December 2011 - Occupy Toronto

Occupy Toronto Activist Assembly Jan 20-22

Occupy Toronto Activist Assembly Friday, January 20-Sunday, January 22, 2012 OISE (Ontario Institute for Studies in Education) at St George and Bloor. This is an invitation to Occupy Toronto’s first Activist Assembly on the weekend of January 20, 21, 22. This will be a conference style event, focused on developing Occupy Toronto’s activist capacity. Join the FaceBook Event:www.facebook.com/events/270078499716966 SCHEDULE: Friday: 7:00 – 10:00 -Opening Panel – Discussion of why Occupy is effective. The focus of this session will be on the importance of outreach, protest, mass mobilization, and of constant recruitment of new people. The panel will be facilitated by an Occupy Toronto facilitator, followed by an open discussion with the attendees and break out groups to address the question “Why are we here?” Speakers: Carolyn Egan – is the president of the Steelworkers’ Toronto Area Council and United Steelworkers Local 8300. She is a long-time pro- choice, anti-war and social justice activist in Toronto and a leading member of the International Socialists. Judy Rebick – is a veteran activist, on feminist, democracy, anti- racist and international solidarity issues. She is also a writer, teacher and sometime journalist. She has a new e book coming out in March called Occupy This!. She is the founding publisher of rabble.ca and a regular on the Q media panel. Syed Hussan – is an organizer, activist and writer based in Toronto. Hussan has been involved with anti-colonial, migrant justice, feminist, anti-racist, environmental justice, anti-war and prison abolition movements and is active in No One Is Illegal – Toronto and Toronto Stop the Cuts Network. As part of his involvement in the Toronto Community Mobilization Network, Hussan was charged with Conspiracy. Though his charges were dropped after 18 months, 6 activist and community organizers have been jailed for the Anti-G20 protests. Saturday: 11:00am -12:15 -History Session (select one) Room 1 – Egypt and the Arab Spring Room 2 – Greece, Spain and the European fight back Room 3 – The Struggle in Wisconsin Room 4 – Paris 68 – a near revolution in France. Room 5 – Students for a Democratic Society – The American student movement of the 60s Room 6 – Indigenous Resistance 12:30-1:30 lunch 1:30-2:45 – Discussion with Occupier’s from across Ontario (select 1 room) The Southern-Ontario Occupies will also be involved in this assembly. We are inviting people from various camps to talk about their unique experiences in other cities. Room 1 – Ottawa/ Montreal Room 2 – Kitchener / Guelph / Niagara / Room 3 – Kingston /Windsor /London/ Room 4 – Pickering/Hamilton/Brampton/Orillia Room 5 – Sault Saint Marie / Sudbury / Barrie 3:00-4:15 – Issues discussions (select one) Room 1 – Environmental Justice Room 2 – Militarization, Colonialization and Occupation Room 3 – Financial Collapse Room 4 – Austerity and Neoliberalism Room 5 – Economic Alternatives Room 6 – Building fortress North America 4:30-5:45 Discussion of OccupyTO’s Committee structure Sunday: 11:00-12:45 Classroom style teach-in (select first option) Room 1 – Speaking to the Media Room 2 – Facilitation Training Room 3 – 10 steps to effective campaigning Room 4 – Direct Action Training Room 5 – Marshal Training Room 6 – Anti-Oppression/Anti Racism Training 1:45- 3:30 Classroom (second choice) Room 1 – Speaking to the Media Room 2 – Facilitation Training Room 3 – 10 steps to effective campaigning Room 4 – Direct Action Training Room 5 – Marshal Training Room 6 – Anti-Oppression/Anti Racism Training 3:45 – 5:15 Committee Discussions Room 1 – Outreach / Action Room 2 – Media Room 3 – Facilitation / Marshals Room 4 – Finance Room 5 – Women’s / Accessibility Committees Room 6 – Marshals 5:30-6:00 Closing Ceremony – Main Room REGISTRATION: ****Please note: Everyone who plans on attending this event must register to attend Registration is Free and MANDATORY!*** You can register online by sending your full name in an email entitled “registration” to [email protected] Or by signing up on the signup sheet that we will be bringing to almost every Toronto General Assembly from now on. Those who have not registered for this event, will not be allowed into the rooms. BUSES: For those people out of town, we are working on organizing buses to pick a few people up from all across southern Ontario (and Quebec.) This is STILL NOT CONFIRMED. If we find the funding for it, we will have one bus leaving Montreal, one bus leaving Windsor, and one bus leaving Sault Saint Marie to stop off at various towns and cities and pick people up on the way to Toronto. (and also drop people off on Sunday evening.) Everyone who wants to get on those buses must sign up for a seat with a liaison from your town. If you don’t know of a liaison to speak to from your town, e-mail [email protected] and we will either send you contact info for your town’s liaison, or ask you to BE your town’s liaison....

What’s up at the Web Development Team?

