OccupyVancouver Day 2: GA becomes disorganized

BLOG POST posted on October 16, 2011 by infil00p

→Dominion Stories, →Occupy

After the last night's General Assembly where a decision was made about the police and the campers, there appears to be more issues between some of the people at the General Assembly and various people who attended.  It appears that facilitation was much stronger last night than it was today, and that the Facilitation Group wanted to try some new policies that they planned late last night after the GM, while people were doing the roving dance party.

However, despite the fact that they started to institute a stack, the crowd quickly devolved into shouting, and questions about how the facilitators of the general assembly were imposing their will on everyone who camped at the occupation were being raised.  There were also issues about how the group, mostly consisting of people who have not met before, may not have any affinity for each other.  I don't totally agree with this, but I do agree that patience was wearing thin because of the issue of the police.

One thing that we keep coming back to is the fact that while the Police are part of the 99%, they are also in the service of the 1%.  Many people who are at OccupyVancouver seem really taken back by my hard line opinion abou the police and keep saying that the police are people, ignoring the fact that they're the only ones with tasers, guns, batons and gas masks.  If they were really about keeping the peace, why are they bringing all this stuff to what was agreed to be a peaceful protest.  Despite the police profiling of everyone wearing a black hoodie (some of which I experenced today when I came there with my partner and our kid), and the fact that they're encouraging others to engage in this profiling, there have so far been no criminal acts by anyone, whether they are in a mask or not.  Instead of looking for boogeymen where there are none, how about we actually look at the fact that the police are starting to wander in the crowd more, and are acting as fashion police.  I can't exactly black bloc in a one-of-a-kind hoodie that you have to go to Germany and attend a Hacker Con to get, can I?

Overall, I don't see the police issue ever going away at OccupyVancouver, but at least people are still talking about it, despite the efforts of the facilitators to move it aside, table it, or silence those that at first seem like they are being disruptive.  One thing that is concerning is listening to someone say that the individual that was yelling today was a cop.  We have to make sure that we don't get into this behaviour.  I have my suspicions as to who is a cop, but I won't make them public since that pits protester against protester, which is counterproductive right now.  Hopefully people can keep the energy up for tonight, and surivive the second day so they can go into the week.