Why I'm Not A Fan of the Spokes Council Model -- Part: And Another Thing

There have now been two "official" Spokes Council meeting with minutes posted at NYCGA; they're doing better at recording minutes and posting them than the GA has done lately (they're up to November 6, progress though hardly timely), but there are -- so far as I can find -- still no archived Livestreams of either Spokes Councils (at all) or GAs (since Nov 2). I must offer the caveat, however, that there are many potential locations for these meeting records to be archived. I've only checked the ones that are announced; if they are not there and easily at hand (specifically at OccupyNYC's Livestream channel) I move on to other things.

From the minutes that are posted, it's clear that the Spokes Council isn't functioning -- because it hasn't been "established" yet. As of Wednesday night's Spokes Council mash up, the goal was to "establish" by next Monday. The problem is one of sorting: who is and who is not "Operations." Ah. This is something of a discovery for would be Spokes Council applicants.

You can apply all you want, but that doesn't mean your group will be eligible to be a member of the Spokes Council. The Spokes Council that was authorized by the GA on October 28 is to be made up only of "operations" working groups and caucuses. "Movement" working groups and caucuses ("while deeply valued") are not authorized to join the Spokes Council.

Deciding what is "operations" and what is... "not operations"... has consumed both of the recorded Spokes Council meetings, and no doubt will consume tonight's meeting (ie: Friday, November 11, 2011) as well, because they didn't get through the list of applicants on Monday or Wednesday before the meetings broke up in high dudgeon and acrimony. Or so it seemed from the written record.

Of course this is an extremely high stakes and high stress process; people know instinctively what is really going on, no matter how much it is couched in high-minded "inclusive" verbiage, cant and propaganda.

On Wednesday, the facilitators actually used the term "stakeholders" to describe the appropriate members of the Spokes Council. Yes. "Stakeholders" -- in the government/non profit corporate realms I'm all too familiar with -- is code for "owners" and their handmaidens, running dogs and lackeys. It's meant to mean "all those who will be affected" by the policies and actions forthcoming, but of course that isn't what it is in practice.

It's about the "owners" -- or rather, about the "ownership class".

When I saw the word "stakeholders" popping up several times in the Wednesday minutes, I just shuddered. "OMG, what are they doing?"

Well, it isn't a mystery. It hasn't been a mystery from the beginning. They are deliberately sorting themselves into an "elect" and an "unelect." That they are doing it in the open, and fairly straightforwardly (though I expect at least some of those involved either as subjects or objects have no idea what's going on) is I suppose to their credit.

I think it is funny -- not haha -- that the response to those who object to this process is either "You're free to leave" or "Anyone can form their own Spokes Council." (But this is the only one that's authorized by the GA. So sit down. And shut up. The authoritarian subtext of all of this is delightful. Not.)

That's really been the only response from Leadership to any objection whatsoever at this point. And yes, not only have the facilitators become defacto Leaders, there's a whole cadre of instigators of the Spokes Council model who "circulate" constantly through the throngs submitting their applications for membership in the "Elect". What their precise function is, who can say? I guess it depends on who needs to know.

At Monday's meeting, they said they authorized 15 Spokes Council operations groups (but I think I only counted 12, there being some doubt expressed regarding three) by acclamation, in other words, "these are no brainers, eh, so let's just say they're 'operations' and be done with it. Consensus? Yay!"

These were, of course, 15 pre-selected inner cadre, effectively Politburo, member groups and their Spokes. That was obvious. Their selection probably had more to do with "ownership" status than it did with actual "operations."

The rest of the applicants had to go through a process of discovery and discussion among the "elect" and the "unelect" to determine whether there was consensus sufficient to include them among the higher of the would-be mighty (in formation.) That's where things got very tense indeed.

Names were called, invective was hurled, and strong emotions were expressed about the nature of some of the groups and the nature of the process of their selection -- or unselection -- as the case may be.

The charge of "racism" was heard more than once, along with some other indelicate charges.

People who brought up issues about the opacity and exclusivity of -- say -- the Finance Working Group (something that's been complained of many times prior to the development of Spokes Councils) were simply brushed aside: "We are not discussing what may have happened in the past, we are discussing how to go forward."

And so it went, one by one.

The rebellion against this process grew and grew, but there was no stopping it once it was under way. And that, of course, is the key to understanding how power works and using it to your advantage.

You set up your System and you manage to get it authorized and started, and once that's happened, it continues on its own until and unless there is a revolt against it that is as powerful as the revolt or revolution it originally came out of. Once started, the System cannot be easily stopped.

This is one reason why the Occupation Revolution has been able to continue and grow no matter what else happens, and why I predict it will continue no matter how extensive the internal and external efforts to suppress it or control it might become. Once begun it cannot be stopped -- at least not easily and not completely. It becomes part of the zeitgeist, if you will.