Occupy Toronto 29 December 2011 by Michael Holloway As the Web Development Committee continues to rebuild our ‘hacked-to-death’ website, we’re trying to better understand what Occupy Toronto looks like – so we can build a web site that reflects it well. One of the ways we’re doing this is to create a ‘schematic’ of OccupyToronto: An Image of “Building a Schematic of Occupy Toronto” See it Live: http://bit.ly/SchematicOccupyTO The Doc was made with Google’s new, ‘Presentation’ application – it’s a live schematic of Occupy Toronto that’s updating daily as we get new info. All links are in blue and underlined – have a look. If you have any new info to contribute, please comment in this Google Groups thread: “Building a Schematic of Occupy Toronto” – http://groups.google.com/group/occupy-toronto-web-development/browse_frm/thread/600b0ae71c2f6092?hl=en A brief synopsis of 5 WebDEV meetings The Committee met face to face on December 13, 2011 at The Imperial Pub (minutes) – and then online on December 15th (minutes), and December 19 (minutes). We tried to meet on December 27 online (notes), but we didn’t have a quorum. Tonight – December 29,2011 – we held another meeting in Google Hangout (minutes). The next meeting is on January 3, 2012 – 9pm in Google+ “Hangout” (see below to register and attend). What’s Coming Up? The new site will have pages for all the Committees and sub-committees – with links to them through ‘Tabs’ just under the site’s Header. Forums, like Facebook, will be up for General Conversation – and also perhaps on individual Committee Pages – where anyone can comment just by signing up with an email. To make the forums as democratic as possible, a ‘Rotten Tomatoes’, ‘Digg’ or ‘Reddit’ style ‘Vote up’ / ‘Vote down’ system is being investigated. To make the communication portals useful as well as interesting, you’ll be able to switch your ‘View’ in any of the forums: see ‘Everything‘, or only ‘Official‘ Occupy Toronto posts (Blogs and Event postings from Committees, Sub-committees, and Action Groups). The holidays have interrupted our progress a little bit – but I think Committee Pages will be up soon – including one for the General Assembly. At tonight’s meeting we decided, as a stop-gap, to add an RSS feed option to the front page that will link to the General Assembly Minutes. Currently they are being posted at a Google Group – this is the feed address the new RSS Button will link to – https://groups.google.com/group/occupytorontogaminutes/feeds ). Soon we will have the software installed to create all the Committee Pages. Inside those pages will be spaces for Meeting Minutes – and much more. Also, you may have noticed that the “Living Schedule” (a live spreadsheet) is now a Live Google Calendar that updates daily. All Occupy Toronto Meetings, Announcements and Events can be found there – many with links to outside web pages. Access it through the “Calendar” link, just under the Header on the front page. Happy New Year! Michael Holloway WebDEV Committee OccupyToronto Author ———— Want to attend the next WebDEV meeting? (10/01/12 Google+ Hangout – 9pm) Leave a comment at this link: https://groups.google.com/group/occupy-toronto-web-development/browse_frm/thread/bb0a4451178f73ae?hl=en I will build a email list and when the Google+ “Hangout” is created, I’ll send out a call. (People who wish to attend should set up a Google+ account prior to the meeting – if you have a gmail account, you’re already on Google+ … while in gmail, just click on the furthest left tab labeled, “Google+“.)...

Occupy Toronto – Regrouping Weekend

“Retreat, Regroup, Reoccupy!” A weekend of reflection, coordination, structuring and regrouping for activists involved in Occupy Toronto committees. Where: Steelworker’s Hall – 25 Cecil Street, When: The weekend of the 6, 7, and 8th of January. Facebook event This weekend conference will give the committees a chance to communicate and coordinate with each other, and restructure if necessary. It is primarily intended for the members of the Occupy Toronto Committees but totally open to the public and all are welcome. Members of the 99% who feel like they are more on the periphery, who would like to learn more about the occupy movement and who want to get more involved then they have been so far should consider coming to the Activist Assembly two weeks later: www.facebook.com/events/270078499716966/ Schedule: Friday 7:00-10:00 – Facilitated Debriefing Session. A facilitated group activity session that will encourage individuals to identify group strengths and weaknesses, and develop interpersonal relationships. Saturday 12:00-4:00 Committees each take a turn debriefing. Every committee interested in participating must come up with a short (10-15 minute) presentation, and a 15 minute open discussion will follow each committee’s debrief Sunday 12:00 – 2:45 Open, facilitated discussion on our decision making process. Various decision making alternatives will be presented followed by a group discussion. 3:00 – 6:00 Visioning Session using the Open Space method of facilitation. “Open Space Technology is a workshop design tool to use when situations include a diverse group of people who must deal with complex, and potentially conflicting material in innovative and productive ways. It is a facilitation method in which people can identify specific issues on a given topic, self-select into discussion groups, and work with the issue with people also concerned with that issue.” http://www.freechild.org/Firestarter/OpenSpace.htm...

NOTICE: Some website comprised to redirect to occupyto.org

It has come to our attention that some websites in Toronto have started re-directing to the occupyto.org website. Please be advised that this action is NOT condoned by the Occupy Toronto movement, rather some individual has taken it upon themselves to compromise websites in this way. The issue seems to be related to websites running Joomla 1.5 or 1.6. The solution is to check the source code of the page and search for the word ‘occupy’. Once you have located the code you should have an indication of what article contains the script. In some cases it may be in multiple articles. Just edit each infected article to remove the script and then update your Joomla to the latest version and the problem should be solved. Peace and love to all, Occupy Toronto...