Weekly General Assemblies
- MONDAYS at 7pm @ The People’s Plaza, Durham, NC
For a complete list of events, visit our online calendar.
Occupy Durham GA: 5 March 2012
Announcements and Reportbacks
1) March 17th: Occupy Six Month Anniversary. People from the working-
groups should try to attend and table with literature. Process Working
Group, Evictions and Foreclosures, Occupy Healthcare NC, End Corporate
Personhood, and DNC Protest Group should try to come out! This
Thursday at 7 PM in the Snow Building, there will be a planning
meeting. Free pie! Bake or bring a pie!
2) May 1st: Occupy Wall Street has officially endorsed this date as a
general strike, and now has plans for promotion. Occupy LA also seeks
to encourage people to take the day off from work. There will be a
conference call on Sunday with Greensboro and Chapel Hill to
collaborate and brainstorm together. Lot of enthusiastic response.
Everyone is invited to come to Sunday’s conference call. It will be
held at Francesca’s at 6:30 to first decide how to think about and
prepare for the call; and then the actual call will be at 7:00.
3) Really Really Free Market: 17 March at the same time as the Occupy
Sixth Month Anniversary. Please contact Javiera to volunteer or to
donate materials, food, time, etc.!
4) Bank of America Shareholder’s Meeting: People from around the state
our planning an action. They would like to recruit support from Occupy
Durham. Anyone interested: there will be a meeting 10 March in
Greensboro; there will be people from across the state and out of
state who plan to attend. It would be great if two or three people
could plan to attend. To be part of the carpool, contact
brigid at pushbacknetwork.org
5) Reportback on DNC Meeting: A few people attended to discuss the DNC
protests and plans this past Saturday. Reviewed specifics of how to
prepare for the DNC, and thought about how OD wants to represent
itself as the DNC. If people wish to become involved, please contact
Elena! On 14 April, the Coalition to Protest will hold a meeting in
Greensboro with people from Baltimore, Detroit, etc. Sara and Elena
plan to attend; others are also welcome to participate.
Notes taken by Alexis
December 29, 2011
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
DURHAM, N.C.—On Sunday, January 1, 2012, Occupy Durham will host a solidarity march and speak out in remembrance of Oscar Grant and all victims of police brutality. The march will begin at 3:00 p.m. at The People’s Plaza (also known as CCB Plaza at Corcoran, Parrish and Chapel Hill streets) and will be followed by a community speak out about police brutality and harassment and state repression. Community members are invited to march and to share their thoughts on and experiences with police violence in Durham and beyond.
The event coincides with others around the country and marks the third anniversary of Oscar Grant’s murder at the hands of Oakland, California transit police officer Johannes Mehserles, who was convicted of involuntary manslaughter, then served seven months in prison. Since the January 1, 2009 death of Grant, an unarmed 22-year-old African-American man with a young daughter, the people of Oakland persistently have demanded justice, and this resistance has reverberated in other cities, including Durham. The plaza where Occupy Oakland set up an encampment was renamed Oscar Grant Plaza and has been a frequently contested site between protesters and the political leaders of Oakland.
Occupy Durham stands in solidarity with those in Oakland and elsewhere who are planning events to commemorate the life of Oscar Grant. Another intent is to shine a light on the struggle against police brutality and harassment locally and nationally. One of the event organizers, Steve Lorenz of Durham, says the Occupy movement as a whole needs to do a better job of recognizing and incorporating such struggles. “The Oakland police department’s treatment of Oscar Grant, who was certainly part of the so-called 99%, is not an aberration in the United States of America. More and more people are on or headed toward the scrap heap of our society, but Oscar Grant was not sent to the scrap heap—he was sent to the morgue.”
For more information contact Steve Lorenz at 919-536-9005 or stevelorz@gmail.com.
Walkupiers in the Bull City
Madame Governor,
We, as Occupy Durham, petition you to aid in ensuring the safe passage of Walkupy, a group of people representing the Occupy Wall Street movement as they travel by foot from the Martin Luther King, Jr. monument in Washington, DC to his gravesite in Atlanta, Georgia: a feat of great admiration and commendation in the estimation of people across the country and the world. The Walkupy group has marched safely through the streets of Washington, DC and the countryside of the sovereign Commonwealth of Virginia without incident. Last week, they arrived in our fair state. To our amazement and shame, they became subjected to harassment by police officers in our capital city of Raleigh, during a peaceful march. They wrestled a female marcher to the ground, as is clearly visible in a variety of multi-media pictures and videos taken of the incident. Over half of the DC-to-GA marchers were arrested at that time; they are now out on bail. As they continued their march into Wake County, they were followed by a helicopter in the air and harassed by law enforcement on the ground. This is a sad commentary on social freedoms in our state.
We appeal to you in your wisdom and elected position of power to raise with state law enforcement officers the pertinent issues of protection of constitutional freedoms in North Carolina, as a viable component of the national Union. We assert that these marchers have proven to be non-violent and responsible in all actions to date in their effort to raise the national conscience concerning today’s significant issues affecting the majority of the country’spopulation: the 99%. As a nation, we are on the cusp of a new patriotic movement wherein, as Dr. King describes it, “America will finally live out the true meaning of its creed.”
As citizens of North Carolina, we in Occupy Durham aspire for our state to be an integral part of the Occupy marcher’s mission: to unite everyone in an effort to envision and create a new kind of society in which the needs of all human beings are put first. We also join with others of like thought across the state to uphold the purposes of this Walkupy march. We therefore ask that you do all in your power to support this worthy effort.
OCCUPY DURHAM
The General Assembly approved this letter by consensus on Thursday, December 22.
