I'm going to sit down. I don't get paid to represent us. So I should be able to
sit down here and have people that do represent us come here and listen to us,
speak to us, let us know that they're aware of the hurt that people are in.
There's two things. There's personal pain and it's compassion.
People are hurting now. Yeah, I was born into hurt. I was born into AIDS. I was
born into crack. I was born into mass incarceration.
This hurt that people are feeling now. I felt it myself and I felt it when I had
compassion, seeing the hurt in people's eyes around me as a child. This is not
new to me. I'm not angry. I'm happy. Okay, it's showtime.
Yeah, the scope of the hurt that people are feeling needs to inform our
compassion. Okay, I'm not excited that anybody was hurting. I'm truly not.
But I knew that if we were going to get to a point when the whole of the United
States realized that we were in trouble, we had to understand that the
Confederate slavery turned into the Union slavery. Okay, right to work.
Indeed, our indenture servitude is real. Okay, when your child goes to
college, innocent person goes to college and it's introduced into drugs and
drinking to medicate themselves and it's put into debt.
When they go into the workforce, they can't pursue their dreams. Whatever
they call their American dream with all the diversity that we have of
Americans, they can't pursue an American dream because they're in debt.
That 15 10 15 20 years of debt is real.
How much choice and how much dignity and respect can you have? How much
integrity can you have when you're a slave already?
When we look at the hurt that people are in now, our representatives are not
here. Our representatives were police. They're here to keep us in line to
shepherd us. They're hurting too. They're not our enemies. We already pay our
state representatives. We already pay our local representatives. They're not
our enemies, but they're standing against us by being silent.
Obama was talking about a job program.
If a parasite is introduced into your land into your pond and you need to
eat your fish and they're killing off your fish, you have to get rid of the
parasite in order for it to flourish because all the ecosystem around you
is going to be destroyed.
An economic system is the same way.
If we bring in a Walmart here and they pay people $6,000 an hour and they
kill all the mom and pop businesses, our middle class is going to a road. I
have no problem with there being a Walmart, but when there's so many
Walmart that there is no city that can sustain itself. There's no people that
are making their own food. Our ecological system is destroyed. We are animals.
Our species is advanced, but when we kill off our ability to sustain ourselves,
we become slaves. So let this hurt inform you, please. For anybody who's
hurting now who didn't have compassion before, understand the scope of this
and we can get rid of corporate greed. We need to understand that people need
to be allowed to sustain themselves. Regardless of what your politics are, let
this hurt inform your compassion so that you don't have to be angry. You don't
have to wait until you're hurting. Okay. Do not wait until it hurts you.
See the train before it hits you. This is business. Our pain is somebody else's
business. Our ignorance is somebody else's business.
This is a predominantly African American community.
Yeah. Where are they? Here we are.
Did you hurt people for this bad parent? Tell me something about if people knew
they were slaves, we'd be able to free more. Welcome to slavery. I hope it
hurts well enough for you to be informed so you don't have to hurt later. Thank you.
