“I don’t take credit cards anymore because they’ve made it too expensive,” says Bob Bailes, the owner of Bob’s Stop and Get It, a camping gear and redwood store in Ben Lomond. “They charged me, they charged everybody else instead of cutting back. Not like the old days. In the old days they would say, ‘We better tighten our belts.’ Now they just charge the people.”
Bailes was among a crowd that swelled to more than 200 people on Tuesday evening, Oct. 4 at Laurel Park. Many of the individuals standing, crouching or sitting on pieces of cardboard in the drizzly rain for an event billed as the first Occupy Santa Cruz general assembly were recognizable as longtime activists in the community, like Jennifer Charles, who served as go-between with the treesitters at UCSC several years ago and who facilitated the Laurel Park meeting, and former Mayor Mike Rotkin. It was not a crowd of surly disaffected youth, though. It was a crowd of surly disaffected people of all ages skewing older.
The meeting began with a reading of the manifesto written by Occupy Wall Street, the New York protest group that inspired the Laurel Park meeting and scores of similar protests around the country. A few speakers were given time in front of the crowd, like Robert Langdon of the New Earth Exchange, who suggested three national goals (abolish the Federal Reserve, end all wars, reform the tax system) and three local objectives (remove money from national banks in favor of local ones, shop locally, transition to local currency) before the group got down to setting goals.
At times, the meeting veered off-message. One presenter billed as speaking on the topic “How to stand empowered and have greater impact in protest” sounded more like a holistic practitioner trying to recruit clients. In another instance, during a call for suggestions for direct action, one woman stood and gave a rambling plug for a singing performance this weekend at the Pacific Cultural Center that connected by only the most tenuous thread to the topic at hand.
At times, there was some conflation about where the protestors were directing their anger—some were frustrated at corporations and banks, some blamed city government and the county government, some sloganeered “Vote with your dollars” and others advocated abandoning dollars altogether to subvert the economic hegemony.
A mild-mannered octogenarian proposed occupying the former Borders on Pacific Avenue, a proposal that was countered with arguments that it would disrupt local businesses and put protestors at a tactical disadvantage to law enforcement. Many who had once received services at the Veteran’s Memorial Hall spoke up in favor of occupying that building, though the idea was ultimately abandoned due to safety concerns (the building was deemed structurally unsound and closed by the county in January 2010). Laurel Park, where the protestors were gathered, was considered, then voted down because an occupation would interfere with after school programs at the Louden Nelson Center.
Other proposals—Chase Bank on Water Street, the Rittenhouse Building and Capitola Mall—were raised and voted down before the group finally reached consensus. The crowed ultimately decided to reconvene Thursday at 10am to occupy the Santa Cruz County Courthouse and San Lorenzo Park. The date, Oct. 6, was chosen in solidarity with other “Occupy” actions happening around the country in Portland, Houston, Washington DC and elsewhere around the country the same day.
Protest information can be found at OccupySantaCruz.org.
