it how do we help support that person to understand that what you just did was actually offensive to me it made me feel hurt or angry um and I'll give you an example that happens in meetings all the time so in many meetings men men tend to dominate right so if I was feeling silenced I might say I need to just time out I've noticed I've noticed that there have been 10 men on the stack and we have not heard from any women that's making me feel really invisible it's making me feel um unheard um it makes me feel like my voice doesn't count or that you don't care about what I think so I need to feel like I can be heard and that there's a space for me to participate so I'm going to ask the group right now would you be willing to have a stack with just women or to make sure that um if men have spoken they can't get back on the stack so so whatever the solution is so I'm using the privilege that I have who can see this stuff to interrupt what's oppressing us making it clear how it makes me feel so it's about me not about them being in touch about what I need to change it and then asking for that right because then that person hasn't been attacked and they've been given a path to move forward in a way that won't repeat the same mistake and it just occurs to me that that's actually a very like vital form of direct action itself you know like even if it's not against banks it's still against the oppressive systems um so uh you started to talk about facilitation and I kind of want to segue a little bit into into that now if if you think that's okay um so in your mind like can you just give an idea of like what is facilitation and what role does a facilitator have both in like a meeting that they're facilitating as well as maybe in the movement as a whole so if we understand that change happens by people working together that means people are going to be in groups working together it means they're going to have to decide things and discuss things right and so facilitation is a role that a person would fill whose job it is is to make that process easy and they do that by themselves becoming skilled and understanding the power of the role understanding that it is a skill set understanding that there are tools that they can put in their toolbox to use to make it easier um and that um that they are there to be a service you know not to tell people what to do or how to do it or to dominate the space or to stack it but to support people in accessing their own power to engage in a democratic process that will facilitate the group accomplishing their goals right and I know I think it's one of your things is like I often talk that there's sort of an art and a science and part of the art is understanding how to work with the energy the dynamics of the group you know that fluid creative space right that holds and builds culture and the science is really about the skills and the tools and the techniques that you bring to bear um right now people are primarily using um a stack as the only tool for the facilitators um and a temperature check which I know I'm a little challenged by but there and we're starting to use straw poles a little bit more but there are lots of other tools and mechanisms and and again I think we're seeing more than being used breaking into small groups how to harvest information how to brainstorm how to do go rounds how to use spectrums right and so those of you that are called to being to service of the movement to help us build good meeting practices you know it's really great to get trained so that you can do a good job because if you don't do a good job you're actually taking away from our growth you're creating a bad space we're a space that's not functional and so people may not come back and you could have a tendency to go to that part of yourself that is the part of power over that can then become authoritarian or dictatorial and again it just begins to set in motion a replication of what we're trying to undo so you need to be trained be skilled and be conscious um about that service you want to offer thank you it sounds like we should be offering regular meditation classes to facilitators maybe that'd be a good idea um so uh I guess along that same sort of line uh what what is consensus like what like I know a lot of people come in here and maybe they have preconceived ideas about what consensus is or isn't but it seems to require a real shift in how you approach decision making and I wonder if you could talk about I mean how most of us approach decision making in this culture um could you talk a little bit about consensus like what it requires of the individuals who participate in it um and that sort of thing so consensus is a decision making it's a way to make decisions there's informal and formal processes people have used them differently in different places the route that I'm familiar with goes back to the Quaker tradition who were a religious institution that was about building more equal power width so many movements have chosen consensus because again I think I said earlier that voting which is the predominant form of decision making or the sort of two predominant forms somebody upstairs makes a decision and tells us what we're going to do or we're going to have a democratic process and we're going to vote and winner take all um neither of those two models is an empowerment model you might empower those that win but they've just won by taking power over which is not a victory so consensus is a process that enables people to have their voice heard primarily on what does not work for them in the proposal so a formal consensus process once you've created a proposal is to ask for clarifying questions which is about do we actually understand what's being presented right level the playing field do we understand then you would move to concerns and the concerns is a critical part because this is where we're mining for what's problematic for people what what does not what's going to prevent it from going forward so you want to gather all of that and then move to discussion and or amendments to can we remedy those concerns once you have addressed all the concerns you would restate the proposal and then go through testing for consensus and the process that I use is the first thing you ask for are there any other outstanding reservations right because we now have a modified proposal any other outstanding reservations just to get them out are there any stand-asides and this is