Occupy Saint Louis report.

[atolnon]

To be 100% clear, myself and one other person went to the Occupy St Louis location downtown for only about three hours. We brought several gallons of water, a store case of pop tarts, a dozen hard-boiled eggs, and a roll of heavy duty garbage bags. I've still got one more week of work and Katie's recently been employed, so there's no question about us being able to even stay late, but it seemed disingenuous to both of us to support the movement but not do anything at all to further it.

It wasn't a lot, but it's the amount we were able to contribute.

Occupy STL was small. Much smaller then I'd prefer to see it. Around 125 or so when it's more populous and about 50 or so during periods when people leave to run errands, go to work, ect, et al. The group seems to enjoy support from a lot of people who can't really 'occupy' as much as 'turn up' - kind of like myself.

The larger the group, the messier it gets. Occupy St Louis was exceptionally clean, though. There were some complaints by protesters (as opposed to the city or police) that they weren't keeping the place as clean as was possible but when we ran a sweep, there wasn't much to pick up but old cigarette butts.

Votes and agenda where achieved through consensus, and was really very orderly. Health, safety, and politeness were the top issues along with education. Bystanders were largely supportive or silent. I think there were a total of maybe two people who yelled at us to go home or get jobs through the windows of passing cars, and everyone seemed to be aware that it would really only take one particularly bad act to spoil a generally good thing.

I'll probably be talking about this a lot more in the near future.

Comments

[elendraug.livejournal.com]

The tremendous amount of support we got was well worth it. Do you remember the one woman who stopped at a red light, and cheered for us at the top of her lungs? She was so excited, so passionate, and everybody standing with signs kept asking her to join us. We need more people like her in the St. Louis group. New York has them. We can too.