December 11, 2011
Soccer mom tries to export Occupy movement to the masses
Darlene Jones-Owens, a middle-aged mother-of-four who lives in suburban Carrollton, Georgia, is hoping to do for the Occupy movement what high-profile actions and arrests may not be able to accomplish: appeal to average Americans.
“I would go down to Occupy Atlanta and set up a table with some chairs,” she said, referring to the pre-October 26 days of the occupation here in Atlanta, before activists were arrested for camping in downtown Woodruff Park. She said she did so because she didn’t want to sit on the ground, which is where many of the occupiers perched.
“Invariably, people like me – my age, my demographic – would sit down and talk with me,” she said. “After a few days I realized I was starting to collect email addresses.”
Becoming an inadvertent hub for the older, more gentrified Occupy supporter gave Jones-Owens an idea: she started a subgroup of Occupy Atlanta called Everyday People Occupy Atlanta.
“I believe there are hundreds of thousands of people like me who want to join the movement but they don’t because they can’t camp or they don’t identify with the campers,” she said.
Everyday People, she said, hopes to attract the less radical members of the 99 percent to the movement.
Occupy Atlanta holds a general assembly meeting at Piedmont Park Saturday.
“Not everyone can get arrested,” she said, noting that when Woodruff Park was raided, she considered risking arrest but decided to offer support from the outside instead. “There are so many things we can do for the movement.”
Jones-Owens organized a fairly well-attended event on Saturday to try to draw support, and new members, for Everyday People Occupy Atlanta. It was held in Piedmont Park rather than Woodruff. While Woodruff has been reoccupied since the bust, it is largely members of Atlanta’s homeless population that are staying there. Piedmont Park, on the other hand, is popular with both local families and visiting tourists.
About half of the 100 or so people there were Occupy Atlanta regulars. The other half stopped in either to learn a little more about the movement or to offer their support in one way or another. There was face-painting, free popcorn and a general assembly, replete with an Occupy 101 session.
Jones-Owens said she plans to hold the Everyday People gatherings in Piedmont Park each Saturday afternoon to try to attract new people to the Occupy Movement.
Boston version: We Can Occupy
In Boston, activists Philip Anderson and Jason Potteiger are trying another tactic to spread the movement into the suburbs. They started a website called wecanoccupy.org that gives people the tools and the know-how to start an Occupy group in their own hometowns.
“The idea is to have a template so people don’t have to reinvent the wheel,” he told me over a beer back while I was in Boston. “Really, we’re just helping get the logistics out of the way so people can focus on the issues.”
The site explains, in layperson’s terms, why Occupy started, and how it can be supported from the sidelines. Soon, Anderson said, the site will have downloadable pdf’s that will teach people how to host a general assembly meeting, among other Occupy basics.
“You don’t need tents to be part of the movement,” the site says. “You don’t need tents to be a part of the Occupy Movement We Can Occupy brings people together in their living-rooms and community spaces to advocate for real and lasting change. Bring this discussion to your community and help construct a better America. Together we can make our voices heard.”
The site has only been live for a few weeks now, and already Anderson and Potteiger have hosted We Can Occupy start-up meetings in Natick and Needham, Mass., suburban communities well outside the Boston metro area.
“We hear all the time, ‘we support the movement,’” Anderson said. “We want people to say, ‘I am a part of the movement.’”
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Thank you for covering Everyday People Occupy Atlanta, Bob!
I am one of the 99% who wants financial justice for the Middle Class- but I work every day (2 jobs) and am not physically strong enough to participate in an “occupy”.
So i have started a website to try to mobilize people. My website is:
http://www.mcclout.org.
Please visit it and tell me what you think.