a key piece that maybe the occupiers should ask themselves why are we not using stand-asides because stand-asides is the place where somebody gets to say I don't really like this proposal doesn't float my boat you can't count on me to implement it but I'm going to let it go forward because I just not that attached to it I don't you know I don't think it's wrong or bad it's just not my thing and then we can move forward after you find out how many stand-asides there are then you would ask for blocks now right now blocks have been talked about is I'll leave the movement if I don't get my way or I have a moral or ethical concern that's not really what a block is about you know and quite frankly sometimes people maybe should walk away from the movement right if they're so counter to what we're doing it might be better that they walk away than continue to stay in and blow things up which is what's happening and then we have to discern is it agent provocateurs or is it people with such different politics that it's another way to destabilize our movement or do they just really fundamentally have a different world view so but back to the block piece really what it is about is that you believe that this proposal if it goes forward is so fundamentally opposite of what we're trying to achieve or could put our overall mission at great risk that our whole endeavor could collapse that's a block right it's that strong because you are using your powers and individual to stop the entire group from moving forward and that's really a lot of power and you should only use it if you believe that this thing fundamentally will tear our whole thing down and if it's not really that level of it you should stand aside right and then if there are no blocks then you have consensus so again just let me tie this back to power and privilege because those of us with privilege it's really easy to step in and say what we want because we're used to that it's easy we're not attacked we've got the space right so and we often if we want to move something it's easy to move but the people who are opposed or have a different view right who might see heaven's power it's not so easy for them to step in so the consensus process is not about opening up the space for support and rah rah it's about opening the space for opposition right and to really hold that so people can really bring forward what's not going to work and then when you test if you go through that process again you're opening up for the what's not here or why we need to stop it and then if there's no blocks then yay we got it right and then it's a much more victorious thing because we know we've now gone through the process when you like put a proposal and say do we have consensus you've really not given the whole group the benefit of really owning it you know and taking personal responsibility for your relationship to it yeah so I think that's really important but I also wonder as facilitators like obviously we can make consensus decisions that don't sort of generate this inclusivity or democratic like this kind of new citizenship that I see us forming here or whatever you want to call it you know we're kind of generating a new common I kind of think of it and sometimes we can form consensus decisions that don't really seem to do much in the service of that and I wonder how we can be sure that when we're facilitating a meeting we are doing it in a way that kind of leads to that and not just kind of plowing through and making sure decisions happen or something well first of all I want to roll it back and say I never talk about citizenship and I wouldn't talk about new citizenship because there are many people in this country who are building this country who are doing work every day that don't have citizenship and when we talk about building citizens we're excluding them so this is just a little learning moment because a part of our mainstream culture that has privilege of citizenship only see that so just a little practice practice I've had over the years to say check the word right when we're building the 99 percent so what should we be using for that sort of thing like creating new people maybe or creating new consciousnesses I don't know people power people power and sometimes if I use it in my writing I'll talk about residents those of us that live here right it's inclusive we all live here right presence or people you know people power which is really is what the tradition that this movement is in it's a people power movement um and there's things that we can learn from that as well there's been people power movements before but I think um if I understood your question on the consensus piece one of the things I would say to the facilitator or the working group whoever's moving a proposal is that one have all the stakeholders had an opportunity to weigh in right and I often like to a lot of times proposals will come from a working group which is very appropriate but what would it be like if we went to the general assembly and had small group conversations about park defense strategy and then we harvested all the ideas and then we brought that to the working group to then build the proposal with input from the whole and then they bring it back right it's going to be better proposal because you've had the benefit of the greater input so that's one thing we might do if you're working in a working group and you're trying to move a proposal like one of the guys said the reason I don't like this spokes council of occupy groups is because some groups are going to get left out like the drummers might not in fact be uh one of the operational groups but you know what they are stakeholders in that park and so the question is is if you're coming up with a proposal to move make sure all the stakeholders are part of that creation process because if they're not you're going to bring that proposal you're going to hit up against them so you want to organize and that's the other thing about consensus and decision-making facilitators you know the meeting is not just the moment it's preparing for it and following up after and that works for any kind of meeting and so I guess the short thing I would say is that if you're dealing with a issue that affects many different groups or people try and make sure that you have those groups and represented so that way we're not speaking on behalf of groups making assumptions but people can actually advocate on their own behalf about