(Speaking of, the Zeitgeist Movement's presence is diminished but still apparent among the Occupations. As is, to a somewhat lesser extent, the campaigning on behalf of Ron Paul. Both of which were the actual co-optation efforts going on from the beginning of the current round of Occupations in this country... What has diminished to the point of almost complete absence is the Marxist contingent; the communists are for all intents and purposes gone; the socialists are still around but very subdued. This may change if the Spokes Council model gains currency beyond New York.)

Very early in the Occupy Wall Street development process, I said that it was my belief that the General Assembly was the surest inoculation against hijacking and co-optation of the Movement. It was my belief that hijacking couldn't take place and co-optation was impossible as long as the GA was functioning "properly."

Others pointed out that the GA model was actually very frail, and a dedicated group of no more than 6 determined individuals could easily overcome the built-in protections of the GA process and take over an individual Occupation and turn it toward their agenda. I didn't deny that was possible -- in fact, it was self-evident -- but I didn't believe it would be possible to co-opt the entire Movement that way. Someone who was determined to do so would have to go to each one, pull the same trick, and move on, and there would have to be infiltrators with the same agenda at all the several hundred Occupations in this country and the more than a thousand abroad. It was physically unlikely if not entirely impossible.

I'm rethinking my premise. I have seen repeated hijackings of the local GA -- which was very easy to do because there were no clear operational guidelines for GAs and hardly anybody associated with the local Occupation had any idea how the process worked. At the time, there was very little information and no training available. When I introduced some of it, more people "got it," but more people "getting it" also meant that those who had designated themselves as the local Occupation's "Owners" -- though that term is never used -- felt threatened, and they set out to ensure that their control of the local Occupation would never be in jeopardy or lapse. So far, they have been successful. And they've done it by essentially driving out any competition for authority and control.

Consequently many of the people who were objecting most loudly -- after being silenced through many different efforts, from outright banning to deletion to insult -- left and went to Oakland. It's not at all clear what the local "owners" want -- except to be in charge, in perpetuity. They have presented no agenda or vision for the future, they simply want to lord it over everyone else, and there are always any number of people who like being lorded over! It is human nature.

I have witnessed with my own eyes how the process of direct democracy can be easily hijacked for demagoguery and worse. This is something the Ancient Athenian innovators of direct democracy found out to their chagrin and mortal peril thousands of years ago. They were not able to resolve the internal systemic problem. Ultimately, the answer was to abolish it and institute some form of Council-Dictatorship-Monarch.

Which seems to be the path followed by every democratic revolution, including our own American Constitutional Republic variety there of.

Does this mean the Anarchic model doesn't work and can't work? I don't know. I'm not convinced that it can't work at all, but scale is the primary issue.

I can see how the scale problem became paramount in New York because the Occupation became huge and completely unwieldy. Even five thousand participants is too many on a regular basis, and they were up into the tens of thousands. You can't operate direct democracy on that scale. But splitting into more manageable parts didn't seem to work either -- for one thing, they were still too big, and for another, they were too vague.

What seems to have happened is that the GA process gradually broke down and became paralyzed; I witnessed part of that in the controversy over paying the drummers for equipment losses (but the controversy was over much more than that.) Money, in general, was (and is) a huge problem for OWS because they have so much of it in New York and no adequate controls over it. Not only do they have money out the ying-yang (well over half a million now), but they have more supplies than they know what to do with. They have a surplus of riches and no comprehensive, understandable, and transparent means of dealing with it.

The Operations Spokes Council is basically intended as a way to manage the surpluses, the abundance, the money.

That seems to be its primary function.

To get the money issues out of the hands of the GA.

But that means that the Operations Spokes Council becomes a defacto Board of Directors, which in turn transforms the Occupation into a standard organization.

What's the point of that?
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Meanwhile in Oakland -- and now in neighboring Berkeley -- they're wrestling with a very different and immediate set of conditions and problems. The situation is getting very tense very quickly. The recent shooting at Frank Ogawa Plaza -- now thought to have been of someone who had been staying at the encampment -- is having extraordinary repercussions. The city is quite publicly preparing for a Final Solution to the Occupation Problem; they say they will not tolerate the presence of the Occupation any longer; the Occupants are asked to leave voluntarily, but if they don't... force may be applied.

In Berkeley, the situation is by turns very grave and surprisingly light-hearted. How the issue of police brutality will be addressed remains to be seen. So far, there's been no official acknowledgement that brutality even happened, despite the viral videos and the hospitalized studentia. Every agency is denying culpability for what happened, though they won't acknowledge anything happened except clearance of the forbidden tents, and the students are apparently not persisting. It's an open and fluid situation at this point, and Occupy Oakland and Occupy San Francisco have expressed their solidarity with the Berkeley students -- whatever they eventually choose to do.

