Occupy Iowa City General Assembly
Last night I attended a meeting that was truly amazing.
I recently moved to Iowa City (where I grew up) and I have been spending a significant amount of time there meeting and talking with other activists and trying to get something going. It’s been a bit of a challenge. For a lot of reasons, a lot of the people I know here have chosen lately to express their radicalism in ways that don’t involve direct action.
I was starting to tell myself, “Hey, That’s cool; there’s still a lot to learn from them. There’s a lot to be said for that.” But the part of me who wants to make a ruckus was still a bit disappointed.
Then a couple people decided to start organizing a solidarity protest for Occupy Wall Street. Man, did they take the bull by the horns.
Last night was the first general assembly meeting of the Occupy Iowa City protest. Over 100 people showed up and we crammed ourselves into a basement room that was half under construction to decide what we are going do and how it is gonna get done. The people in that room with me were ready for action. It was almost a foregone conclusion that we were going to occupy something. And by occupy, I mean march there, set up camp, and stay—for months if necessary—until we are removed.
I was worried that this meeting was going to be a bigbig mess. A general invitation had gone out over facebook and the precedent for leaderless action and consensus process has already been set by Occupy Wall Street. The meeting was scheduled for three hours and it (as you can guess) was hot in there. I thought, “man, this could be crazy disorganized.”
But it wasn’t. There were several people there who already had experience participating in consensus process meetings and they helped facilitate a reasonable, productive and generally on-point discussion. In two hours, we had decided that we would occupy, and had determined the where and when. By invitation, we dovetailed our initial march with another protest that is happening on the night ours begins. We made a list of logistical concerns, shared information about other events that were happening in the area, and planned a place, time, and rough agenda for our next meeting. We also wrapped it up just as everyone was starting to feel antsy.
BOOM. All of that, made from whole cloth, without a leader, and with 100+ people satisfied with the outcome? You say it’s not possible? I fucking saw it happen.
The feeling leaving the place was electric. Everyone was excited and talking to each other and making new friends and making dates to hang out later. I talked to my friends and they said that they were surprised at how many people who were at the meeting that they didn’t already know. It made me very hopeful on a general level to see that people in a relatively comfortable town like ours are not too comfortable to want to get out and make some noise.
What was even more awesome, was that there were representatives from other cities at the general assembly, too. People from Waterloo and Des Moines (where another general assembly is planned for Sunday) came out to see our process, get energized, stay tuned in and coordinate with our efforts. That led to the sense that we were definitely seeing something that is momentous!
And the people in the room were ready to strike while the iron is hot. One woman showed up with her toddler and a car full of food and said that she had come here ready to occupy tonight. When someone suggested that we begin our occupation on the 15th, another man said, “Why not tomorrow?”
It was a thing to see.
Here’s the details:
Occupy Iowa City—Friday, October 7, 2011 6:00 at College Green Park in Iowa City.
At 4:30pm there will be an anti-war protest commemorating the 10th anniversary of the start of the war in Afghanistan—meet at the corner of Clinton and Washington Streets in downtown Iowa City. There will be a march from this protest to the park.
If you are in the area, you should come out. If you aren’t, you should organize an occupation yourself.