what is going to meet their needs okay yeah that's certainly part of it maybe I can explain a little bit more and that is very useful but also like I'm kind of wondering so it's easy to see a meeting as just a meeting you know it's easy to see these working group meetings as just a means can you like put them in a greater context so that we kind of understand what it is that we were really doing when we come together and like talk about these things well I think you have to understand that we're building a new society is really what we're doing and that the meetings and the processes are all just the path we're walking through um and you know it's um I told the story earlier this moment reminds me a lot of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina I spent a year there working to build a radical horizontal organization called Common Ground Relief and what we did and it's very similar these moments because we were in the midst of a man-made disaster both in New Orleans and right now we had large numbers of people being very devastated and we impacted losing their homes then and now losing their jobs then and now losing all their security being separated from their families it's happening now then you had a collective response by people around the country who wanted to be part of wanted to help wanted to give material aid wanted to put their bodies and help we came from all different walks of life it's happening now we brought with us all the damage of our society and it starts manifesting happened in New Orleans happening now and then we're trying to figure out how do we deal with it building community building agreements building structures we're doing that now the only way to address these things is through our meetings and working together in small groups to do it this is building a new world so in New Orleans what we did is we figured out everything and this is what was prefigured by what we did in Seattle 10 years before and the whole global justice movement we come to a place of ground and we make sure that there's housing for people and that there's food for people and that there's legal support for people and there's medical support for people and there's childcare for people right there's radio stations for people there's access to computers right everything people need to be wholly present and authentic and be able to fully participate so the processes by which we achieve this is ultimately in a lot of meetings and building that culture and community and so everything we do I think about fractals you know what a fractal is I hardly know what it is but repeating patterns so how do we take everything we do and compact it you know that's how I do my facilitation trainings in a lot of ways so that how are our meetings building community by having check-ins how do we have equal power by having good facilitation and using tools to equalize power like one thing I've done in meetings where you have people that dominate you give people a set number of chips every time they talk they put a chip in when they're out they can't talk anymore shit out of luck right so how do you how do we in our meetings in our personal participation embody everything we're trying to do right so our meetings have beginning middle and end our meetings have grounding in energy our meetings have good tools and practices on anti-oppression they we have time to use creative times small group times right because again we're practicing our new world this very moment now and if we understand that then we are understand that we are in a living revolution of creating a new world and so that's why it's so key that that's awesome thank you so much that gave me shivers and I love that okay so sort of on a somewhat related note but in a slightly different shift I see a lot of facilitators here have kind of just taken the model they've gotten through the facilitator training and then just adhered to it without deviation and one of the things I noticed in your training was the kind of flexibility that you displayed as far as like approaching different problems that arose and kind of kind of spontaneously generating practices that would sort of get get you unstuck and I kind of wonder how much flexibility do we do facilitators have as individuals to kind of play with the model of consensus that we're using and what needs to be held you know pure and like what's what's the basis and what's what's you know can be shifted around sort of when people are new and beginners they're more mechanical once you have experience you can have more flexibility because you just have more tools and comfort I think that facilitators have to have the leeway to be creative and how they work with a group which is why I urge them not all the time to just use stack and it depends on the size of the meeting different meetings allow you to do different things and it's when you do things in meetings once you've entered into sort of the formal decision-making process it's very important to lay out what you're going to do at the beginning and then to try and stick through it so for example on the spokes council the other night the facilitators did a little different process right they had people proposal presented they had people in small groups and then they were bringing the stuff back to address them instead of from the floor there were some challenges in that one the small groups needed to harvest both questions and concerns but it was set up with questions and then when we did bring it back and answered all the questions then they opened it up again to have more questions which was going off the process they set up and then it began to get challenged because why did these people get to ask questions when everybody else went through this process and then it's taking it back off to a whole different realm and extending the time and then we got into process problems because people are like we have a process and you didn't do it right so again it's part of training and culture building facilitators should know the process they want to use they should try and lay it out clearly they should try and adhere to it because again their job is holding the structure that makes it possible for everybody else to move through easily and if they're changing it up a lot it can become destabilizing at the same time shit happens in meetings right and if you're stuck to a linear process sometimes or stuck to a stack it makes it harder for the facilitator