Friday, October 7, 2011
News Occupy Atlanta has begun in Woodruff Park
Posted by Thomas Wheatley @thomaswheatley on Fri, Oct 7, 2011 at 6:47 PM
The Atlanta spin-off of what's becoming a nationwide protest against corporate greed, income inequality and other social issues has set up camp in Woodruff Park to advocate for "economic democracy."
The crowd, which one source estimated at approximately 150 people, voted shortly before 10 p.m. to "occupy" the downtown greenspace to show solidarity with the Wall Street protesters who kicked off the rallies more than 20 days ago. More than 400 hundred people gathered at the downtown greenspace earlier this evening to plan such an occupation.
Woodruff Park, like all city-owned parks, closes at 11 p.m. Atlanta Police officers appeared on the scene around 11:20 p.m. An APD spokesman tells CL via email:
We're just monitoring — as we do with many public gatherings — to ensure safety of all involved; protestors and citizens alike.
To follow tweets from the event, click here. The event is being livestreamed, which we've embedded below. There's no telling how long the friendly cameraman or woman will continue to broadcast the occupation. But here ya go...
Send us your photos of Occupy Atlanta to be added to our gallery, send them to Joeff.davis@cln.com
NOTE: This post has been updated to note the protesters' decision to occupy Woodruff Park and to include an APD spokesman's comments.
Comments (8)
Showing 1-8 of 8
A bunch of unwashed hipsters have decided to forgo sleeping in their homes and hanging out all day in favor of sleeping in their tents and hanging out all day. This is going to turn out as well for everyone involved as that whole Troy Davis thing did. That is, a bunch of white kids from the suburbs will stand around with signs and slogans and absolutely nothing will get done. But at least they will have seen and been seen. Maybe they'll even get their photo on Creative Loafing.
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Which one of you is going Mohamed Bouazizis yourself and really kick off the party?
There are some really pathetic people in this town (eyes towards first two posters).
BG, if you can suffer through all this toddler-y call-and-response stuff you too can understand the process whereby Rep. Lewis was excluded. In favor of the far more exciting alternatives, of course. http://youtu.be/FaBFhRsi4Gw
i don't get it. this should be a simple protest march, not an impromptu-love in.
i admire the kids trying but peaceful revolution is impossible in our current political climate. i doubt they're going to accomplish anything more than media presence, meaning all this 'assembly' noise is melodramatic hobbyist crap
"I'm curious to know what happened in regard to John Lewis not speaking."
he got talkblocked by a self-important anarchist out of 'respect of the process' but it's ok because lewis just swung by to check things out. didn't want to make a speech
GD & EP, I just saw the clip on the Joeff Davis thread & am very disappointed. As I stated on that thread, John Lewis could have lent some much needed credibility to the movement, but basically got shut out by the same mealy mouth runaround that the movement is supposed to be opposed to. This should have been an ORGANIZED protest/rally with actual speakers, etc, not some call & response Christian summer camp bullsht.
I am glad to finally see a movement catching up to the eggregious BAILOUTS that should never have been done by Bush or Obama - money down the toilet used only to temporarily prop up government jobs and unions as those hands have greased each other up pretty good.
Would the economy have gotten really bad, yes, would we have survived yes, would our economy have recovered by now, yes, now we have this band-aid over the wounds that no one wants to rip off.
Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, GM, Bank of America, Citigroup, JP Morgan, Wells Fargo, GMAC, Chrysler, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Solyndra, the list is exceedingly long.
Every dollar of all these bailouts needs to be repaid to the Government now, problem is much of it our Government has no idea who got the money.
The protests should be at colleges for their exorbidant prices, never ending fees, high salaries, completely wothless degress offered, and continious lies about how great they are and how much money you could earn with some of their pointless programs.
Stay peaceful group, clean up after yourselves, stay respectful, don't get thrown in jail like your counterparts in other cities.
Also there are a lot of jobs out there, however some of them require actual work to be done....
I also wonder which half most of these people are in - the ones who do pay federal taxes or the ones who don't.
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