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| I haven't made any signs yet because people keep making signs like this that perfectly sum up my feelings and so I just use them |
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| Lots of people dancing around the center fountain last night. Some to a bongo drummer, some to a boom box, some to a trombone and trumpet |
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| Folks just chilling out on a Sunday night. Behind them you can see the new food/comfort/medical tarp all set up. |
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| Here's the inside of the new services tent, looking towards the food side. Used a fire line to move all this stuff across the park earlier in the day. Great example of cooperation and many hands make light work. The new area still needs to be organized, but should be a lot better. |
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Lots of kids out in the park on Sunday. Perhaps celebrating the freedom to draw on the sidewalk with chalk?
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| Screen printing more Occupy Detroit patches and other arts and crafts projects. |
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| A fiddler and some other folks look at the map of Detroit where people are putting dots for where they are from. |
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| Right on. |
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| I assume this sign is leftover from the "International" rally Saturday. Occupiers from Detroit marched down to Hart Plaza and waved across the river at some Windsor Occupiers. |
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| New welcome banner. |
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| The statue near one of the entrances to the park. Turns out this guy is AWESOME. He was the mayor of Detroit that gave out land and seeds to poor folks during the depression of the late 19th century, basically the first proponent of urban agriculture. He fought monopolists and land speculators (Matty Maroun anybody?) I can't find the quote of his that is now written in front of the statue in chalk, but here's another in the same vein: "Unfortunately the laws are generally on the side of the trusts and corporations laws made or purchased by them for just such occasions and so are most often the decisions of courts." Things apparently haven't changed much in the past 100+ years. |
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| A little union support. Heard there were lots of UAW folks at the BoA protest Friday. |
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| While I was holding a sign on Friday night a guy pulled his car over to ask where folks were. I explained that since it was late many folks were hanging out either near the food tent or around some of the little campfire stoves that were going in the park. He asked why we were there and I told him that we were there because we thought connection between corporations and the government had grown to tight and that the vast majority of people no longer had a voice. He then asked why were protesting banks instead of the government then and I told him we'd probably do some protests at government offices too, but that this week we'd been protesting at BoA because of all the foreclosures in Detroit. He said it seemed pretty silly to camp in a park if we were upset with the government. I said that money talks with our current system but since we don't have any money we have to do this instead, and hey, it had worked since he and I were talking. Then we said good night. |
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| Saturday night before I talked to the skeptic I talked with a guy on his way to work at Ford Field for a long time. He works for a cleaning company and would be working from about 10 PM to 6 AM to clean up after the Lions game. Even though he has a job he can't afford a place to live so is homeless. He's not without hope though, he got a Pell grant and will be starting a degree in Social Work in January. He worries that he won't be able to finish his degree though because Pell grants are often under attack by the Republicans. Having to shelter hop also makes things difficult. If he loses his Pell grant he said he'd probably go into the military because that is his last option. We talked for a long time about the state of politics and protest and Detroit and the wisdom of investing in people like him where such a little money can go such a long way |
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