ST. GEORGE –Supporters of Occupy Wall Street are organizing a local movement, Occupy Saint George, to be held at Vernon Worthen Park in St. George, this evening, Thursday, October 6, from 5 to 7 p.m.
One of the organizers, Martin Shabazz, said tonight’s event will be a general assembly to “see if we can get a group of people together and come up with a list of demands or if we want to go with the same as the Occupy Wall Street movement.” (See group Facebook page here)
Shabazz said they are waiting to see if a “decent amount of people will show up” before they decide if it is a plausible thing to do.
“Occupy Wall Street is a grassroots movement that started Sept. 17 in New York City to protest against growing social and economic inequality, corporate greed, and the influence of corporate dollars and lobbyists on government and policies, and other growing concerns,” Shabazz said in his press release.
He said local students in Southern Utah will be working together to jump on the “occupation” bandwagon by hosting the general assembly today.
“Although St. George may be a smaller town than the other cities involved, there are many in our community who are striving to be a part of this movement because this is a movement of people, protesting issues that affect all across the nation and globe; one proponent of the movement said that there are many individuals in our community who are facing the struggles of the economy and are angry about the corporate greed,” he said.
The Occupy Salt Lake City also starts marches today.
“So we chose this date to begin planning for Occupy Saint George,” he said. “The general assembly will be an initial discussion, to bring ideas to the table from all individuals interested in participating on what steps we want to take, and if there is enough support to take the steps for a march or ‘Occupation.’ Ideas will be shared and specific goals and demands will be set into stone by the people; and from there, we will move forward and decide our next move. For now, this general assembly will simply be a discussion to put together a movement. This all literally started Wednesday night when a few individuals started an Occupy Saint George group on Facebook, trying to share the idea of starting a potential movement in our community, the group just overnight has gone up to 70-plus members, and as of now it has about 75 members. This shows how quickly this ‘Occupation’ movement has caught on.”
According to CNN, Occupy Wall Street protesters have a leaderless structure and hold general assemblies every day to “further underline their opposition to the hierarchical undemocratic world of Wall Street and publicly perform the alternative model of society they are propagating.”
According to OccupyWallSt.org, the movement does not have an official list of demands, though demands have been submitted by users online. According to Coup Media, a list of official demands can be voted on online.
Joyce Kuzmanic contributed to this article
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