Ruth and Herb Gamberg
Nov. 17: Occupy Wall Street, New York
Zucotti Park: About 150 people here and there, lots of abandoned signs. Not many people around because they were occupying subway stations where they held rallies and did educational work.
City Hall (very close to Wall Street): about 250 trade unionists and others demonstrating.
November 26: Occupy Naples, Florida
About 15-20 people with signs at a busy street corner on a Saturday morning.
Attended their meeting in a park (no tents) mid-afternoon. Discussion centred around holding a joint march with occupiers in Ft. Myers, some 30 miles away, making occupy T-shirts, communications and outreach issues.
November 30: Occupy Ft. Myers
Visited occupy site, which was several miles from the city with no public transportation. They had been evicted from a site in the city, and the Unitarian church, which is out of town, had welcomed them to their grounds. The area was very large, and the tents were spread out. There must have been 20 or 30 tents. Only a few people were there. The rest were on a march in the city.
Joined the march in the city, which had started just before we arrived. About 25-30 people marched with signs through the city to the Court House and then spread themselves around the 4 corners of a busy intersection displaying their signs. Ft. Myers is a working class town and there was lots of horn-honking.
December 2nd: Occupy Ft. Lauderdale
Visited the site, where there were 22 tents. The 4 people who were there said that 12 to 20 people sleep there every night. They will have to move to another site, but they said that the mayor, who is sympathetic to the occupiers, is helping them find another appropriate place that is well located. About 60-120 people attend their weekly meetings, and about 200 come to the events that they hold on Saturday’s. (See pink paper attached.)
December 8: Occupy Wall Street, New York
Zucotti Park was pretty empty when we arrived (except for police all around the area), but there was an impressive schedule of the day’s activities. We decided to attend a meeting of the ComHub (sp?) work group to be held about a block away. From what we understand, this group coordinates and disseminates information from different work groups. (However, we’re not very computer savvy and so don’t take this as gospel.) While we were there, there were15 to 20 people present, including members of other working groups and visitors from France and Colorado. Discussions focused on standardizing lists on the internet that are coming from lots of different working groups, and on trying to define “group”since there are many different kinds of groupings springing up that want or claim to be part of the Occupy Movement.
