'Occupy' to hold national conference in Philly
PHILADELPHIA (AP) — A group of protesters affiliated with the Occupy Wall Street movement plans to elect 876 "delegates" from around the country and hold a national "general assembly" in Philadelphia over the Fourth of July as part of ongoing protests over corporate excess and economic inequality.
The group, dubbed the 99% Declaration Working Group, said Wednesday delegates would be selected during a secure online election in early June from all 50 states, the District of Columbia and U.S. territories.
In a nod to their First Amendment rights, delegates will meet in Philadelphia to draft and ratify a "petition for a redress of grievances," convening during the week of July 2 and holding a news conference in front of Independence Hall on the Fourth of July.
Any U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident who is 18 years of age or older may run as a nonpartisan candidate for delegate, according to Michael S. Pollok, an attorney who advised Occupy Wall Street protesters arrested on the Brooklyn Bridge last year and co-founded the working group.
More: http://news.yahoo.com/occupy-hold-national-conference-philly-151936603.html
Cross-posted to LBN: http://www.democraticunderground.com/101458323
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You'd think that something like this would lead to positive change if they kept it horizontal and did it right. But they're already on the wrong foot having divorced themselves from OWS... Why should a single, narrow working group control the selection of delegates? That's not how the Continental Congress worked... we're being more democratic than that here on DU.
It's a real shame that the people in charge of this working group aren't willing to take a step back, go back to Occupy participants regionally, and say, what if the persons leading this step back and allow new voices to emerge, is there a way to restructure this effort so that more good than harm (i.e. divisiveness) comes out of it? The original Continental Congress was formed through a sort of consensus process between a variety of diverse regional elements... if they had not sought unity they would not have succeeded.
Sadly, most of the people seeking to co-opt the language of the American Revolution are affiliated with the Tea Party movement, and most are either Rand libertarians or Constitutionalists... their insistence on adhering to right-wing dogma has sucked the air out of the room for reclaiming a shared language of resistance.
