Catherine, as Chairwoman, called a public meeting about this delay October 14th.
At least, everyone assumed that she had called a meeting about the delay. The topic of the meeting was listed as ‘The Haven Provisional Government’. The meeting had, inexplicably, been listed as open to outsiders, despite that not particularly making sense for a ‘How do we get Project Zero to respond to the thing that we all already agreed upon?’ meeting.
It was very clear, before the meeting, that not only would everyone not fit upstairs, but would not fit into the bar. The bar had to filter entry, with people spilled out into the streets. Everyone had voted in the poll, and now wanted to know why they were being ignored.
So the entire ‘Haven Constituent Assembly’ walked into June’s Place on October 14th, 23HY talking about how they had stalled, how they had to figure out how to try to make this happen. How they could possibly work within the system to make it faster. Or should they just wait it out? Who could they contact? They had tried to avoid end-runs around Project Zero, before, but now maybe they should all be contacting people in the MTPs, trying to get things working from that end?
Anna was arguing with Gregory, as she had online, that the ‘publicly hand stuff to them at the Founding Celebration’ plan from years ago had not been a bad plan, maybe they should do it now. Mab was trying to get quotes for the paper. Cynthia was talking about how she had been stonewalled.
Catherine had a completely different plan.
She didn’t go into the upstairs of June’s Place, where they were still normally meeting. She climbed up on the bar instead and told Mab to record and broadcast this.
And as everyone there, and a good chunk of Haven seeing it through Mab’s eyes watching, Catherine Fuller declared that this was the first meeting of the Haven Provisional Government.
People objected, claimed they weren’t the provisional government, that such a thing did not exist yet, Project Zero had not created it, and they were there to figure out how to make them do that!
And Catherine invited them to leave if they weren’t the provisional government, because this was, in fact, the first meeting of the provisional government. It just factually was that meeting, she was calling the provisional government to order, and as chair she wouldn’t consider a discussion about if the body could exist because they already did exist. If someone wanted to hold some other meeting to ‘try’ to make the body that now already existed, they were welcome to hold that meeting elsewhere.
And thus, the Haven Provisional Government was founded. There’s a plaque where Catherine was standing on the bar.
Speaking of the bar, June rather infamously claimed that they had as much right to just state they were the Haven Provisional Government as the bar did, and said she was going to rename the bar itself ‘The Provisional Government’ so she didn’t have to pay rent. And the June’s sarcastic comment stuck, and people also started calling the bar The Provisional Government, quickly shortened to The Provisional. June eventually gave in and renamed the bar.