Forum Post: Occupy Ufa, Russia! Support and advice needed.
Posted 12 years ago on Dec. 6, 2011, 2:42 a.m. EST by reggaemortis
(2)
This content is user submitted and not an official statement
Greetings to fellow occupyers. I'm expressing solidarity from Ufa, a million-people city in Russia.
You might be aware of the results of our Parliament (State Duma, house of representatives) election of Dec 04th 2011. In order to keep the majority, the United Russia (Putin's party) rigged the election and vote-counting, getting just under 50% popular vote and keeping the majority (due to minor party vote that was not counted since we have a 7% barrier a party has to pass to get into parliament). This result exceeds the independent polls by 10-20%.
The communists, socialists and liberal-democrats are organizing meetings all over Russia. Here in Ufa the people have decided to act on their own.
We've set up a group in the Russian social network vkontakte.ru and held the first meeting yesterday. 20 people came and over 100 are coming today. We are organizing a peaceful meeting to discuss further action.
Here's the link to the group (Russian language): http://vkontakte.ru/club32808602
We, however, are afraid we are going to experience problems with moderating the discussion. We are aware of the techniques of moderating and human microphones, but we are not sure how to use them.
Could you give a link to a concise manual on conducting a discussion? We would very much appreciate it.
And, above all, please wish us good luck! For world solidarity!
Your timing of the post was not the luckiest - most American Occupiers, the most experienced, are sleeping. :) I don't have an Occupy in my home country, so I cannot speak from experience - but here is what I've found:
http://ww w.nycga.net/resou rces/gene ral-assembly-guide/
(leave out spaces, of course. Maybe I am too cautious, but I am used to giving links this way because some forums forbid writing them without...)
I guess that is not an absolute law, but an useful template. Adapt it and/or modify it for your own circumstances. And there is no need to stifle thoughts that do not comform to the party line. I have views that would be very unpopular here, but I can still find the common grounds that allow me to support OWS wholeheartedly.
And yes, congratulations for you and your fellow brave Russian Occupiers! It takes quite some courage to stand up and organize. (I think... I have never got to it because I lack the needed extroversion it takes.) And good luck. I heard that your authorities are not very docile. We are with you. Occupy Russia! Occupy the world!
How did Occupy Ufa work out? I see other Russian cities are becoming active too.
Thank you ever so much! I'm now going to get down to translating the documents.
http://howtooccupy.org
I'm sorry for bothering you with this thread as you clearly have something more important to discuss. But we are having a meeting in 5 hours and we are in a very real need of advice. Please help us defeat the party of the 1%!