Meow everyone, the last two articles showed the occupy Toronto movement as it formed and made it way from a plan to implementation. This article will look at the techniques used to ensure loyalty to the leaders / facilitators and how they use certain techniques to gain and maintain power. Make no mistake. This is a very dangerous tool and it is used to create not only divisions, I postulate as well that this technique is a tool used to create enemies and to later justify a plethora of behaviors by the cult leaders / facilitators designed to intimidate and animosity towards those who ask questions.Thank you to Lawrence for his help with the editing of this section. The images used for this section are screen shots and some images I took with my blackberry; hence the image quality is not to my usual high standards.
Those general Meetings and Cult Mentality… the Delphi technique
Oh, those general meetings. They went on for hours, accomplished nothing unless the facilitators wanted something passed, went on for yet more hours, still accomplished nothing, and this was twice a day. How many times can one say the same thing before it become just a monotone drone in the air. The phrase ad nauseum seemed to be the best phrase to describe them. These leaders / facilitators sure loved to hear themselves speak, makes me wonder if they got paid by the word.
These meetings gave new meaning to the words dull and boring. Watching paint dry in slow motion was a far more interesting activity to engage in. One meeting, however, was unlike the other one. There was none of the usual cult like actions. The meeting was to address the list of demands. This document was weeks in the works and Lawrence McCurry and his team worked hard to put it together. If Occupy Toronto was to have a message, finally, this would have been the perfect message. The demands were read off and for the most part, widely accepted. There were going to be a few small changed made in the overall language but the general message and its feel was great, and the people really absorbed it. Finally, Occupy Toronto was going to have a message that the media can pick on and work from. The public would finally get an idea of what occupy Toronto was really about and what was wanted as the end goal. Lawrences document can be viewed here at :
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That was until the facilitators got wind of this. The facilitators got to the park as fast as possible to hijack the meeting and a really good document was dismissed and ridiculed by these same facilitators. The cult mentality was in full force with them and nothing and no one was going to even remotely take away from their absolute power. These cult leaders where obsessed with power. One of most arrogant persons who were utterly full of himself was Misha Saunders, one of the masters of the Delphi technique.
One of the classic examples, well one of many, was the use of specific hand signals as a means of showing approval or acceptance of an idea. However, in the cult mentality, these hand signals also showed to the leaders / facilitators who were their supporters and who were the detractors.
Here are photographic examples of them being used at Occupy Toronto
The timing could not have come at a worse time either, as, Occupy Toronto was at the point of brain death with only the organs still somehow functioning. Lawrence had a cure that could have revived the brain but the facilitators clearly feared losing their power and control to the point of forcing the hijacking of the meeting to shut the proposal down. The leaders / facilitators killed any chance of a recovery, killed any chance of a clear message, and killed any chance of garnering any public support.
I made mention of something called the Delphi technique that was used very significantly at the occupy Toronto general meetings. I suspect that this was also made use of in all other occupies, as this seemed to be part and parcel of what this movement was built around. The Delphi technique was a technique whereby a person might offer up a proposal for discussion.
Before I get any further into this story, it is very important that these four screen shots be read. These describe in great detail what the Delphi technique is, how it works and how to defeat it. This technique was the primary tool of the Occupy Movement and one of the tools used by cults as an obedience tool.
Information on the Delphi technique is sourced from here at :
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and :
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The facilitators did not want this proposal passed, but rather than simply say outright they were not interested in it, they might start with words like “I hear what you’re saying” and then start to talk around the proposal enough to distract others away from the idea. While the lead facilitator would take the lead in this manipulation, he or she would have several other facilitators spread out throughout the general meeting to start small conversations to distract the proposal idea as well. Lastly, yet another facilitator, often time acting as a “marshal “would then approach the person making the proposal to ask if he or she could “hold off on the idea until the meeting was over to get through the meeting in a reasonable amount of time. “ This is yet another clear and classic example of cult mentality in play where the leaders or facilitators ideas are the ones to be addressed and promoted, as opposed to ideas from the general members or attendees. It’s about the power the facilitators had / have over the members and this is one way they not only exercise their power, but also, maintain hold over it and the membership. Other ideas may plant seeds of dissent which would risk being quickly and effectively spread.
Often times, as well, proposals were made by persons who were better educated, thus had a superior grasp of their idea, and in addition, had a vision of how it could be implemented. The leaders / facilitators could see this and as in all cults, an educated person is a dangerous person. It is only the leaders that are supposed to be more intelligent than the followers.
The example I sites that happened to Lawrence was possibly the best and most note worthy example of the Delphi technique being put to use on a idea, but there were others as well. As a person who was on the disability and accessibility committee, we too raised several issues, and as with Lawrence, and were quickly shot down but not without a fight. On several occasions, these same leaders / facilitators tried to shut us down on proposals but we would not go away, would not play by their rules and were unrelenting in our questions. We simply went ahead and did what we wanted to do anyway, regardless of what the general meeting and the facilitator wanted. People were beginning to see that Lawrence, myself and others were on to something and we started to garner more and more support from the members.
