Peoples’ Assembly Organizing Committee

Organizing Agenda

Moving beyond the “Wall Street model of human liberty.”

The ever expanding burdens thrown onto the backs of working people are not only unreasonable, oppressive and unfair, these burdens have grown too big for working people to shoulder. In response, Occupy Portland's Labor Outreach Committee has launched a Peoples’ Assembly Organizing Committee tasked with organizing, planning and facilitating the democratic development of a peoples’ budget centered on democratically addressing the primary economic interests of ordinary working people.

Initial Questions

1. Why do we need a Peoples’ Assembly?
2. What would a Peoples’ Assembly look like and do?
3. Who are we going to approach as partners in building this?
4. What are our next steps towards putting this proposal together?

Links to Documents

• A Budget for the Rest of Us
• Resolution in Support of a Community Assembly to Create a “People’s Budget”

(Short version.)

• Resolution in Support of a Community Assembly to Create a “People’s Budget”

(Long version -- draft.)

• CA Outreach Update - Time Sensitive

(Shorter, updated list.)

• CA outreach lists

(Fuller list.)

• Peoples’ Assembly Organizing Committee - Combined Meeting Notes

Join The Discussion!

Attend one of our organizing meetups.

Thursday, January 26, 2012 A Budget for the Rest of Us

Who: Occupy Portland’s Labor Solidarity Committee

What: Strategy Session

When: Thursday, January 26, 2012 at 7:00 p.m.

Where: Oregon Fair Trade Campaign Office

Address: 310 SW 4th Ave., Suite 436, Downtown Portland

Contact Us

Group Homepage: http://groups.google.com/group/peoples-assembly
Group Email: peoples-assembly -AT- googlegroups -DOT- com

Attend Our Meetups!

Join our discussion list -- http://groups.google.com/group/peoples-assembly

We usually meet every Wednesday evening from 5:30 - 7:00 at the Lucky Lab's SE Hawthorne Boulevard location (915 Southeast Hawthorne). Please connect with us through our mailing list to receive all time/date/location updates.

Grammatical Confusion?

“Peoples’” or “People’s”?

Either way works for this group!

In addition to our group discussion list, a number of our wiki pages use the possessive of peoples, as in indigenous peoples. It's likely, however, that the possessive of people, as in We the People, will appear more often in the discussions we have and in the documents we craft.

See Also

• Occupy Portland Labor Outreach Committee
• Represent The People
• Make Revolution Not War

Further Reading & Research

• March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom
• Statement by Dr., Martin Luther King Jr., President, Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Announcing The Poor People's Campaign. Atlanta, Georgia, December 4, 1967.
• The Poor People’s Campaign 43 years later through the lens of Occupy Wall Street

Scroll down to the "The Poor People’s Campaign — 1968 The “Occupy” Movement — 2011" (compared) section.

• How To Destroy The Occupy Movement And How To Prevent It From Failing
• A Constituent Power Greater Than its Parts: Occupy and Workers from the Port Shutdown to the Primaries
• Book review: Hessel & Morin — The Road to Hope

See the sections "What are the problems?" and "What are the solutions?" for useful ideas.

• The Ninety-Five Theses on the Ills of Europe
• King Versus the Tea Party: From the Poor People's Campaign to Occupy
• The Freedom Budget at 45: Functional Finance and Full Employment - ABSTRACT:

Forty-five years ago, the A. Philip Randolph Institute issued “The Freedom Budget,” in which a program for economic transformation was proposed that included a job guarantee for everyone ready and willing to work, a guaranteed income for those unable to work or those who should not be working, and a living wage to lift the working poor out of poverty. Such policies were supported by a host of scholars, civic leaders, and institutions, including the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.; indeed, they provided the cornerstones for King’s “Poor Peoples’ Campaign” and “economic bill of rights.”

This paper proposes a “New Freedom Budget” for full employment based on the principles of functional finance. To counter a major obstacle to such a policy program, the paper includes a “primer” on three paradigms for understanding government budget deficits and the national debt: the deficit hawk, deficit dove, and functional finance perspectives. Finally, some of the benefits of the job guarantee are outlined, including the ways in which the program may serve as a vehicle for a variety of social policies.

External Links

• Peoples Assemblies Network

Includes Peoples Assemblies News and Peoples Assemblies Groups.