At any rate, it is apparently the standard media narrative that any violence whatever that can be associated with the Occupations -- no matter its source -- is the "fault" of the Occupations.

Of course!

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An even more disgusting view of what happened at Berkeley yesterday afternoon. It didn't get any better at night. Note, the officers involved are a combination of UC Police and Alameda County Sheriff's Deputies. Both agencies are fully culpable for the brutality.

A Real Effort At Co-Opting Occupy Sacramento

[Part of last night's city council meeting.]

Last night, there was a genuine effort to co-opt OccupySacramento, a blatant attempt by the Mayor of Sacramento, Kevin Johnson, former NBA star and close personal friend of the President of the United States of America, Barack Obama. He's also a corporate tool. Everyone knows it. He got elected during a period of "star worship" -- the kind that put Arnold Schwarzenegger into the Corner Office at the Capitol. A good deal of his luster has worn off. The former mayor whom he beat in a hard fought election has a tendency to snicker morbidly about it. She was bitter at first, but now she just takes it in stride.

KJ wants more than anything to build a new basketball arena in Sacramento as his Legacy, and he has committed a relatively huge chunk of civic time and money to see that it is done. (Truth to tell, the current arena sucks goat testicles. It is awful.) Much of the City Council meeting last night was about progress on the Arena and Railyards project. We're talking hundreds of millions of dollars -- I think it was at $350,000,000 for the arena alone at last report, and probably another $200,000,000 to $300,000,000 for improvements to the Railyards. All in a four or five year time line. This is really all Kevin is concerned about. There is nothing more important to him, and it would appear that there is little that is more important to the rest of the council. This is their baby. They want it so bad they can taste it. As always in Sacramento, the People are ambivalent about it. They like the idea; they don't like the cost and they don't like the fact that the project will further enrich the already filthy rich at the public expense.

KJ seemed to see the Occupation as a kind of plaything last night. An amusing diversion from his Important Work. He saw something that he wanted to take advantage of, and he moved quickly and surely to do just that.

All the rhetorical flourishes of the speakers were simply unheard by him -- and I would assume unheard by the other August Council Members as well. They had less interest in what was said than they had in the style and assurance with which it was delivered, the cuteness of some of the speakers, the quality of their delivery, or their personal knowledge of some of them. It was a hearing in which literally nothing that was said was heard by the Council, and certainly not by the Mayor. Well, except for once, when a speaker challenged the Mayor to say whether they were going to vote tonight, and KJ refused to answer until after the speaker finished his remarks. At that point, Kevin said that no, the Council was not going to vote. They couldn't. The Occupy Sacrament agenda item was not an action item (a misstatement which will have consequences for the city, but I'll get to that), so they couldn't vote on removing the camping ordinance -- which was not what was being requested -- or anything else. This was just an opportunity for representatives of OccupySacramento to be heard, and then the Council would discuss it, and then we'd see what would happen. The speaker KJ said this to replied, "That is unacceptable!" There was a good deal of murmuring among the multitude, but the Mayor's response was, "I understand you see that as 'unacceptable,' but that's how the Council has to work."

After the OS speakers finished and two of the Council members spoke on the issue, basically proposing a "compromise," the Mayor stepped in and "made an offer." He would agree to go over to the Plaza (across the street from the City Hall) sometime this week and meet with some of the leaders of the Occupation -- which he started to designate last night -- to work on a Resolution of the Occupation that he would then, he said, be able to take to Washington with him the next time he went to see the President, and he could give copies to anyone else who needed to hear from OccupySacramento. He would do this because he -- and all the rest of the Council -- believes in the aims and intentions of the Occupiers. He called forth one of the Occupiers whom he knew from previous appearances before the Council to serve as coordinator -- and putative Leader -- of his Visitation Across The Street.

Now. THAT was a direct effort at co-optation, and it almost worked. It was so unexpected. At first there seemed to be agreement among the Occupiers present that this was a good idea, but then some got to thinking about it and got angry. "What about the arrests?" they said. "Stop the arrests!" He said no. The camping ordinance would remain in place. They said, "Stop the arrests!" He just sort of grinned, and said he'd coordinate with the man he'd designated the time and place for dialogue with the Occupation leaders.

On to other business.

The mood in the room was very hostile by that point. The Occupiers trooped out, disgusted.

But that is the way this city works -- as many who have been through this process know and tried to warn the more naive among the Occupation. KJ -- and his wife Michele Rhee - are masters at manipulating people to get what they want.

And what they want, clearly, is to say to the White House -- and anyone else who wants to listen -- that they have found the way to Break the Occupation! No lie. That's exactly what they are setting up to do.

The absolute fury after the meeting was a wonder to behold. They knew they'd been had, but not necessarily why or even how.

The arrests re-commenced at 11:36pm. And they will not end until one or the other side gets tired of them.

