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Occupy Grand Rapids General Assembly
Occupy Grand Rapids General Assembly
Saturday October 8 2011 at Noon
Occupy Grand Rapids Flier
The Occupy Wall Street demonstrations have been going on for about three weeks now. Many other Occupy [Insert City Here] demonstrations have spread all over the country. Cities such as Chicago, Los Angeles, and Seattle have all had ongoing occupations in solidarity with the Occupy Wall Street movement. Saturday morning will potentially show the beginning of a Grand Rapids occupation.
Saturday, October 8th, the group calling themselves Occupy Grand Rapids will hold their own General Assembly at noon at the Calder Plaza. “We are following the Occupy Wall Street setup,” Mike Kolehouse, one of the organizers of the group said. Kolehouse explained that essentially tomorrow’s event will be to have a public forum to decide whether to support the statement released by Occupy Wall Street.
While tomorrow's Occupy Grand Rapids General Assembly will help to determine a more defined course of action, in just eight days the group has had considerable success in attracting people. Kolehouse explained that the fellow organizer Anthony Slater started the Facebook group late last week, and as of writing has nearly 1500 members.
While Kolehouse said that much of the group thus far has been younger, he believes that similar to the Occupy Wall Street demonstators, the protestors come from all walks of life. "At our first planning meeting there were about 20 people there. Four of them were over 50 [years old]," Kolehouse said. "It's a movement of pissed-off people."
Abigail Southworth is one of the active members of Occupy Grand Rapids. "What's so different about the Occupy movement is that it's so democratic- there are no representatives, no frontrunners." Southworth said that the first thing that drew her to the movement was the website, We Are the 99%. "The stories I read are so similar to my own and others that I know, that I was just blown away."
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Comments
Good job Nick! Nice to see you there today supporting the cause as well.