A walk around the Occupy Philly encampment

There’s a dif­fer­ent feel since I last vis­it­ed – it’s qui­eter and more lived-in. Less a protest and more a small town. Ser­vices are orga­nized and there’s less peo­ple stand­ing with signs and tak­ing each oth­er’s pictures.

I briefly sat in on the Quaker/Interfaith tent, where a meet­ing was going. I could­n’t hear much but the main issue of busi­ness was how open an inter­faith speak­er’s series should be. I did­n’t have too much time so I qui­et­ly slipped off after­wards to take more pic­tures of Occu­py. #blog

In album Occu­py Philly, 10/25 lunchtime #occu­pyphilly (7 photos)

Part of the “Idea Wall”

blank

blank

blank

blank

Google+: View post on Google+

6 thoughts on “A walk around the Occupy Philly encampment

  1. So how do you inter­pret this change? Has the “edge” of the ini­tial protest waned so that peo­ple are unclear what next steps to take? or do you think this is a qui­et before a new storm of protests? Or some­thing else? Too much dis­cussing, not enough doing???

  2. I’d say it’s matur­ing and grow­ing into a real lived com­mu­ni­ty. I used to do peace march­es back in the day, and today Occu­py felt more like that. The dan­ger is becom­ing insu­lar: passers­by were ask­ing me about it because many of the “res­i­dents” were going about their lives.

  3. I think there’s some­thing to be said about the anger and frus­tra­tion that spurs these things on. But, if noth­ing hap­pens because of the ini­tial protests, my guess is that some­thing like this can quick­ly with­er away. Not that I should com­plain as I’m not out there lit­er­al­ly in the trench­es, 🙂 But, I’m both inter­est­ed and even excit­ed by recent events. It will be inter­est­ing to see how this con­tin­ues to play out. Thanks for shar­ing the pics, BTW.

  4. I haven’t done counts but there were prob­a­bly twice as many tents com­pared to the Occu­pa­tion’s first week and it feels pre­pared to stay. I’d love to see some sci­en­tif­ic sur­veys of who’s mak­ing up these mini-cities.

  5. The peace march­es could be pret­ty insu­lar. But with this kind of wit­ness, it’s hard to guess at the last­ing impact: just being there, vis­i­ble and talked-about, has it’s own value.

    An affin­i­ty group I was part of had an action once of pay­ing one of our mem­ber’s income tax­es with a check writ­ten on a cof­fin lid, com­plete with “War = Death” graf­fit­ti. It was pre‑9/11 so there we were in the IRS office as agents tried to make sense of it all (tech­ni­cal­ly you can write a check on any­thing). Every­one in the build­ing came over to watch the spec­ta­cle as agents unscrewed the lid, made up a receipt and took it to the back office. Best of all, our mem­ber got the lid back a few weeks lat­er – from her bank, can­cel­la­tions and all. How many fed­er­al and bank employ­ees went home over those weeks to tell their spousal equiv­a­lents of the crazy cof­fin lid check? 

    I see nor­mal, non-radical peo­ple on my morn­ing com­mute every morn­ing read­ing that day’s slam of #occu­pyphilly. That’s more pub­lic­i­ty and conversation-starting fod­der than the left has been able to gen­er­ate in a while.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Recent Comments on Quaker Ranter Daily