Day "7" of Wall Street Occupation...Other Cities Launch Occupations!
Live Blog of #OccupyWallStreet: Day Seven, Other US Cities Launch OccupationsBy: Kevin Gosztola Friday September 23, 2011 9:48 am
A march for Troy Davis converges with Occupy Wall Street (photo: ajagendorf25 )
The grotesque murder of Troy Davis by the state of Georgia and corruption on Wall Street may have been separate issues, but last night the separation ended, at least temporarily.
Occupy Wall Street, which had been showing solidarity with Davis, converged with a march in support of Troy Davis in a cathartic and compelling moment that the police did not expect. More than a thousand people were now overrunning the streets of lower Manhattan, and they were able to push their way on to Wall Street together.
Back at Liberty Park, where the occupation has been taking place for nearly a week now, speakers stood up to share their thoughts on the occupation so far. One man explained he wasn’t sure it was a good idea to divert energy and pay attention to the case of Troy Davis. He thought the General Assembly (GA) process (which has been used to make decisions since the beginning of the occupation) had been hijacked. But, what everyone was experiencing was an extraordinary circumstance where something so profound hit people on a universal level. And he understood that the ability of the occupation to latch on to this extraordinary circumstance was what made the GA so great.Another speaker, an African-American, let everyone know that the occupation has a lack of diversity and not many in the hood that he is from know what they are doing. He explained Mayor Bloomberg just cut funding for subsidized housing so 12,000 will be out on streets. Latinos, Asians and blacks are ready to mobilize if the people in Liberty Park just talk about issues they want to talk about, he said. “Too little of us are here because we don’t understand what this is all about,” he added. Then he said, “You all look like a bunch of white kids who just lost their trust funds.” He told the crowd that black people have been having problems with student loans since the civil rights movement.
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FDL’s live blog continues. At some point, I will be reporting on Twitter (@kgosztola) from Occupy Chicago. There are solidarity actions popping up all over the country so go to Occupy Together to see if there is an action in your community. If there isn’t, maybe you will be so inspired by Occupy Wall Street that you will get a group to together and start one.
Here’s a Twitter list to follow for the latest. If the blog post is not up to date check the comments thread, as an amazing team of FDL users are constantly feeding this blog new information on the occupation.Pics and Video at..........
http://dissenter.firedoglake.com/