Occupy CLT gets real

On Saturday, Oct. 8, Occupy Charlotte began its official occupation of Uptown at the Old City Hall building at 600 E. Trade St. That means the group is not only marching and protesting outside big corporations such as Bank of America and Duke Energy, but some of its legion also are camping out on the city hall grounds. The occupation has no end date and it is mostly symbolic, meant to remind citizens of Charlotte that people here and elsewhere — not just Wall Street but also the main streets of cities nationwide — are pushing for big changes.

Charlotte-Mecklenburg police continue to work closely with the local Occupy group to ensure demonstrations come off smoothly and peacefully. Police are looking after the occupiers, too, stopping by several times a day to chat and check in. (CMPD’s main office is directly across the street.) Citizens and businesses are dropping off donations.

CL hung out with the demonstrators for the first 24 hours of their occupation, capturing some of the participants’ stories and comments on a digital audio recorder for you to hear. Listen on the CLog at www.theclogblog.com.

What we’ve learned so far is that the reasons for the occupation are as different as each individual participating. We’ve also learned that the unifying force of the group is its commitment to bringing attention to concerns about “corporate greed” and the government’s failings, which, they assert, have led to general feelings of injustice and distress among the American people.

As occupier Izzy, from upstate South Carolina, said in our online audio commentary, “This is simply not one movement for one person, it’s not one religion, one group, one politic, one idea or one thing period — it’s a multitude of things. It’s basically the melting-pot movement, and with that we stand behind our beliefs and our ideals, and we stand together unified.”

Keep up at OccupyCharlotte.org or go visit the occupation. Meetings will be held there twice daily at an undisclosed time in the morning and again at 7 p.m. The next General Assembly, like the one held this past Saturday, will be in the same place on Oct. 15 at 3 p.m., according to the website.

This article appears in Oct 11-17, 2011.