[OccupyComms] Bath People's Assembly

[Standing Stone]

Hi Occupiers,

Thought I'd let you know how the first Bath People's Assembly went last night. We announced that we were setting this up during a speech to about 1500 people just prior to Wednesday's union march. We later had the same announcement again at the camp, and handed out hundreds of leaflets. We then put out a press release to the local paper and several independent news sources, and e-mailed as many unions and campaign groups as we could think of in Bath.

Last night we had about 50 people turn up. Prior to this a large number of people said that they couldn't make it, and some that said they would didn't turn up, so the actual number of people who would be up for is probably much higher (and considering we only had 3 days to promote it, 50 people - of which about 43 of them aren't camping at Occupy Bath - is pretty good). 

We began with a welcome and an introduction, then introduced consensus decision making and the hand signals. We then opened the floor to open debate. There was 10 seconds of silence, then someone put their hand up and raised an issue. Issues discussed included housing in Bath, the war in Afghanistan, government cuts, taxation and family law. During the course of the BPA, five working groups were established dealing with housing, international relations, tax, legal and admin.

The meeting was a success, everyone took to the hand signals and many were amazed at how it works. The next meeting is provisionally scheduled for 15th December. If anyone from other Occupations would like to visit to see how it is done, get in touch!

As the future of Occupy Bath is still uncertain (overnight numbers are now very low most nights), we feel that not only has something potentially worthwhile come out of the occupation, but also it could be something we could focus our efforts on more if and when the camp goes. One thing is for certain - if we hadn't set up camp in Queen's Square, we probably wouldn't have got that many people last night!

The website for Bath People's Assembly is: http://www.bathpeoplesassembly.org/

Solidarity

Standing Stone (representing Standing Stone, who lives in a tent at Occupy Bath)
 		 	   		  
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