to bring in creative tools I think the facilitators did a great job though using the straw poll at that meeting as well and and what we would call using the group because what you saw which happens in many of these meetings is that there's a set of people that have a different perspective that might be blocking and the facilitators at one point because we've been around the block on this one multiple multiple multiple times and those people who are going to block were never going to change that they had the ability to use the group to ask permission can we just move forward to the decision-making process and they asked how many people think we should now go to test for consensus and when the whole group raises the hand and if you don't you have the will of the group to move there even if somebody saying we didn't do this over here right and then they ultimately didn't have the consensus so they moved to a vote and the vote showed by what it 280 plus to 17 that really there was an overwhelming consensus of the group that this was needed and there were a small number of people who actually if they had known about stand-asides might have stood aside the end of the day the process ultimately worked because everyone had their say everyone has had a process and they actually got to a decision that really was the will of the group even though it had to be through voting and that's the thing consensus requires people coming together with some common values some common visions a willingness to cooperate with the group some respect for the facilitator right but when people come in that don't hold those values or practices they can explode a meeting and some of the people that explode meetings you know I can't remember the guy's name but he has a book called sitting in the fire calls that the role of the terrorist in the meetings you know our tendency is to shun them but the truth is that person might hold a really important piece of information that we need to bring into the picture here and so our reaction is often to push away the terrorists shut them down whatever but it's almost more important to hear them and then figure whether it's valuable or not because you know that if you shut them down it's just going to escalate but sometimes hearing them I mean there was just in another meeting I was there was a man from the Ukraine who wanted to talk who didn't understand our process who kept overriding the process he kept asking that people started engaging him on the process where he had not a clue what we were talking about if we just let him finish his sentences it would have been done with but everybody trying to get him commandeered into our thing where we have completely different cultures just made it even worse so again that's part of the facilitator knowing when to let the space stay open and when to bring it back and you have to always evaluate the needs of the individuals versus the needs of the whole group and is it moving us toward where we need to be so that we can actually achieve what we've come together for so that's really great and it does I'm just because I'm a meditator I kind of bring it back to meditation just the kind of fluidity and spontaneity and kind of awareness and responsiveness you need to have and the equanimity to kind of hold all that in that space um that seems really important um so you talked a little bit about stand-asides and uh in your in your facilitation training you talked about other kind of slight shifts in the models that you said might be if not a better way at least a different alternative way that might sometimes achieve better consensus decisions and I wonder like is it the role of the individual facilitator to invoke things like stand-aside and because I've never seen that anywhere here you know and and like could I just be could I just say okay now we're going to do this because it seems it does seem like that's like there's a part of me which says that's not okay that's not what we do here and I wonder how much how much of that is just fluid and how much of that needs to be like agreed upon by like everybody or at least a facilitation working group or something that's balancing sort of your own individual power versus collective power um you know we all as individuals need to be able to take direct action meaning just do which is important but we have to be mindful that we're living in trying to build a culture and a community of resistance and we have to be mindful about the fact that we've been raised to be rugged individuals and I can go out there and do it and my idea is the best and you know and so we have to temper that a little bit so in this particular thing you know my path would be to work with a facilitation working group that's the group doing it they're paying attention they're setting it they're evolving it and if I tried to do it separate from them that would be an abuse of my power so I would work with the group to understand it and then begin to build it into the process right because you can't you know we're not we're not in an instruction any moment with the state or with ourselves so we don't want to just go in and try and turn everything upside down in the moment which was a great this is I had this image it was there was a man in the Russia who was being interviewed about what was para-strike alike when Gorbachev came in and he changed the you know from the Soviet Union to Russia and change it all and somebody was in his home and he interviewed the guy said what was this like the guy scratched his head and he went over to the wall and he took the photo of the painting on the wall took it off turned it upside down and put it back on the wall images always stayed with me because it's like how do you just completely invert everything on its head um so um so it community building culture building takes time too so having stand-asides in is a critical part because we're getting blocked so quickly so we have to bring it back into the process if we want to do it building it with the facilitator is getting people comfortable and then when you go to the general assembly again it's about transparency saying you know what guys you know we've been doing this this is how we've been doing it we've just learned this as other piece we think it could really help here we want to start using it tonight um any major concerns about that okay if not great let's go forward right um you could do a straw poll how many people think