Author: Mike

There was another general assembly meeting of Occupy Worcester on the Common today. No, nobody’s “occupying” anything yet. There was a lot of discussion of occupation but no consensus. I counted 96 people.

Eventually attention shifted to Saturday’s “International Day of Action in Solidarity with Occupy Wall Street” event. People will meet at Clark at 2pm, march downtown around 3pm, and begin another general assembly on the Common at 4pm. At sundown, there will be a candlelight vigil. The message will be “Solidarity.” Not many more details than that were decided.

People at the assembly were also talking about helping the Worcester Anti-Foreclosure Task Force prevent a foreclosure on Tuesday, and joining a local Bank of America protest Wednesday.

Directly after the assembly a number of folks rushed off to join Occupy Boston in their attempt to hold onto a second camp despite warnings from police. Various responses to the Boston situation were floated during the assembly, but there was no consensus, probably because the situation was developing.

See also:

• The minutes of the assembly
• T&G: Common cause: “OCCUPY WORCESTER” LOOKS HOMEWARD

For what it’s worth, here’s video of the first hour of the assembly. IIRC the whole thing was about 2 hours long.

Hundreds gathered on Worcester Common today for a general assembly of “Occupy Worcester.”

After discussing consensus process, we used that process (love how meta this stuff gets) to decide to break into small groups, talk about why we were there, and then report on the consensus of each small group to the group as a whole.

As the small groups assembled, I counted 190 participants.

Update: Another general assembly 5pm Monday (tomorrow) on the Common. Likely will have a more active event Saturday.

We are gathering for a second time [Monday, October 10] on the commons to exchange ideas and discuss the responsibilities of each working group. People may gather anytime after 12PM for discussion, but the actual assembly begins at 5PM. Today was a great success, please join us tomorrow as the second day of Occupy Worcester commences.

Elsewhere:

• T&G: Occupy Worcester protestors fill City Hall common
• Sean Dacey
• Craigslist “missed connection”

Below is video of the first hour of the “large group” part of the general assembly, in case you’re curious about that sort of thing.

T&G video:

30 people gathered on Worcester Common today for a 3-hour “Occupy Worcester” rally. This was organized independently of tomorrow’s general assembly, also on the Common. What are the chances there are Occupy Worcester events this weekend I don’t even know about?

General assembly meeting for Occupy Worcester:

1:30pm, Sunday, October 9, Worcester Common (behind City Hall)

If you have ideas to share or want to plan Occupy Worcester’s next steps, please be there.

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People are starting to talk in an organized way about what “Occupy Worcester” would look like and how to put it together.

No, there are no specifics, or even generalities so far.

(Yes, this occupation would be larger in scale than last week’s 508.)

See also: I Think We Should Start Talking About Starting A Band