Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Occupy Wall Street Receives International Support

[It's Day 5 of the occupation of Wall Street and the activists have settled in for a while.

Their camp in Zuccotti Park, formerly Liberty Plaza Park, shouting distance from Goldman Sachs bankers, is fully stocked with blankets, a kitchen, a medic table, and even a childcare center. A couple hundred people (hard to get a count as people milling in and out also included local folks on their lunch break and some curious construction workers from the World Trade Center site) are hanging out in the park, chatting, napping, chanting, talking to reporters or trying to recruit passersby.

"We've got everything to sustain us for months," Lily, working at the medical table, told me. She's an EMT, and she said that they have a full committee of people with some sort of medical background to be prepared for emergencies, as well as all sorts of medical supplies, some donated and some bought with money that Lily said was being donated from all over the world.

"So far we've given out lots of Band-Aids, because everyone has blisters, lots of cough drops because nobody has a voice," she said...

Monica Lopez was part of a small crew huddled around laptops with portable wifi, keeping in touch with the rest of the world--and I do mean world. Monica is from Spain, having flown in a few days ago to join the occupation after taking part in her own country's occupations of public squares in protest at austerity measures imposed by the government.

"We did this in Spain four months ago," she told me. "I'm the happiest person now--my life changed. It started with a big demonstration--300,000 people were there, and about 1 AM people decided to stay..."

"We were so scared but we were so many they couldn't stop us," she said. "We built a mini city, created assemblies."] emphasis added
http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/article/669889/%22occupy_wall_street%22_protest_has_international_support%3B_setting_up_for_long_haul/

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