that they'd be willing to try this right but you know a lot of times it's often better to make sure there's no opposition than right um uh so I think that's some of the ways I would go and then um you know maybe ultimately I know somebody's talking about a little facilitation handout so people can better understand the process they're participating in yeah that's a good idea and uh just really quickly if you because I think stand-aside is a really important thing that we start to generate discussion about maybe adding into our general model um maybe you could just say why you think what stand-asides are really clearly and why they would be an important thing for us to think about adding part of it is that we are a diverse group right now many people we don't know each other we're just learning each other we don't know our different politics and therefore we're going to have different goals and different strategies at least until we come to something that we all agree on and so recognizing that we're going to have major differences and that not every proposal is going to speak to everybody's needs um if the only choices you have is to support it or to block it and if you don't like it it leaves you the block which so we're getting all kinds of blocks that are not what I would consider legitimate blocks which is actually thwarting hundreds if not thousands of people from moving forward and that in my mind is an abuse of power and it may not be intentional but it is and so the stand-aside creates a third option or third way as well which says I don't like it but I don't think it's going to destroy our movement so let me stand outside let me step out of the way and I want to make it known that I'm standing aside and then the important thing for the facilitator and the proposal presenter that if you're in a room of 50 people and 40 stand-aside even if you have no blocks you don't have a good decision there right or 30 or whatever the threshold you think if you clearly have a lot of people stepping out of the process as a facilitator I might say to the presenter at that point clearly people aren't here yet right you might get this decision but you might be wiser to take a step back right now evaluate why this is see if you can address any more of that and then bring it back right because you're not looking for unity we don't all have to do the same thing that would be boring it's contrary to nature nature is diverse right but how do we create frameworks for action activity that we know how to connect to and feel like yes I'm a part of this um and how do we have a variety of choices so that I can connect and disconnect where I want that's real direct democracy you know I get to decide and so that's another important step that people have to decide how to be in relation great thank you so much um so to kind of end with I want to ask a few kind of questions I didn't get to fit in earlier um the first one is kind of what's what do you think can I guess can instead of should be next for the this occupation as well as perhaps the national or global occupations well we obviously have to get through winter we obviously have to learn how to defend the spaces that we're holding and how to do it effectively that's winning hearts and minds and exposing the violence of the state we obviously have to deal with these questions of power and privilege and community building and accountability because that's also how we can be in relationship to other organized bases whether it be community-based organizations or unions we have to begin thinking if we do have to take it down physically for people's own physical safety in the winter how are we coming back in the spring or in the early winter there's some exciting ideas floating I'm just one of the words that have come to me is taking the halls of power because they're inside and they're everywhere which might be great around the Martin Luther King holiday and we're entering an election year so so I think you know preparing for how do we roll out it's again it's that how we've been reactive but how are we building to a different place over the course of time there's never been a movement quite like this it has tremendous potential no one will know completely but can we begin to lay down the threads or whatever that allows it to be moving in a direction that's building greater and greater and not polarizing and splintering so a lot we got a lot of work to do is what I hear cool that's good well it's fun work though um okay so the next question is um how kind of self-aware should we be of the media so I hear sometimes people especially when talking about securing the camp um like saying things like well if we do this the media response will be negative like they there's a possibility the media will will judge us harshly because of our actions and I wonder like should we care like about that or should we just act that well whatever yeah you understand the question I think I never rely on corporate media to tell our story that's why I organize with visuals with clear messaging where we tell our own story that's why I rely on wheat paste posters bridge banners lots of art that get our story out um corporate media has the ability to take our messages and amplify them way more than most of our tools do although we're catching up with our live streams and facebook's and twitter's um which is a parallel form of media I think it's important to not frame it so much on what the media will tell the story or not but how does this fit in the moment of where we are overall and if you understand that our primary that we're in we're in the infancy right we're in babies we're growing right we want to get bigger right so you could take that same image right with people and we want it more to come in so then the question is what enables more people to come in having good organizing clear plans but having our shit well organized so that people are coming in and getting what they need and not walking into a disaster right or bad meetings or bad actions or getting arrested when they don't plan it because that makes them step away so um what did you ask me again what am I talking about sometimes it was a close client right with that so I think it's important that to understand that the tool of the corporate media can work for us or against us so I like I I see a lot of professionals and NGOs and people coming in where everything's about a media event I'm not about that I don't