The Occupy Albany general assembly this evening at first didn't have a microphone working in the meeting place, a community arts center in a former church building at Grand Street and Pearl in the expanding and increasingly dangerous (according to Councilwoman Barbara Smith, the only politician speaking at the event) South End. About 300 people were at the second meeting of the organization, which like others across the country was inspired by the ongoing Wall Street protest. That number was apparently a considerable increase from the group's first meeting last week.
So they used "the people's mike," meaning group repetitions of what an individual speaker says, and waved their fingers up or down to indicate support or opposition. There was a lot of energy in the room at first, along with earnest attempts to reach quick consensus, and I found it somewhat impressive. They were deciding to be nonviolent until someone objected, at which point the resolution was modified to permit self-defense but a facilitator said: "We're not going to publicize the self-defense thing."
Exactly what they are going to occupy was not decided, but the most popular suggestion was the state Capitol. One guy said those opposing that site were just uncomfortable opposing the Democratic Party, even though that party is complicit in bad policies such as abolishing the state millionaire's tax. But I saw activist Joe Seeman, a longtime ally of Democrats, waving his fingers down at that. Seeman later urged linking up with other progressive forces, and when the assembly broke up was going into a meeting of the Coalition Building with Organizations working group. He, like me, was considerably older than the majority of attendees, who included a high proportion of students.
My Democratic wife, who took some pictures for her blog, bought a couple of bumper stickers saying "Tax the Rich". While I won't be using one on my car, and don't think it's the answer to all our budget problems, I can't really object to the sentiment.
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