Occupy Royal Oak August Minutes

Time/Date    - 10:00 AM, Saturday August 3, 2012
Place        - Coffee Beanery, 28557 Woodward Ave., Berkley, MI
Attending    - Art M,  Pat S,  Kimmie S. and  Susie S

The MI Emergency Manager Law Referendum will be on the ballot this November.  Proponents of the EM law say it is necessary to rescue struggling communities but critics maintain that it is a power grab by Lansing that crushes the democratic process. A good summary of the powers the EM law has can be found at standup4democracy.com

The Future of Food is a video that will be shown at the Hazel Park Library, on Wed. August 8, from 6  - 8 p.m. The library is located at 123 East Nine Mile Rd. in Hazel Park.  The video is free and open to the public.

The Future of Food looks at the impacts of GE food on our health and on society. We can learn where GE foods are to be found in our supermarkets, something that corporations like Monsanto do not want us to know. You can find more information at: foodandwaterwatch.org

Transition Ferndale meets next on Wed. August 15 at 7 p.m. The meeting is held at the Ferndale Public Library, located at 222 E. Nine Mile Rd. in Ferndale MI. A video entitled We’re Not Broke will be shown, with a discussion following. Admission is free and open to the public. Light refreshments will be served.

The movie tells the story of US corporations dodging billions of dollars in income tax, and how seven fed-up Americans take their frustrations to the streets, vowing to make the corporations pay their fair share. Learn more at the website: werenotbrokemovie.com

Occupy the Midwest Conference will take place in  Detroit from August 23-26, 2012. It will be hosted by Occupy Detroit. Most of the Conference will be located in the 5900 Activist Center at 5900 Michigan Ave. in Detroit.

The Conference will be an opportunity for Occupy Movements in the Midwest to network, share information and skills and participate in workshops.

To volunteer or host a workshop, please call Hans at (313) 333-7104. You can also visit the following site: occupythemidwest.org

On July 3, 2012, Gov. Rick Snyder vetoed the voter ID bills that fellow Republicans maintained were necessary to crack down on voter fraud. Critics viewed the laws as a means to disenfranchise minority groups. Snyder said he believed that the bills would have created confusion among absentee voters and in ongoing registration efforts.

Next scheduled meeting for ORO is: Saturday, August 25, 2012.at the Coffee Beanery,
28557 Woodward Ave, Berkley MI from 10 a.m. - 12 p.m.

Respectfully submitted,
Susie Schindler

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Time/Date    - 10:00 AM, Saturday August 25, 2012
Place        - Coffee Beanery, 28557 Woodward Ave., Berkley, MI
Attending    - Art M,  Pat S,  Kimmie S., Greg S and  Susie S

Pat brought up the issue of fair elections and had found two excellent articles on voter suppression by Brentin Mock.  The articles are: “How the Right is Building a ‘Poll Watcher’ Network for November” and “Voter Suppression Groups Plot a Million Person Army to Swarm Polls” They may be found on an excellent website called www.colorlines.com Thanks Pat for bringing this to our attention.

We agreed that we would like to see a class or some instruction given, on how to be a poll watcher. The rules on this can be found at: www.Michigan.gov/sos.  In the search line, you can type in: election challenger and poll watcher.  One of the articles you will find is: “ The Appointment, Rights and Duties of Election Challengers and Poll Watchers.”

Art thought that it would be best to first line up a person to instruct us in the necessary protocol, then line up a place for the meeting, perhaps a community center. After getting a date and time, we could get the word out to the public.

Art brought another excellent website to our attention, called www.EnergyBulletin.net . This site is a “clearinghouse for information regarding the peak in global energy supply.” They publish news and research concerning energy production, the implications of peak oil in all areas of our lives, and information on how to help people prepare for peak energy, such as “renewable energy information, alternative financial systems, low energy agriculture, and relocalization.”

On the www.EnergyBulletin.net  homepage, articles are listed by category: Resources, Regions, Authors, etc. Two authors brought to our attention by Art are Gene Logsdon and Kurt Cobb. Logsdon wrote an article on Tire Eating Cornstalks, in which he describes how corn stalks were developed to be strong enough to withstand high winds, but the tough stalks are destroying tractor tires, which ends up being very costly to farmers.

Kurt Cobb has written an article on “How Changing the Definition of Oil Has Deceived Both Policy Makers and the Public.” He shows how government, industry and media sources have been inflating the world oil production figures (!!), by including substances that are not oil and are not interchangeable with oil.

This site contains a wealth of information, from many authors and sources, as well as excellent book and film reviews. Thanks Art, for letting us know about this one!

Art also brought up the Enbridge oil spill, into the Kalamazoo River in MI, in July 2010. Two excellent articles can be found, one at www.huffingtonpost.com , entitled: “Michigan Pipeline Spill: Enbridge’s Neglect, Inaction to Blame, NTSB Finds.”  One quote from this article: “Enbridge didn’t realize the pipeline was gushing oil into  the Kalamazoo River and an enjoining creek for more than 17 hours, when a gas company employee worker pointed it out, and during that time Enbridge control center personnel pumped more oil into the ruptured line, investigators found.”

Another article may be found at www.dailykos.com  and is entitled: “Enbridge Bullies Michigan Residents while More Tar Sands Oil Spills onto Michigan Soil” by Lance Enderle. It was posted VERY RECENTLY, on August 21, 2012.

Pat has been researching the changing nature of the Occupy movement and has found some excellent websites to check out, one is: www.occupycafe.org  (“an open space for global conversation”) and the other is: www.interoccupy.net

The mission of www.occupycafe.org  is to expand the Occupy movement and to support the conversations it has ignited into the wider world. It states that “conversations that matter are one of the highest forms of ACTION.” To that end, it exists to “connect people to people, to share and listen. The more we share and hear our individual and collective needs, wants and visions, the more powerful our initiatives to create real change become.” This website is a rich source of news about Occupy, groups involved and forums that can be  joined to discuss the issues.

www.interoccupy.net  is “an interactive space for activists looking to organize for global and local social change.” IO Newswire gathers and posts information about “local, regional, national, global and project based organizing.” IO Hubs allow anyone to use “a set of organizing tools for coordinating large scale projects easily for greatest impact and reach.”

One item from IO that Pat brought to our attention is called “Stop TPP.” TPP stands for TransPacific Partnership. It is a “Free Trade Agreement that is currently being pushed by the US to 10 nations of the Pacific Rim” which would create a super-treaty that “would jeopardize the sovereignty of the nations involved by giving that power to large corporations like Wal-Mart, Monsanto, Goldman Sachs, Pfizer, Halliburton, Philip Morris, GE, GM, Apple.”

For more information, check out this site: www.stoptpp.org

Thanks Pat, for letting us know about these excellent websites.

Our next meeting is scheduled for Saturday, Sept. 8,  2012 at 10 a.m. at the Coffee Beanery (see address above).

Respectfully submitted,

Susie Schindler