Wrapup: Fourth #OccupyBoston General Assembly First Night of Dewey Square Encampment Draws Over 1000

BOSTON/Dewey Square - Less than a week after their first gathering the fast-growing #OccupyBoston movement drew well over 1000 people - some of whom had just participated in the Right to the City Alliance's march on the Bank of America - to the launch of their encampment at Dewey Square and their Fourth General Assembly last night. Despite the large crowd of new participants organizers led the assembly through a full meeting - including their customary breakup into several working groups. Given the large numbers and still lacking a proper sound system a fair amount of time was spent training people to use the "modified consensus process" favored by assembly organizers - and trying to decide how best to use the "People's Microphone" technique (in which speakers' words are repeated by large numbers of people a sentence at a time). Following that discussion the major business of the meeting was the announcement of a march on College Fest at the Hynes Auditorium at 4 p.m. today by the General Assembly's Direct Action working group - with the stated intention of "recruiting more students" into the #OccupyBoston movement. College Fest is an annual event sponsored by companies marketing products and services to Boston area college students. Other working groups then reported out. After which many attendees held a spirited impromptu march around downtown Boston followed by what Chris Faraone of The Phoenix called "a wild party" (via Twitter) in front of the Federal Reserve Building - which is directly across from the #OccupyBoston encampment. Said party was in full view during live shots on the 11 o'clock news on Channels 5 and 7. A small session of the General Assembly has been called for this morning at 10 a.m. The next full General Assembly session has been called for 6 p.m. - and is expected to address organizational issue and feature a "full group brainstorming." Full image set coming soon. Follow all the up-to-the-minute info on our OMB Special Events Unit's Storyful.com page. Bookmark/Search this post with: Delicious Digg StumbleUpon Reddit Newsvine Facebook Google Yahoo Technorati