If you’ve started seeing Occupy Together in your daily email box as we have, you probably know the word is spreading like a wildfire. The site has recently been linked on occupywallst.org, Adbusters, tweeted by Michael Moore and sent out in a MoveOn.org newsletter. WHEW! Talk about growing exponentially!

You have to remember, when we started this we were merely two designers who couldn’t get to NYC to support in person. We saw these solidarity actions forming in other areas and though “you know, it would be great to gather this information and make it readily available and easily accessible for everyone!” Little did we know we’d go from listing 4-5 locations in one night to receiving hundreds of emails in a day. We were slowing the flow of information because us volunteers weren’t able to keep up. This was a huge issue for us to solve because if we’re not making this information as accessible as possible then we’re not helping the movement.

This is where the internet gets awesome. Through this process we’ve been in touch with some very incredible and talented people with much more technical knowhow than we will ever have. The beauty of it all is that this just started as an idea by two and has grown into a collaboration by many. We are all in this together, it only takes one (or in our case two) to take the jump and you’ll find others to support and join you along the way.

We were contacted by the good people at meetup.com, who got in touch because they heard we were in need of some technical assistance and advice. They listened to our pressing issues at hand: adequate server space for site performance, SEO & RSS issues, and what seemed to be most daunting of all, our inability to keep up with all of the information we’ve been sent. They talked us through all of these issues, but most helpfully, showed us how we could use meetup.com as a tool to provide real-time event listings and updates. Who would have known there was a site out there that was made SPECIFICALLY for this kind of DIY, grassroots activity 

All of the volunteers talked it over… we work in the spirit of the movement. No one is leading, everyone has a chance to voice concerns and we all make important decisions together. We all decided the best way to foster the growth of this movement and provide access to information around the world was to use meetup.com as the method of finding, listing, and updating events. The GREAT thing about all of this, is that it’s completely in line with the whole idea of this decentralized movement. Any single person can start an action in their area, and where one stands up there will likely be another to join you! Plus, you don’t have to belong to the site to view the information and meetup.com is very concerned with user privacy. So, if you’re not a Facebook or social media user, no fear! You can still get real time information and updates in your area too!

Long story short, we’re going to integrate meetup tools into www.occupytogether.org. For the most part there won’t be a huge difference. You will look on the map for your location and once you find it you’ll click on a link that will take you to a page with all of the information of solidarity actions being organized in your area!

We hope you all understand and share our sentiment on this decision. We’ve done our best to add all existing locations that were on our website, and we will continue to add the events that were emailed to us through tomorrow. However, now you are all individually empowered to add new and update old information at any time!

Lastly, we want to mention that we’re very aware of the server problems we’ve been encountering. We will have a new home on our very own dedicated server here within the next 24-48 hours. You have all been great in being patient with us and supporting us. We hope we won’t wear your patience out as we wait to move to our new home!

Occupy Together

Wow, the groups organizing and occupations popping up across the country is growing exponentially by the day. So much so that, in order to have proper navigation and organization on the site, we had to begin categorizing these pages by state. Because of this, every occupation’s permalink has been changed. We’re sorry for this inconvenience, especially if you have directly linked to our page, but it was necessary for people to quickly find what they were looking for on our site. We ask all of those who previously linked to their occupation’s page on our site to update their link accordingly.

Again, we apologize for the inconvenience and hope that this change will prevent us from having to do any major overhauls in the future.

Thanks.

In solidarity with Occupy Wall St.,

Occupy Together

We will be posting a lot more videos from different places across the country. All of these are so incredibly inspiring that, as I write this, I have goosebumps. We will let you know how to submit your videos shortly.

We’ve witnessed an exponentially growing list of communities that are banding together with our brothers and sisters on Wall St. by organizing solidarity actions in their cities. This rise in support has been incredibly inspiring and has promoted many of you to become active in organizing an event in your area. Through the enthusiasm and excitement of wanting to show your support you are all working diligently to organize events in a short amount of time. As we have followed some of theses group’s efforts we’ve seen many different approaches to organizing. We’ve also fielded many questions on advice and how to information on effectively organizing. We wanted to feature Portland as an example for those of you would like a model to follow or to take from as they have done a great job joining and organizing efforts in a very short amount of time. Of course, each group dynamic is going to vary and what worked for Portland may not work for you, but at least this will give you an idea of how others are doing it.