The Delphi technique does have an Achilles heel. The Delphi technique is most effective on persons who are followers and easily swayed into a certain line of though. The Delphi technique, however, does not have the capacity, as far as I know, to handle outright, direct and continuous opposition and attacks against those who try and employ it. This is something we discovered when we were continuously attacked and challenged the authority of the leaders and facilitators. They had answers to supportive and friendly questions but were totally unprepared for a continuous bombardment of direct challenges to their proposals, leadership and self imposed authority. I said that this was something we had discovered. I however, was not aware of what we discovered, only, that our decent was working. The real credit to this discovery has to go to Susan who, rather than ask a million questions, sat back and just listened and then researched. I learned a lot from her.
There were several really good examples of the leaders / facilitators self-imposed authority being put into question. One which I raised on behalf of the accessibility committee, on a multitude of occasions, was the manner in which the general meetings were held and how they were outright inaccessible for persons who lived with several types of disabilities, myself being one of them. I have hearing that is better than average and am able to hear in ranges that many others simply cannot. ( Not wearing loud earphones helps a lot ) the general meetings were conducted in such a way that everything was stated and then repeated, always out of sync. To me, as well as too many others, this repetition of every word became a huge nightmare in that it sounded like one giant mish mash of noise, something I am not able to separate into individual conversations. It was a huge barrier that excluded many persons from participating. The problem was simply, we heard everything at once. Nothing made sense, as every sound came across as noise, auditory overload. I told my friend Susan about this and she right away recognized this. I wish I can remember what she said it was called but when I described it to her, she asked me a few questions pertaining to what I was trying to convey. She got it dead on.
With this problem being made known to the leaders / facilitators, I had hoped that some solution can be found to make the meetings more accessible. All they said was that “we here what you’re saying but this is how they do it in New York and we have to keep things the same here. “ I said that this was not acceptable to deny persons the right to participate just because you want to impress the people in New York. ( The meetings were live streamed ) I asked them then, if it was more important to look good, or, was it more important to gain allies and support. The leaders / facilitators were uninterested but we raised the issue at every meeting I attended. They got sick of it after a while but we did not relent. They were not prepared to be able to handle outright defiance. They were in for a lot more, and from many others.
We offered up some great ideas as to how to make these meeting fully inclusive to everyone but these leaders / facilitators would have no part of it. Any ideas that were not THEIR ideas were quashed well before they were even presented. It got to the point where they even wanted proposal submitted 24 hours in advance to review and discuss them in their very secret, private meetings.
There was a series of meetings that was held at the design Exchange and were about Occupy Toronto of course. I am not fully versed on how this came to be or where this idea came from, or what its purpose was. I did attend one such meeting that was facilitated by one of the TOP heads of Occupy Toronto, Misha Saunders ( no relation to Sakura ) He started off using what was called the “ peoples mic “, that being that dreaded method of repetition of everything that was said. I stopped him from using it when I publicly declared it a barrier for me as a person with a disability. He was clearly upset that his pride and joy “people’s mic” was just outed as a barrier, in front of some high profile people who attended this meeting he was clearly trying to impress. After that, for the rest of that meeting, he had no choice but to use the sound system that was in place, as did everyone else. He was livid, and it showed. I admit that I got a great deal of, short lived, personal satisfaction knowing that for a short time, I took away his prized cult tool, openly questioned his authority, openly questioned his method of delivery and forced him to accommodate me and others. Misha, if you are reading this , laser eyes are totally ineffective on me, but I could not help but notice how upset you got when I also wagged my finger at you right after forcing you to use the REAL mic.
To give an example of the utter contempt that the Occupy Toronto leaders / facilitators had for persons with disabilities , there was one general meeting at the park which was held in the gazebo. It had started to slightly sprinkle . There was also a person there who was another person with a disability, who used an electric wheelchair, the gazebo was not accessible in anyway , as to get into it, one would have had to climb about six or seven steps . In order for this person to participate, which he wanted to do, he was FORCED to CRAWL ON HIS HANDS AND KNEES up the steps. I saw that and was outraged, I demanded that the meeting take place where everyone had equal access to it, which meant outside, in the rain like everyone else. One of the facilitators / leaders in training was livid and she said she was furious at having to be out in the rain as she just got back from the hair salon and her hair was going to be ruined because of me. I felt really bad ……. NOT .
These leaders / facilitators were the text book example of what a cult leader may look like. However, not all the “brainwashed” “were leaders / facilitators. In the next section, I will bring this point home with some examples of people who fell into the trap, and “drank the Kool Aid”. Stay Tuned ……..
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