like to do things just for the media I like to do things because they're building good culture they're modeling strategic action they're impacting our target right all that and then how do we make sure that our story about this is told well so then it does require evaluation on tactics and what are the images right and are they bringing in or building out if we move to tactics that are going to be alienating too fast we'll never build a mass movement right and this gets complicated in the realm of historic nonviolent direct action or violence and nonviolence a historical debate debate is going to play out again today but I'm an advocate of nonviolent movement building it is not passive it can shut things down it can be extremely powerful um and it can be inclusive and effective so I'm interested in building it and trying to show that trying to get those images out through the media you know some people say at the end of the day good media bad media any media is better than nothing but I've watched over the last decade after Seattle how the footage of Seattle has been used again and again to instill fear in communities in governments in business and I think that we lost a lot of a generation of young people coming into the global justice movement because they were afraid and they didn't know what would happen at actions and you had the media indoctrinating people and criminalizing us and you know if you look at building power the state has a series of things that they do to to smash us and criminalizing us is one of them so if we're engaging in activity particularly early on that's going to help them tell the story that enables them to criminalize us I might choose different tactics so it's about strategy not about what moralistic or judgment but understanding where we are what's going to build us not what's going to splinter us great so it seems like the kind of paradigm is more pragmatism than you know any kind of ideology in that sense like what works or no just that's all that's my orientation cool nice no yeah of course that's all we can speak about um okay um once the other question was uh what are we doing like what do we have that movements in the past didn't and what are we doing like really really well why is this so special I mean everybody feels it like why do you think this is happening now and so like alive and real and kind of emergent um it's almost like um the collective soul that has been oppressed for so long it's like the cracks have come through the concrete and it's all the stuff we've been carrying for a long time is coming through and just a little short story when we shut down the W. Toe in Seattle we had people from around the world and we were going after the capitalist system the neoliberalist system and we were building and it captured the hearts and imagination of people around the world and a very vibrant movement was coming from all the different movements using all kinds of great creative tactics and um when I think back a lot of history a lot of struggles are often in the context of war and war in my mind is the belly of the beast and the state controls the playing field on war with censorship and patriotism and what happened is when we were going after capitalism the heart of the beast 911 happened and we got flipped back to the war paradigm and we lost a lot of momentum and we shifted to a different kind of movement sort of the old left movement and the anti right which has been around but it's never held the dynamics of the global justice movement some of that energy has morphed into the climate justice movement because the climate is crashing right and so um and then what happened is that in the united states and around the world the economies are crashing and not only are they crashing really it's actually more about uh the stealing of our wealth and I've done a lot of work between the U.S. and Europe and really this change in our economy started 30 40 years ago with the d industrial deindustrialization the de manufacturing the shipping jobs overseas the sweatshops turning to a service economy a finance economy right um in beginning to move from full time paid positions over the past 10 years in Europe they are going through the same thing a little bit later and the language they use is around a lot around austerity and precarity so there's the whole precarious movement part-time jobs temporary jobs right no longer having the the social service safety nets that is so strong in many European countries that's they're losing so you've had a global movement who have generations who are coming up into a period of crash as a result of a huge theft of our collective wealth through privatization and downright thievery right and we are watching it and we're being impacted and people are the foreclosure crisis and the loss of homes of millions of homes of families middle class people right um all of those things have created this moment and um um and that's why I think you see it is because consciously or unconsciously we know this shit is coming down we know we're dying and if we don't rise up now we have no hope for the future great so we have uh two minutes left and so really quick I wanted to ask another question but I guess we don't have time right um two minutes really quick what's the world going to look like after we win well um I often some people don't like it starhawk has a book called the the fifth sacred thing but I think it's a world that's using permaculture for sustainable design of our communities that's working bioregionally that understands that we have local resources and that we can barter in trade with other resources that we have a map so we can bike from community to community because there ain't going to be transportation and that we don't rely on social media because when they pull the plug we need to have that ability to build relationships one on one and build community and use the power of story to keep bringing our our history forward so some of those are things of what I hope we have I feel like I want to do an entire another interview about just that topic um so that was amazing like I thought that was incredible thank you so so so much for being here and doing this and uh giving what you've given to us and I hope a lot of people get a chance to see this interview and thank you all for what you're given to me too this is an incredible moment I have such awe and awe and awe for what everyone is doing so yeah let's go team