Again with the Hijack Meme

General Assembly in Washington Square October 8, 2011.

This is getting tiresome.

The notion that the Occupations are a unity is a delightful fiction, but it simply doesn't fit the facts.

To a very significant degree, the Occupations have spontaneously arisen and are at best only loosely affiliated. There is no central Occupation Office where the Occupation Board sets Occupation policy and where Occupation media releases are cleared. Given the organizational structure of loosely affiliated autonomous Occupations -- active in over 100 cities right now with more than 1000 others being planned -- it's all but impossible for a unified, hierarchical, controlled and controlling Occupation HQ, Inc., to emerge. The institutional organizational structure is antithetical to the Occupation spirit. So much so that if some institution -- say MoveOn -- were to try to amalgamate with Occupations (each of which is autonomous), the institution would likely implode.

The problem for institutional players like MoveOn or any hierarchical political party is that the Occupations eschew hierarchy (or at least they try to), they refuse institutional categorization, and their organizational and operational model is that of a participatory, direct democracy, with recommendations, considerations, and implementations through Working Groups -- which are essentially voluntary task focused associations. There are no employees, no managers, there are no designated leaders, there is no board of directors, there are no offices, no officers, either. The Working Groups are themselves operationally autonomous; the General Assembly, which is composed of the "committee of the whole" -- ie: everyone who is participating, whether as individuals or members of Working Groups or both -- is the deliberative and decicion-making body for the whole Occupation. The New York City General Assembly may influence actions and decisions taken by other General Assemblies in other Occupations -- simply because it has been in operation longer and has a body of experience that others don't. But NYCGA has no authority over other Occupations, any more than, say, the Spanish People's Assemblies, which are models for the New York GA, have authority over OccupyWallStreet. They not only have no authority over any other Occupation, they don't want it.

Let's say for the sake of argument, that MoveOn manages to subvert and take over the New York City GA and thus gains control of OccupyWallStreet. That's what would have to happen: the GA would have to be subverted and taken over before there could be any MoveOn control or authority over OccupyWallStreet. But even if that were to happen, every other Occupation would still be autonomous; MoveOn would have to subvert and take over every GA in every Occupation one by one, they could not do it in batches.

And how, exactly, do you subvert and take over a participatory democracy operated under such...difficult rules. Unless literally every participant in the GA is a subversive infiltrator from MoveOn, there's no way for a General Assembly to become a tool of the Institution. That's because of the way consensus works in General Assembly. Consensus is not found through a majority vote; consensus is only reached when no one blocks a proposal.

That means that a single individual can force the reconsideration of any proposal. Thus, unless literally everyone at the GA is an infiltrator from MoveOn, MoveOn can't "take over." No institution can.

This is one reason I have had so much interest in the operations of the General Assemblies, and it's why I urge the adoption of as much of the Quick Guide as possible. It is the primary means of preserving autonomy and genuinely reflecting the consensus will of the People.

Yet there can be so much anxiety over the presence of provocateurs. Infiltrators are assumed. Staying on track is difficult under any circumstances, but if there is trust in the Assembly, even the presence of those who want to "destroy the movement" won't be able to do it.

The problems come -- and become compounded -- when the principles of the General Assembly process aren't followed either because they are too complicated or unfamiliar, or because the process of hearing everyone "takes too long." That was one of the issues raised in Austin: the GAs were taking too long because too many people wanted to talk about too many extraneous matters, and important matters were neglected. The other problem I saw was that the moderators were trying too hard to exercise authority and control. Part of the process is to explain the rules and how the GA operates before the GA begins and to gain consensus on those rules and the proposed agenda. Then stick to the agenda. Reports are made by the Working Groups. Proposals that require consensus to implement are made. Questions and discussion about the proposal ensues. The Question is asked whether there is consensus to adopt a proposal. Proposals that don't gain consensus are tabled, referred to working groups for reworking and reconsideration, or they are dropped. There is no open forum at GA. The discussion must stay focused on reports, proposals, questions and discussion. Then consensus is called for. If there is consensus, the proposal is adopted. The entire body has thereby decided. If there is no consensus, then the matter is returned for further consideration by a working group or whoever made the proposal. The proposal may be resubmitted at a later GA or be dropped.

As a rule, matters that will affect the whole Occupation (such as marches, for example) or that will require the expenditure of more than a set amount of money (typically $100) will be submitted at GA. Other matters are handled in the Working Groups or informally. Forums are separate processes, generally involving a moderator and a floor assistant and anyone who wishes to speak on either specific topics or any topic, if it is an Open Forum.

While the outline is simple, actually doing it isn't so simple. It takes time and patience to learn and much practice to do well. But if the process is respected and practiced routinely, it becomes the central core of the Occupation.

Except under very unusual circumstance, hijacks cannot take place.