I spent four of the five days at the Occupy National Gathering and my here’s my overall impression;
It was a powerful, visionary, exciting, FUN gathering of representatives from close to 100 different Occupy locales. Marches through Philadelphia, aimed at Comcast and big Banks, in heat reaching mid 90s temperatures, had upwards of 300-500 marchers.
The goals of the gathering, described on the official website were, “for a week of direct actions, movement building and the creation of a vision for a democratic future.” There was also a lot of sharing of ideas, tactics, strategies, resources, between occupiers, for example, on how to help people being foreclosed on and thrown out of their houses, or how to take over unoccupied buildings.
The last day focused on a visioning process. Hundreds of the occupy representatives participated in discussions aimed at defining a positive vision for a democratic future. I participated in the process.
This visioning was interesting to me because I’ve spent many years in the world of positive psychology, long enough so I own the website www.positivepsychology.net. With positive psychology, we take an approach that goes beyond diagnosing and fixing what’s broken. We look at how people can be taught and empowered to reach towards optimal functioning, towards ideal ways of being. I felt that the same approach could be applying to visioning for an ideal future from an Occupy perspective.
photo by rob kall
First, the whole group of Occupy #NatGat listened as the coordinators explained the process.
People were broken up into groups of 45. Then, further broken into groups of three who were asked to generate a lists of visions for a democratic future. A scribe for each group of three was to write them down. Next, three groups of three were to come together. First, a new scribe had to be chosen for each group of three. Then, they had to collage the ideas into a single list representing the nine people, and then, the nine had to vote, with twinkle fingers, on the different items.
Next, the lists created by the nine people were worked on by another group of scribes, so the visions of the 45 could be pulled together. This was not always easy work. One group might have had an item– “get rid of for-profit prisons.” Another had, “end all imprisonment.” They weren’t the same! There were some ideas that each group had come up with that were very similar— “direct democracy,” “horizontal approaches wherever possible,” “free healthcare and education.” Now, please keep in mind, these are my personal observations and recollections, not the official report that will be issued, soon, by the group that organized the visioning process.
On the last day of the gathering, Elise Luce Kraemer displayed and helped to create the Occupy My Soul Quilt, a beautiful collection of images and words.
Here’s a video, taken by Kevin Gosztola, showing some of the discussion in the visioning session.
Rob Kall is executive editor, publisher and website architect of OpEdNews.com, Host of the Rob Kall Bottom Up Radio Show (WNJC 1360 AM), and publisher of Storycon.org, President of Futurehealth, Inc, and an inventor . He is also published regularly on the Huffingtonpost.com
Mediate ranks Rob Kall among the top 150 print/online columnists, often ahead of NY Times, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post columnists.
With his experience as architect and founder of a technorati top 100 blog, he is also a new media / social media consultant and trainer for corporations, non-profits, entrepreneurs and authors.
Rob is a frequent Speaker on the bottom up revolution, politics, The art, science and power of story, heroes and the hero’s journey and Positive Psychology. He is a campaign consultant specializing in tapping the power of stories for issue positioning, stump speeches and debates, and optimizing tapping the power of new media. Watch me speaking on Bottom up economics at the Occupy G8 Economic Summit, here.
See more Rob Kall articles here and, older ones, here.
To learn more about Rob and OpEdNews.com, check out
Rob’s radio show, The Rob Kall Bottom Up Radio Show, runs 9-10 PM EST Wednesday evenings, on AM 1360, WNJC and is archived at www.opednews.com/podcasts Or listen to it streaming, live at www.wnjc1360.com
Rob also hosted a health/mind/body/heart/spirit radio show– the Rob Kall Futurehealth radio show. Check out podcasts from it at futurehealth.org/podcasts
Follow me on Twitter
A few declarations.
-My articles express my personal opinion, not the opinion of this website.
Recent press coverage in the Wall Street Journal: Party’s Left Pushes for a Seat at the Table
