OccupySF: General Assemblies and Consensus Building

By far the most fascinating and innovative aspect of the Occupy Movement has been the social structure being developed. Obviously I can only speak about what I have directly witnessed at OccupySF, but I’ve been told these strategies are similar throughout the movement, including a strong consensus against the establishment of any leader or hierarchy.

Everyday there is a General Assembly in which proposals and announcements can be made by all participants. On Thursday, after the raid, the General Assembly was so large that it had to be moved to the Ferry Building where guest speakers from the ACLU and NLG offered legal assistance such as Know Your Rights workshops, direct action training, tactical discussions, legal observer training and cop watch training. These meetings are not being organized by a majority-rules democratic process, instead they’ve developed a number of tools for crowd sourcing decision making by consensus.

General Assemblies are moderated by a volunteer, but all participants have the power of veto. They have also developed a language of hand signals that allow the crowd to express their support or disapproval of the speakers message. Forming an “X” above your head signals disapproval, while dazzling your fingers above your head signals applause without the disruptive sound. If a decision ever must be made by an up or down vote a thumbs up or down is sufficient but the decision is not made by the majority. Instead every individual has the power to block the decision. If it’s all thumbs up they call it a consensus. But if someone blocks they are given the floor to express their objection until a consensus can be reached.

Obviously this process can be messy and time consuming. Cigarettes have posed a unique controversy to the process because the culture in San Francisco is very anti cigarette, but the street anarchist crowd doesn’t really give a damn about city ordinances. So there is a strong desire by some to ban smoking in the camp, but no consensus can be reached. After a few minor confrontations it seems as though this has already been resolved by polite requests and respectful distances. No hard fast rules were necessary. New customs were sufficient.

Many of the innovations have also been a response to police aggression.

They had been using a gas powered electric generator to power the communications center. This was used to charge laptops and phones as well as power the live feed equipment. During the raid Police seized the generator, and then forbid them to use the replacement generator that was donated siting both noise and health concerns over the exhaust. Activists responded by constructing a bicycle powered electric generator hooked up to a series of car batteries, hooked up to a plug strip. They invite people to “donate their rage” channeling their frustration into pedaling the bike, which in turn charges the batteries and provides the camp with electricity. In fact it’s only because of this innovation that I’m able to make this post.

Police said at one point that the campers couldn’t use amplified sound, although they still use megaphones during active protests and marches. But the rest of the time they use something they’ve developed called, “The People’s Mic.” Anyone in the camp may call out, “Mic Check!” and all campers within ear shot echo back “Mic Check!” Once the speaker has the attention of the camp they begin to make their announcement in small segments allowing the crowd to echo their statement in unison, in effect amplifying the sound without any amplification device.

Before the raid the camp had appointed a “police liaison” to carry messages back and forth with the police department. After the raid their was so much animosity toward the police, and so much backtalk to the police liaison that it was decided that having a police liaison was too similar to a leader and they demanded that the police address the group as everyone else addresses the group, by using the People’s Mic, which happened yesterday.

So strong is the rejection of leadership and hierarchy, at least in this crowd, that there is a general rejection of codifying the message of the group into a list of demands. This is thought to be exclusionary and limiting of the diversity of the movement. In fact, yesterday a couple arrived in the middle of the day, rolled out a big piece of butcher paper and began hand writing the proposed list of demands from Occupy Wallstreet that has gotten so much attention recently. There was immediate backlash from the campers insisting that this couple had no right to speak on behalf of the community, that there was no consensus on this list of demands in OccupySF and that the original list was the work of one person on a forum, not even the consensus of Occupy Wallstreet. In the end the couple posted the list among all the other signs, but not permitted to claim that it represented the consensus of the group, and many other campers posted amendments along side the list expressing their respectful disagreement.

Whatever this thing is developing into, it is unlike anything we’ve seen.