G.A. 4-29-14

We’ve have to meet in the WSAC performance space tonight. The small gallery is now being used as a small art gallery with paintings and sculptures and such. Who woulda thunk? The performance space is huge so we tuck ourselves into a corner, put out beverages and form a circle of chairs. We intend this meeting to be short and sweet as we have much work to do tomorrow to get ready for May Day.

Somehow a conversation gets going about homelessness. Most of the Occupiers have been homeless at some point. Everyone tells their stories and the one thing all the stories have in common is the unpleasant experience of being treated with distain and fear by most of the non-homeless.

We have a new person who is at his 2nd meeting tonight. He’s not familiar with the story about the homeless camp we ran during the Spring and Summer of 2012. We tell him about that experience.

It’s time to get down business. We write up a list of all the things we need to do. A quarter sheet flyer for handing out to passersby still needs to be made. One Occupier volunteers to take care of this. The lock to our storage space has been repaired so we’ve got the 2 propane stoves. Tomorrow afternoon some of the Occupiers will arrive to clean out the big truck and then pack it with all the stuff for the rally. We got most of the food things like plates, silverware etc.

The Occupier who is in charge of the food isn’t with us tonight. We’ll talk to him by phone later tonight. All the cooking will be done tomorrow. He promises us a very large pot of something vegan, gluten free and delicious.

The weather these last few has been rainy or misty with temps in the 30s and 40s. Most of the snow has melted. The forecast is for much of the same on May Day, the same as it was for our last several May Days. Everything worked out nicely in the past; we assume things will be o.k. on this May Day too.

A female resident of WSAC comes in and says pleasantly, “Sorry but I’m teaching a dance class in here in a few minutes”. One of the Occupiers who lives in the artist co-op says, “Oh, I had forgotten about that. We’ll be out of here right away”. We pack up and are out in a matter of minutes.

We take everything to the Occupier’s apartment, converse briefly and we’re off into the night to put out handbills for Mayday at the Homegrown Music Festival venues. These next 2 days will be extremely busy. We may be back at WSAC on Saturday.

G.A. Minutes 4-26-14
This evening’s meeting is taking place at the Pineapple Arts Center, an art supply store, community meeting and art making space in Duluth’s Central Hillside.
We have a full house and we’re ready to go over our plans for May Day again. Many speakers, musicians and poets have signed up to participate so we’ve decided to start the rally at 2pm instead of 3pm with cleanup set for 4:30pm and the march to Idle No More’s rally in Canal Park to begin at 5pm.
There are 5 people signed up to speak about various aspects of a non-capitalist economic system and sustainable ideas for the survival of humanity on our planet. There is one more friend we would like to invite to speak and an Occupier takes responsibility for contacting him. 2 groups of musicians are scheduled to perform. We also have several volunteers to help with cleanup.
The Occupier in charge of providing the food says everything is under control. There’s one small hang up in that the lock in the door to the place we have been storing all our cooking equipment is broken and the Occupiers responsible for this have not been able to get into the space. We’re pretty sure this can be remedied in a few days.
A supporter of Occupy has cooked some really good food; we serve ourselves and settle down to watch a somewhat humorous movie about the origins of May Day as a political holiday. The movie is about the Haymarket riots.
Only 4 days and one more meeting left until May Day. We hope we have everything under control. Much physical labor remains to be done. We’ll meet again on Tuesday at the WSAC small gallery.

G.A. Minutes 4-19-14
The small gallery is full of Occupiers tonight. Everyone is exceptionally cheerful, which is odd considering that we had another big snow storm just one day ago. Things have been melting rapidly since and it does appear that Spring is trying real hard to get here. That’s a good reason for optimism.

We need to go over our plans for May Day. The Occupier tasked with organizing the food can’t be here tonight but he has sent word that there will be almost $100 for buying food. That’s more than enough to provide a simple but healthy meal for a lot of people.

Finding people to speak at the event is something we haven’t taken care of yet. One local environmental activist has agreed to speak about our mayor’s very unpopular decision to support the Endbridge pipeline expansion. One of the Occupiers has agreed to contact an empathetic city councilor and a professional organic gardener. We try to come up with other ideas and a longtime political activist who is an excellent speaker on any subject he chooses is suggested. Also suggested is someone from the Whole Foods Co-op who would be willing to speak about the new store about to open in the poor and working class neighborhood of West Duluth. Someone recommends a well know local permaculturalist and the conversation diverts a bit.

This man has been making a series of permaculture presentations in the area lately. Several of the Occupiers rave about his presentation, which they attended last night. “I was seriously enlightened”, says one Occupier. We all say we should definitely contact this man and we hope he won’t be teaching his college class at the time of our rally.

An Occupier asks, “Could we have a very simple half sheet flyer that we could hand out to passersby at the rally? Another asks, “Do you think we could leaflet the neighborhood the night before the event”? The Occupier in charge of making all the printed materials says, “No problem” to both requests.