A couple of members from Portland filled us in on their process:

Basically it all comes down to networking and extensive planning. The initial construction of the Occupy Portland Facebook group was backed by some pretty frequent tweeting. Once we started getting a huge following, there were more and more discussions popping up on the Facebook group. We were discussing where it should be, what Portland laws were regarding “urban camping”, as well as a number of other concerns. We then held a General Assembly to further organize where were all in consensus with our future actions and demonstration details. After we compiled notes from the GA, we discussed them further on the Facebook group. Once we had the frame work of what everyone wanted and expected we set up a Facebook page and web site to better organize and announce future details.

Advice using Twitter:

Sending messages to those working at Occupy Wall Street was definitely helped us gain notice. People are heavily following #occupywallstreet, #takewallstreet, #usdor, as well as a number of other widely used hash tags. Each tweet sent out would include a tag with a trending tag, my city (#pdx) as well as a link to the facebook group.

Also we paid attention to the amount of followers people had, and mentioned them as well.

Portlanders were watching, so they were bound to jump on board once they knew about a protest here. Nearly all of us are using Twitter, so they used the same approach when spreading the group link around the internet.

Advice using Facebook:

We first started a Group that opened up discussion to hear out everyone’s ideas, concerns and thoughts on how they could help. This was a very important stage in our organizational efforts.

General Assembly:

I think the most important thing for us was using the General Assembly model and making each decision everyone’s decision. This helped us remain unified. Legal assistance, bike deliveries, medics, photographers, people who can stream the protest, and similar topics were brought up. We covered nearly all the bases, and most of us left with a pretty hefty amount of notes. Notes from the General Assembly were posted online on a page for everyone in the Portland group to see.

Legal Advice:

Contact your local National Lawyers Guild early on for legal advice in your area. We are holding a seminar with the National Lawyers Guild so that we can become versed in the proper execution of a demonstration like this. They have confirmed that legal observers will be present durring our demonstration. We are also planning to hold a meeting with them where we discuss the importance of nonviolence and the proper way to conduct oneself in civil disobedience.

Additional Thoughts:

It’s extremely important to make sure extensive preparation goes into a something this big. Some people have certain contacts who would be useful, others are volunteering to do a specific job. It all comes as we address what needs to be seen and done upon Occupation.

We stressed something several times: this needs to remain non-violent. Remaining peaceful helps the overall image of this nationwide movement. If things do become violent, we acknowledge that staying calm only helps the cause. If we have arrests then we will have the footage immediately uploaded. It helps those in NYC by showing that the cops are abusing our rights, and that this thing is nothing like the misleading media says.

Helpful Links: 

nycga.cc Find up to date information on the NYC General Assembly.

occupywallst.org News, video feed, forum & chat.

http://nycga.cc/2011/09/24/principles-of-solidarity-working-draft/ Working Draft of the Principles of Solidarity

www.nlg.org National Lawyers Guild

Brothers and Sisters on Wall St.,

We’ve been busy over at OccupyTogether.org helping people become aware of solidarity events in their area taking place and organizing. There have been many expressing that it would be a good idea to organize a national event in solidarity with Occupy Wall St. so that our voices of support can be heard louder. We would like to communicate with you on Wall St. and see how we can be most supportive of your efforts.

We’ve been discussing this topic here: https://www.facebook.com/topic.php?uid=294421993905616&topic=324

We also have someone who has suggested and will facilitate a national conference call if beneficial. Discussed here: https://www.facebook.com/topic.php?uid=294421993905616&topic=325

Occupy Together would ultimately want the word from those of you on Wall St. before we’ll organize, endorse and promote any national event. At Occupy Together we stand by the developing mission of Occupy Wall St., but we are not representatives for Occupy Wall St.

Please get in touch, we’re able to communicate with many occupying groups at once and would be able to help form a louder voice across the nation.

Solidarity,

Occupy Together

This project and this movement is about mobilizing the masses and nothing is more important than numbers when it comes to a protest’s strength and longevity. That is why we are providing everyone with free downloadable posters, graciously provided by graphic designers around the country, to not only promote this site and efforts down on Wall St. but to help mobilize in other communities, to inspire, to promote, to inform, and to strengthen the occupiers’ efforts. Please, feel free to download these, print them, and start hanging them everywhere.

To all graphic designers out there, if you would like to donate some of your time and energy to this effort, we want to make your work available. Please provide us with a PDF of your poster and we’ll get your poster up ASAP.

WOW! The response from this has been overwhelming and so encouraging. Thank you so much for all of the information that all of you have been sending us. We have been making some updates to the site to make the Events more navigable, so bare with us. We’ll be updating as quickly as our fingers move to get all of you the most up to date information. Again, we are going by what organizers within these states are giving us so if you are finding some of the information to be false, please let us know and we’ll get things corrected.

Again, thank you all so very much. Once we get things better organized and updated, maybe we can tackle some of the tougher issues like “making the red seem less angry.”