Occupy Burlington

courtesy of adbuster.org

The Occupy Wall Street movement has just reached its one month anniversary. For thirty straight days protesters have been jamming Liberty Square in Lower Manhattan to protest against corporate greed, and social and economic inequalities in country. What began with 150 protesters spending the night on September 17^th has grown into a movement with solidarity protests in over 100 United States cities and 82 countries around the world.

The Occupy Wall Street movement began with a call to action from the Canadian activist group, Adbusters; they called for the original occupation to begin on September 17^th. The movement has also received lots of support from the hacker group Anonymous. The movement grew slowly for the first couple of weeks with little major media coverage outside of until September 24 when video of police spraying protesters, who were already restrained by orange mesh netting, with pepper spray went viral. Within days there was major news coverage of the incident and of the protests in general. The movement began to gather momentum with more and more people showing up to Occupy Wall Street.

The protesters who have been occupying Liberty Square have set up make shift kitchens, library’s and medical centers to help the people occupying the area. The movement is leaderless, meaning that the protesters meet twice daily at general assembly meetings to decide what will be on the agenda for that particular day. They also decide on what jobs people will have to help keep the park clean and functioning. They have set-up for all intent purpose a commune right in the heart of New York City.

The movement has endured threats from Mayor Bloomberg of needing to “clean” the park which would force all the protesters to leave, though in the end Bloomberg didn’t follow through with his threat. The protesters have also faced criticism of being, “whiners” who don’t want to work hard and want someone else to fix their problems for them, or of not having any clear demands of their grievances. Through all this the protesters have stood strong in unity to try and create the change that they feel is so sorely needed in the country.

Through the success of the Occupy Wall Street movement, other movements have begun in cities across the country including Burlington. Protests in Burlington began on October 2^nd in City Hall Park. Initially organized by Jonathan Leavitt and Matthew Cropp, the protests gave grown from about 200 hundred people at the first protest to around 500 people at the most recent protest in Saturday, the October 15.  There was a general assembly meeting to decide how the Burlington movement should proceed with their movement.