Words from an Occupier

The occupy movement started with a big bang in Zuccotti Park, in New York. It was interesting to see it start and grow with such speed it would make your head spin. When it started I personally thought “Well what the hell is this now?”  I had no idea as to how involved I would become in it. When the movement started getting negative press I was wondering what I was doing even thinking about joining the movement, to me protests were something that you read about in History books and watched taking place overseas. I quickly learned that protests can happen anytime, anywhere where there is civil unrest and people had complaints against their government.  Being raised in America, and always being told the same rhetoric that “If you try hard enough you can become anything you want”. These lies have filled my head for years. When this protest started I saw through the lies and knew that no matter how hard I try to succeed in this economy I would always get knocked back down.

My husband and I have been involved with the Wilmington, DE occupy group in our state since early October. After several long and grueling GA’s (General Assemblies) we camped for the first time on November 5^th at Fletcher Brown Park in Wilmington. It was a great experience, we even got a pink warning citation from the park rangers/ DNRC.  It was only a warning citation under the name Occupy Delaware for trespassing beyond the park hours. At the moment though, I felt I had committed myself for the long haul. 

The 6^th of November was an interesting day as well, we branched off with a few others for an emergency GA to assemble in Dover, De; which is where we live. It was a quick GA and we got everything assembled within about a week and half.  Our Emergency GA was only about 6 people strong but we got things done, a very large welcomed reprieve from what we had experienced with the very large GA in Wilmington. Our GA’s have never exceeded an hour and thirty minutes, where our happily large counterparts had 3 hour long GA’s. With as small as our little Dover group is and has been remaining we didn’t see the point in a 3 hour GA unless it’s something extremely important. We really use a very good process to keep our agendas on point.

The biggest thing I find funny about the movement is the general stereotypes that are thrown out there. Some of those include but are not limited to : Hippies, young white kids bitching, homeless, druggies/junkies, Don’t have a job, Dirty, etc…

Why I find this funny is because in just our little group we disprove all of these stereotypes. No one in our group is homeless, majority have jobs, we all go home to take showers, though most of us are young white people, we do have a variety of ages from 18 people in their 50’s and 60’s. We have this one older gentlemen named Mr. Trexeler who actually marched with Fidel Castro to overthrow the government in Cuba who comes out, and he’s in his 70’s or 80’s (I’ve never been real sure as to his actual age, but he’s old). We have dogs that come out with their owners to show us support, we have “professional” activists who hang out off and on with us. We have such a variety of walks of life, it’s surprising to see so many in just the little city of Dover.

Occupy Dover itself is located on Legislative Mall directly across from Legislative Hall. We are also across the street from the Towsend building which is where the big fortune 500 companies have to file their paperwork to become incorporated in Delaware.  We are in front of the Kent County Court House as well. The reason I’m telling you this, is because one of the other stereotypes is that there is no unified message and people are just camping in random locations. This is not true of our little movement.  Legislative Hall is where our Representatives, Senators, Mayors, Governors etc… meet to write the laws of Delaware and to write bills that need to be pushed in Washington.  The Court House is a great representation of a failed justice system that would rather harm than help the people it’s supposed to be unbiased against.

We’ve had a lot of great times though camping out there. Our tents symbolize that we are not going anywhere anytime soon, that we are assembling peacefully, and it’s our right to speak against the government that so eagerly shuts down the people it’s supposed to speak for. We’ve had a few homeless wander through, and we’ve helped them as much as we could by giving them clothes, food, a temporary shelter, and gave them information on local shelters they could go to that would be more suited to their needs.

The stories I can tell would never fit in a simple article, unless they were merely abbreviated, such as one of the homeless who hadn’t taken their shoes off for 8 months. We had a 3 hour discussion and jokes about it. We also had a self-proclaimed Christian Prophet who swore up and down that Selyndra stole his idea on a working water and solar powered generator. He had to leave us after a few weeks though because he was being over bearing on the women in the group and constantly scared off potential supporters.

Just about every day we stand on the street corner with our signs. Honk if you’re a 99%r; Honk if you’re in debt; The government lies; The government has you, Free your mind 99%; Error 404: Democracy Not Found;  (and one of my personal favorite) Show Us Your Tents.  The people we camp with are great, many of them are jokers and pranksters, and they keep things lively and upbeat. We keep security 54/7 and police our own which is a huge help to the local police department, because they don’t have to work extra hours and such. We’ve been on good standing with them thankfully and are really hoping to stay that way

As I type this though, I’m currently sitting on a train heading to Missouri to see my in-laws. We haven’t seen them in about 4 years. There’s really no specific reason I’m telling you this other than I’m excited to be heading into Saint Lewis, Missouri where one of the branches of Occupy Resides.  We are hoping to stop in if we can, as well as stop during our 3 hour layover in Chicago, to see the Occupy group there as well.

The future of the Occupy movement is still unknown. Will we make a difference? I think we already have. What will become of the groups? Who knows, all I can hope is that the ties and friendships that we’ve made during this movement remain and only grow stronger, and the relationships we’ve created that don’t survive, well, I guess it would just be interesting to know what they would be up to about 10 years from now.