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General News    H4'ed 10/8/11

Day 2 DC Occupation of Freedom Square

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Something never done before is spreading across America. It's a joy and honor to be a part of it. If you haven't yet showed up for one of the hundreds of occupations yet, you are really missing something, and really missing an opportunity to shake the system. 
Friday, several actions were staged from Freedom Plaza. 
A protest against Drones led to the shut down of the DC office of General Atomics. 
Another group protested against the Tar Sands pipeline, then a few hours later, a large contingent with a massive declaration of independence, at least 120 feet long, designed and orchestrated by Bill Moyer's Backbone Campaign, walked 1.5 miles to the Martin Luther King Monument.
photos by Rob Kall
In the afternoon, fifteen different discussion groups were formed to discuss topics like health, prisons, education, housing, economics....
Then, in the evening, group representatives reported on the conclusions and policies the groups had come up with. In between, as the night before, there was live music.
I gotta say, before the 15 group representatives got their two minutes each to speak, a pair of "facilitators" spent a good 30 minutes talking "meta" about what was going to be spoken about and how it would be done. After the 15 presenters representing the people spoke, the two facilitators spent another hour parrying with the crowd about what should be done with the time all are together. I guess that a discussion of what's to be done with the time is a good idea. But it seemed screamingly clear that the facilitators were using ideas and talk usually used for corporations. The people occupying the square were a lot of really smart, grown ups who could have done better. 
I was tempted to comment. As founder and leader at Opednews, I've learned that trusting the people is a really good thing that leads to success. I put most decisions before a council of senior editors. My point is that before a process is set in place for the emerging occupation communities, we need to trust the people to find their way of doing things, not submit a way to them. 
Talking to the two people whose names are on the permits at Freedom Square-- Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese , it was clear that they are very aware of that need to not exert too much top down control, to allow bottom up policies to emerge.  That was very good to see. 
This morning, I give a class on tapping the power of story for activism. 
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Rob Kall Social Media Pages: Facebook Page       Twitter page url on login Profile not filled in       Linkedin page url on login Profile not filled in       Instagram page url on login Profile not filled in

Rob Kall is an award winning journalist, inventor, software architect, connector and visionary. His work and his writing have been featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, CNN, ABC, the HuffingtonPost, Success, Discover and other media.

Check out his platform at RobKall.com

He is the author of The Bottom-up Revolution; Mastering the Emerging World of Connectivity

He's given talks and workshops to Fortune 500 execs and national medical and psychological organizations, and pioneered first-of-their-kind conferences in Positive Psychology, Brain Science and Story. He hosts some of the world's smartest, most interesting and powerful people on his Bottom Up Radio Show, and founded and publishes one of the top Google- ranked progressive news and opinion sites, OpEdNews.com

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Rob Kall has spent his adult life as an awakener and empowerer-- first in the field of biofeedback, inventing products, developing software and a music recording label, MuPsych, within the company he founded in 1978-- Futurehealth, and founding, organizing and running 3 conferences: Winter Brain, on Neurofeedback and consciousness, Optimal Functioning and Positive Psychology (a pioneer in the field of Positive Psychology, first presenting workshops on it in 1985) and Storycon Summit Meeting on the Art Science and Application of Story-- each the first of their kind. Then, when he found the process of raising people's consciousness and empowering them to take more control of their lives one person at a time was too slow, he founded Opednews.com-- which has been the top search result on Google for the terms liberal news and progressive opinion for several years. Rob began his Bottom-up Radio show, broadcast on WNJC 1360 AM to Metro Philly, also available on iTunes, covering the transition of our culture, business and world from predominantly Top-down (hierarchical, centralized, authoritarian, patriarchal, big) to bottom-up (egalitarian, local, interdependent, grassroots, archetypal feminine and small.) Recent long-term projects include a book, Bottom-up-- The Connection Revolution, (more...)
 

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