A report of an Occupy event in Manzanita OR from a member of the Episcopal Church:
Our Occupy Manzanita group did an anniversary presence at the Post Office in Manzanita on Saturday to celebrate the anniversary and to educate folks a little about the facts regarding the reported “trouble” the USPS is having. I continue to participate in Occupy because I think our presence is needed to prick the curiosity and conscience of American Citizens about the deepening discrepancies in our culture between the have a lots and have not so much. Our Manzanita group struggles with what are the meaningful next steps and so far we have offered some documentaries on the pressures the 99% faces and we are now asking folks who stop by our protest on Saturdays to sign petitions to keep the USPS open and to sign petitions to overturn Citizens United. Last, I think the reason I stick with it is that I need the support of a small group of like minded people who want to improve the lives of all of the citizens of this country and who want to have our voices heard about solutions to the problems in this country that plague the middle and lower classes.
Janet Robinson
News from yesterday’s OWS event in New York City:
Street activists gathered in New York’s financial district on Monday but police kept them well back from the New York Stock Exchange, which they had threatened to surround as part of a day of protests marking the movement’s one-year anniversary.
The New York Police Department arrested fewer than a dozen activists, led by retired Episcopal Bishop George Packard, who refused to move from a checkpoint along the broad perimeter police had set up to block access to the NYSE by anyone other than exchange workers who showed identification.
There was sound and some fury — and dozens of arrests — Monday as the Occupy Wall Street movement marked its one-year anniversary by trying to bottle-up the fat cats in the Financial District.
But the demonstrators quickly found themselves penned-in by cops, who arrested 63 people as of 10 a.m., police sources said — including retired Episcopal Bishop George Packard, a decorated Vietnam vet who served as a military chaplain during the Iraq War.
Bishop Packard tells of his day at his blog and that he did not plan to get arrested this time:
As we reached 200 in that holding cell we whistled “Battle Hymn of the Republic”, one fellow composed two rap songs (I’d rather stand up proudly in jail than spend my life on my knees!). We sang a few more protest songs throughout the day. In two instances of creativity the plastic water cooler and garbage can were inverted and becoming an ersatz drumming circle a la Blue Man Group. When an officer took those things away because of noise with, “these are for you to clean up in here.”