Welcome login | signup
Language en es fr
OccupyForum

Forum Post: Occupy Indianapolis numbers dwindle

Posted 12 years ago on Oct. 28, 2011, 12:42 p.m. EST by spidey (101)
This content is user submitted and not an official statement

26 Comments

26 Comments


Read the Rules
[-] 1 points by MattLHolck (16833) from San Diego, CA 12 years ago

Occupy Indy (a visual poem)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHE1K1H_10A

[-] 1 points by MattLHolck (16833) from San Diego, CA 12 years ago

by Maureen Hayden CNHI Statehouse Bureau

INDIANAPOLIS — A fledgling offshoot of the Occupy Wall Street movement remains outside the Indiana Statehouse but numbers are dwindling, hampered by bad weather and internal disputes.

Three weeks after hundreds of people showed up for a mass protest culminating in a march to the Statehouse, only a handful remain vigilant at Liberty Lawn — the name given to the south lawn of the Statehouse by early organizers of Occupy Indianapolis.

On Thursday, Indiana State Police made their first arrest at the site, charging a 25-year-old Evansville man, James R. Kerner, with trespassing after he refused to move himself and a large patio umbrella away from a fire exit at the Statehouse. Kerner’s fellow occupiers had pleaded with him before the arrest to move.

“He wouldn’t listen,” said a woman who asked her name not be used because she didn’t want her employer to know she’d been involved with the Occupy Indianapolis movement.

Indiana State Police Capt. Dave Bursten said officers had asked Kerner repeatedly to move. “We think it was a reasonable request on our part, and a reasonable response after he refused to move.”

While there have been confrontations between police and Occupy Wall Street protesters in other cities — including 100 people arrested in Oakland, Calif., Tuesday — the scene outside the Indiana Statehouse has largely been without incident.

Early organizers of Occupy Indianapolis had contacted state police before their initial protest march on Oct. 8 to inform them of their plans and to find out the rules for public gatherings on state property. Those organizers agreed with a state police request that they not sleep or set up tents on the Statehouse lawn. They also arranged for occupiers to use the restrooms at a hotel near the Statehouse.

That relationship changed a week ago, according to Joh Padgett, a 40-year-old web designer who helped launch Occupy Indianapolis when the Occupy Wall Street movement started to spread beyond New York City’s financial district.

Padgett said he and other early organizers left the Statehouse site after disagreements arose among the occupiers who’d been laboring to make decisions by consensus.

“There was a lot of negative stuff going on that was repelling people away from us instead of drawing them in,” Padgett said.

Among the issues that arose, he said, was how to respond to homeless people who’d shown up at the protest site displaying erratic behavior that interfered with the group’s “general assembly”

meetings. He said the occupiers’ focus on getting out their message about economic disparity and corporate influence on politics had been hijacked “by some people who were up to no good.”

There were also disagreements on how to respond to state police directives. Bursten said ISP has been following the guidelines for public gatherings established by the Indiana Department of Administration, which oversees Statehouse grounds. On Tuesday, the Indiana chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union asked the Indiana attorney general for a clarification of those rules, at the request some of the protesters who remain outside the Statehouse.

ACLU Indiana director Ken Falk said he received the policy directives Thursday and was reviewing them.

“We’re learning as we go,” said Greg Lambert, one of the early occupiers who have remained on the scene. Lambert acknowledged that the numbers at the Liberty Lawn site had dwindled, but he said there were ongoing efforts to boost their presence.

That sentiment was echoed by Stefan Ludlow, a Butler University student who was at the site Wednesday.

“Democracy is dirty but it’s a beautiful thing,” he said. Meanwhile, Padgett said he and other early organizers of Occupy Indianapolis remain committed to the cause and are working with Occupy Wall Street sympathizers around the state.

“We don’t want this to be just another political movement of the week,” Padgett said. “This is the last chance to fix the American government at all levels.”

[-] 1 points by nuclearradio (227) 12 years ago

We're busy building resistance in the outlying areas first. Downtown indy is very sparsely populated.

[-] 1 points by growup (58) 12 years ago

I think you've been watching way too many movies.

[-] 1 points by nuclearradio (227) 12 years ago

Which movies?

[-] 0 points by spidey (101) 12 years ago

V for starters.... this is real life dude, there's no "resistance" grow up.

[-] 1 points by moediggity (646) from Houston, TX 12 years ago

You say that while this movement has gone world wide and has now produced several positive results already. Most recently in Israel.Keep drinking that koolaid though. OWS is just getting started.

[-] 1 points by nuclearradio (227) 12 years ago

If you say so.

[-] 0 points by JonFromSLC (-107) from West Valley City, UT 12 years ago

This is good.

[Removed]

[-] 1 points by nuclearradio (227) 12 years ago

First of all, they erected tents today. http://www.ajc.com/news/atlanta/occupy-atlanta-tents-erected-1211725.html

Second, the Atlanta resistance is very small because Georgia is a Southern state and therefore stronghold of the system. Southern states exemplify the type of grained-in mindset that allows the system to persist:

  1. The belief that those that are poorer than you deserve their fate for some reason (especially if they're not white) and
  2. The belief that if you make a middle class salary (between $70k and $3M/year) that somehow you're a Master of the Universe and have something in common with the Corporate overlords that control the world. Therefore you need to protect their interests.

I personally believe that the Atlanta resistance will grow in time.

[-] 1 points by kestrel (274) 12 years ago

Since the median income is more like $49K, doesn't that make middle class somewhere say $35K to 70K? I would think anything over $70K wouldn't be middle class anymore. it has generally been accepted that $250K for a couple counts as "millionaires and billionaires", the rich to be taxed by all these proposals.

[-] 1 points by nuclearradio (227) 12 years ago

take a look at the real numbers before you waste a second more of your time fighting the work of ows:

http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/02/income-inequality-in-america-chart-graph

[-] 1 points by kestrel (274) 12 years ago

Yep... totally agree with those numbers... that agrees with the IRS numbers I was using.

[-] 1 points by nuclearradio (227) 12 years ago

That's complete drek. lawl No one thinks you're rich if you earn 250k! Roflmaosncikeliubum!! 250k is pocketchange

[-] 1 points by kestrel (274) 12 years ago

250K puts you in the top 1.5% of all income...... people included in that "No one" are the President, VP, Democratic party, Warren Buffet, basically anyone who supports that American Jobs Act, whose millionaire tax starts at $250K. Heck, even the MSNBC, Jon Stewart, michael Moore and others see that as rich. It might be pocket change to the top 1% but to the bottom 98.5% it isn't.

[-] 1 points by nuclearradio (227) 12 years ago

You keep repeating millionaire tax, millionaire tax, millionaire tax. I assume you're parroting some right-wing talking point...

What does any of this have to do with the fucking Glass-Steagall act or repeal of Citizens United? I don't understand what any discussion of this has to do with corporate corruption!

[-] 1 points by nuclearradio (227) 12 years ago

The proposals to get Corporate corruption out of Government? You mean the reinstatement of the Glass-Steagall act and the repeal of Citizens United?

[-] 0 points by growup (58) 12 years ago

Then you don't know Atlanta. Georgia as the state is very right wing, but Atlanta is fully controlled and populated by left leaning residents. The truth is is that most Occupy protesters where failures on their daily lives and will fail on anything they attempt. The smart people are already in the 1%

[-] 0 points by MattLHolck (16833) from San Diego, CA 12 years ago

Homeless

I want to left alone

social outcasts don't interact appropriately

painfully aware of the inability to keep a job

the

[-] -1 points by OTP (-203) from Tampa, FL 11 years ago