[GPSCC-chat] Occupy San Jose Update

[John Thielking]

http://www.wesleysj.net/  has an address and phone number for the Wesley United Methodist Church at 566 N 5th st.  If that is not the right Methodist Church, there are other results in Google. The Greens should be reaching out to this church anyway since they are Japanese (Re: Fukushima).  Good luck.
 
Sincerely,
 
John Thielking

From: Spencer Graves <spencer.graves at prodsyse.com>
To: GPSCC <sosfbay-discuss at cagreens.org>
Sent: Sunday, October 9, 2011 6:35 PM
Subject: [GPSCC-chat] Occupy San Jose Update


Hello, All:  


      I arrived at the Occupy San Jose site at City Hall, 4th and Santa Clara for a 10 AM meeting of the Communications Committee.  With some effort, a group of roughly a dozen people got consensus on a "working version" of a statement of why they were there.  The statement appears now under "Who we are at "http://occupysj.org".  I plan to produce bookmarks of that text.   


      The Research committee was scheduled to meet at 11 AM.  The meeting was attended by Gerry Gras, Doug Jones, and others whose names I did not properly record.  At the General Assembly (GA) schedule to begin at noon, I summarized the minutes of that meeting by saying that we were proposing to produce a bookmark with the Occupy San Jose Statement produced by the Communications Committee and approved by the GA, and we would ask people to distribute them AND ask anyone who seemed interested in talking about their concerns (about the current political and economic problems facing the US and the world today) -- then listen respectfully, taking careful notes on what people say.  Or invite people to write their own summaries of their concerns.  The concerns would go onto Post-Its / sticky notes or 3 x 5 cards, which would then be sorted using the Affinity Diagram technique (Wikipedia, "Affinity Diagram").  This will produce categories of
 concerns.  These categories of concerns might then be translated into questionnaires to get quantitative data ranking people's concerns.  They can also be used by Research committee to focus their work and by the group at large to craft position papers on those issues.  This is crudely similar to what well funded politicians do to figure out how to package themselves for the voters.  We would use it in a less cynical way to develop political agendas that could sell -- and to further research the past actions and positions of candidates on these issues.  Honest analysis of the histories of competing candidates is not a worthy subject for the mainstream media, because it would reduce their revenue during election years.  We can help fill that gap.  


      Around 1:45, Merriam, Catherine (I failed to get her last name) and I went looking for people representing the United Methodists, who own a lot at 5th and Santa Clara, just north of City Hall, to ask their permission to use that site for expansion or as an alternative in case the San Jose Police actually evict the group currently camped on the City Hall lot on 4th St. at Santa Clara.  We failed to find a human, but Merriam will make further attempts to contact them.  


      I believe there is a difference between the current international Occupy movement and the antiwar demonstrations of the 1960s and early 1970s.  When I was involved in my late 20s, I don't remember working with anyone much over 30, who had knowledge and experience with similar efforts.  This group seems genuinely pleased to have members of the "Over the hill gang" like myself to provide a perspective of what they need to do to have a longer term impact than we had at that age.  


      Thanks to all of you who helped edit the "No Credit Card" flier last year and all you've been doing since.  They have a General Assembly at 7 PM each evening, Monday - Saturday, and noon on Sunday.  As far as I know, they've had people on that site every minute of every day since last Sunday, Oct. 2.  They'd be happy to have you come by any time.  As long as I've listened respectfully and asked questions, they seem to have appreciated my suggestions and offers to do things for them.  They haven't responded to every suggestion I made (I'd be worried if they had), but I think they've accomplished a lot in a short time and stand poised to accomplish much more.  For more info, try "http://occupysj.org".  


      Best Wishes, 
      Spencer 
      


-- 
Spencer Graves, PE, PhD
President and Chief Technology Officer
Structure Inspection and Monitoring, Inc.
751 Emerson Ct.
San José, CA 95126
ph:  408-655-4567
web: www.structuremonitoring.com 
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