A Letter from Occupy Amsterdam ( received via media team mailinglist)

Hello all,

with this letter I want to annoucne that I liek to call on all responsible members in our group to come together, as soon as possible, with also the external supporters of our common goals to discuss and implement the following:

- organizational model and structure
- deciding exactly what jobs we have, what they are about, and who will do them
- discuss a brief simple set pof houserules and work rules
- set up communicationlines that function and are followed and respected


today I have been working with Robin all night to try and save whatever is left of the mess of our organization and see hwo to implement that
when he went to bed I tried to get everybody up to take care of the CNN crew, and help make this into a success
then I spent the entire day – apart from 6 hours of sleep in between – on helping people on teh chat and trying to reach people in the mediatent which was hopeless and not successfull because simply NOBODY did his job there, NOBODY moderated teh chat when I was off sleeping and NOBODY was available or reachable for all kinds of issues and questions from many people
and on top of it all, I get yelled at, have had several deadthreats against me from idiots on the chat and a membetr of this list (!!!) and have been treated with utter disrespect and rudeness

I have witnessed mediapersonel bring in friends in teh tent to hang out, drink alcohol and smoke joints;
I have seen perople completely disregarrding protocols and policies that were discussed and implemented
I have met incredible rudeness, lazyness, disinterest and plain stupidity from some members who just do whatever pleases them
I have seen our g ood name and our image to the public being ruined by members who fidn iut funny to film junks acting crazy for the live cam, who think it is helpfull to openly attack fellow moderators in teh chat, or just decide against an implemented order on the chat
I have seen vital important plans an doptions go to runs because soem members decided ‘they diudnt feel like doin what was asked’ or just felt ‘they wanted to do something else and well just fuck it’
I have witnessed saturdaynight how our crewmember Gijs was very ill, lying on teh ground, and several members just playing stupid clips and music extremely loud, some whiel enjoying their joints, some intoxicated with teh smell of alcohol around them, and then o top of it some felt it was a perfecvt time to play porn!!!

all of this in teh working space that needed attention and where there was always work to be done, urgently

I have seen many people desperately trying to get answers, to ask questions, and to address issues, to help an dsupport us, but just walking on a dead end, against a wall, because there simply isnt anyone who listens in the tent (literally)

sometimes it seems – as Dmitri said very wisely last sunday – that the leaches rule in this camp, also in our team! There seems to be a complete lack of basic respect, a lack of udnerstanding what is at stake here, and a complete lack of knowing what RESPONSIBILLITY means

I have invested tremendously these 10 days to support occupy, truely belieivng in i t; made huge sacrifices to get therem, brings tons of food and supplies, an entire suitcase full of warm clothes, another with first aid materials, fire extinguishers for our mediatent, brought my own chairs, gastanks, borrowed money to finance things, bought cases for the mediatent, and spend mopre then 120 euro on cellphonecosts
in return I have not heard anyone thank me for all my efforts, nor for what I brought, nor for all teh time I spend there to jkeep saving occupy, kill fires, help people out and make it work
apart from some people like Ernst, Marc, Geert, Dennis, Robin, Suzanne, Niek, Benoit, Dmitri (forgive me if I forget one or two) I have encountered a complete lack of any respect whatsoever

and the endresult at this moment is that people from all sides are falling apart, peopel in our crews get burned up easily uinder all teh stress, and ewe loose most of our support in teh country

THIS IS UNACCEPTABLE!!!!!

This is not a free-play-camping!
this is not a place to act out, date, use drugs, get drunk and just do whatever pleases you!
our future is at stake and it seems at this moment we are about to loose teh battle

after a long night of complete insanity in teh chat, of endless trolls, grievers and nutcases,
after not getting any help whatsopever from anyone present from teh team, in fact got dizzed by soem and sabotaged i n my work by some,
after retrying with them time after time after time, I decided to klet them figur it out for themselves
I unbanned everybody, and removed restruictions to login
immediately ALL the trolls came back and started talking their own crap about all kinds of stuff except Occupy Amsterdam

I find it impossible to do my job under these circumstances!

further more, I notice there are all kinds of mediagroups, communication between eachother is at least troubling and challenging, informations not shared, and at the moment I think there are more tools and options for communicatiosn set up then I can think off, most of them only shared by small numbers, leaving many out, and therefor keeping teh same chaos

I am convinced many of you are incredibly motivated and have worked their asses off all these days and I deeply respect that, same as I did from day 1
but this MUST stop immediately, and we have to get organized, get communications running, and develop a way of behaving taht is helpfull for our common goal, an drespectful of eachother and our people in teh field, and the country as a whole

if we don’t, Occupy Amsterdam is finished

please feel free to contact me on this letter or write the entire group
but in all cases, lets not forget our common goal
and the incredible challenge and urgency of our occupation
we MUST win this battle!!!

best wishes for all, including the guy who wants to kill me

V M