The subject of the march after the rally is next. We talk about music and begin discussing various musical instruments that may be available. One of the Occupiers living in the artist co-op says, “You’ll never believe what I dug out of the dumpster a few days ago”. He leaves and returns with an intact high tom from someone’s trap drum kit. Several Occupiers who are musicians express amazement that anyone would throw away something so useful. These musician Occupiers discuss what kind of straps can be put on it so it can be used in the march.

Another Occupier has brought all the old but undamaged signs left over from one of the big actions we held over a year ago. We examine each sign and decide they are all suitable for May Day. That’s great as we won’t have to make as many new ones.
We had originally decided to hold the May Day event from 3pm-5pm. Tonight an Occupier says, “If we’re going to march down to Canal Park and join Idle No More at their Wolves, Water and Women event maybe we should stop the rally at 4:30 pm so we are sure to get there in time”. Everyone agrees.

“Remember the times when we had marches with some of the unions and we marched in the street? If we notified them in advance, the DPD would block the traffic lane for us,” says one Occupier. Another says, “Yeah, but that was when we were marching with the unions. The DPD ain’t gonna to do jack for Occupy”. The first Occupier says,” Oh yeah, I guess that’s true”. We all laugh.
The Occupier tasked with doing the printing gets a text on his cell phone. The text says that we have the use of Pineapple Arts for our next 2 meetings. Sweet. Time to pack up, rest up, maybe do the family thing tomorrow on Easter, then back to work and back to the small gallery next Tuesday.

G.A. Minutes 4-15-14
All the usual suspects arrive for tonight’s meeting in the small gallery. We’ve previously agreed to focus solely on the upcoming May Day event so we put up a big piece of paper and write down all the relevant topics for discussion.
First off everyone wants to know the details of the May Day Decolonize event that Idle No More is planning. We’re hoping we can finish our event before theirs begins so we can join and support them. The Occupier who regularly attends INM meetings says the tentative plan is to start the Decolonize event around 5 or 5:30pm down in Canal Park. “Oh good, seeing as we’ll be happening from about 3pm to 5pm we should be able to get down there and join in,” says another Occupier.
Next on the agenda is the role of police liaison. The Occupier who had done most of the legal research during our “battle” with the DPD at the CJM Memorial volunteers to take on the liaison position. She says, “The Civic Center is considered to be a city park and I have a list of all the city ordinances on city parks. I’d like to at least read all of them to everyone before May Day so you’ll know what our rights are.”
An occasional Occupier reports he’s heard some Duluth church is planning a vigil at the Civic Center at 5pm on May 1st. Another Occupier offers to investigate just so we know what we may be dealing with.
The biggest item on the agenda is food. A longtime Occupier has already taken charge of this. He reports on his progress and we make plans to do an inventory of all the cooking equipment we have left over from our previous camps.
We also need to discuss signs and literature. We know one of the occasional Occupiers is not with us tonight because he is finishing the new flyer he is making for May Day. We have a big 2 sided May Day banner from last year and many well-made signs left over from our 2nd Anniversary of Occupy action. We’ll need to make some new signs and an Occupier reports we can make more on Sundays at Pineapple Arts when they open their space to the general public. An Occupier volunteers to find out more and report back at our next meeting.
Will we be inviting people to speak? We think that would be a good idea but no one has any concrete ideas about who we could ask. It will be kinda tricky because we need to find people who speak fairly well, have free time during the event hours and will agree to speak on a topic related to poverty, homelessness and to our challenge to the City to spend more time and money meeting the needs of the citizens as opposed to meeting the needs of big business. We will think about it for the next several days and hopefully will bring ideas to the next meeting.
One of the Occupiers wants very much to also have a fire. He says that a fire is very symbolic of May Day. Another Occupier is adamantly opposed to having a fire. She says, “A fire will cause us a lot of problems with the DPD. Cops are generally not too bright and they are not going to realize that the fact that their Chief gave as a letter stating he has ordered his police force to not bother us when we have our fire at the CJM Memorial also means they shouldn’t bother us about our small safe fire at any place deemed to be a city park. The cops will bully us and spoil our event. Also, we don’t have a lot of firewood and we need it for CJM”. It doesn’t appear that either Occupier is going to concede so we agree to table the discussion until next meeting.
Somebody says, “I guess we’d better talk about cleanup”. That’s always the last and the most unpleasant thing however, over time we’ve become pretty good at it. We invariably leave a site cleaner than it was when we arrived. With 2 large vehicles designated to carry all out belongings and a box of big garbage bags we think we will have it covered.
So that about raps up everything for now. We’ll pack up, stop by the Occupier couple’s house to relax a bit, then everyone will take care of their assigned tasks and we’ll meet back at the small gallery on Saturday.