We got word early yesterday morning. We'd constructed it, if you will, a media
structure. We were a little concerned about the weather. Rainy had come in
the night before and one of the supporters that had been by to the GA the
night before offered to build a quick put up structure and we put plastic over
it. You know, he brought it the next day, we put plastic over it. An officer did
come down in the middle of the night and sort of half jokingly said, well, you
know, you know, you have till the end of the night, letting us know that we
know once day breaks, there will be, you know, some official word to change
things, things that are very noticeable. And we were aware of that, I think. At
seven o'clock, we got word that we had 10 minutes to take it down. It remained
throughout the day. I think that we realized that some decision was being
made about, you know, exactly what right channels that were to go through to
really get it removed effectively. What we got was in order to remove
everything, everything. After a little bit, you know, of healthy communication
with the state police, they and, you know, they credited us with working with
them. They said that we had until noon today. They did offer us the space up
top. They wanted it removed from the space, but put in a parking spot up
there so people could come and claim their things until noon today. So what
happened is word got out on site on the live stream and we had to rush people
down to help us. They didn't know. They thought that perhaps there was some
kind of, you know, real confrontation happening. So when they came, they
became part of the vote. They voted to remove everything themselves. Now,
these aren't the people that really have been staying here. Oh, that really
have been staying with everything. But, you know, we took in consideration
their vote, the online vote. So the vote was the vote of the people was to
remove everything. So they did. After a few runs, I think, to wherever, you
know, things were taken to the rescue mission, a few other places. I guess
they got tired and these left a significant amount of stuff still
here. And so we got word again today. It had to be removed by noon. So it was
basically the core group of us here who have a general understanding how we
feel about that. If you feel the need to remove the stuff, remove the stuff. They
at no point threatened to remove us. So everything that comes in here, you're
really the donations of the people for the people. We're just a few people. We
need very little of, you know, the few that we are need very little to, you
know, to, you know, really to make it, you know, through the day. But I think
that belief is the understanding is that more people will be coming. So
everyone watching, everyone who's, you know, part of our live stream, thank you
guys, all the supporters, you know, they want to be sure that we're prepared. So
it's honest as if they've made us the caretakers of the things, the quote
unquote things, you know, and we're more than happy to act in that capacity, you
know, so we're trying to keep everything as organized as possible. The few of us
that, you know, that sleep here, you know, we're kind of doing shifts, you know, we
can manage and, you know, chairs, we sleep bundled, you know, we have the time
we're falling asleep, you know, immersed in really core conversation. We're not
looking to really set up any kind of permanent structures that we need to get
inside to, you know, we're sleeping a few hours at a time on the run. So it's not
going to affect us. We're here. The same people are here that were here. The
things just went and already we have word that more things are coming. We can
control that. We were presented with ample one. The state police have been very
respectful of us. We've maintained communication with them. They may be
working under the authority of the attorney general, but we haven't
discussed and had a communication of why these things are being done rather than
for adjustments to be made. We have worked diligently with the state
police to be more courteous citizens and occupants here. We have a history of
working with them and we continue to do so. Um, the nationally, there have been a
number of identical rates done. So I'm not even sure if this is something
that's being done locally rather than being perpetrated locally. They took
pretty much everything. They took donated clothes, donated blankets, donated
tarps. They took our media equipment. They took jackets. They took umbrellas that
were sitting there. They took extension cords. They took bowls of oatmeal on the
table. They literally emptied the tables off. I've met so many people that just
want positive change in our government and our world in general that we all
have a lot of similar goals. Some people have different goals here and there, but
honestly, it's just been a really amazing experience that we do everything by
consensus. Um, we're, it's just really been awesome. It's like a family down
here now. Um, I've done it for a lot of reasons, but one of the main reasons is
because I really believe education in this country needs to be funded better
for one and really just handled better altogether because the way it seems to
be going with our schools failing and everything like that, if we don't have
smart kids, we're never going to have them be smart adults and then we're not
going to have a great future. And that's just one of the things. I mean, for me,
I've struggled for a long time with money issues and things like that.
Insurance. I haven't had insurance for quite some time. Yeah, health insurance.
Yeah, it's a big thing. A lot of issues, but mostly I think I just want discourse
finally. Positive discourse that actually means something, not just sound bites,
not just wedge issues and not just what you hear normally on TV. And I just want
to get that out to everybody who will listen on the street everywhere and on
our live stream.
This is what democracy should look like right now is what democracy should look
like. It should not be a bunch of rich white men gathered in a boardroom calling
the shots for the rest of the country. First of all, the deficit isn't the
biggest problem. That's a very minor long-term problem. The real issue is jobs.
How are we going to employ our youth folks?
They used to tell me I was building a dream and so I followed them on. When there was
earth to plow or guns to bear I was always there right on the job. They used to tell
me I was building a dream with peace and glory ahead. Why should I be standing in
line just waiting for bread? Once I built a railroad, I made it run, made it race
against time. Once I built a railroad, now it's done. Brother, can you
spare a dime? Once I built a tower, up to the sun, brick and rivet and lard. Once I
built a tower, now it's done. Brother, can you spare a dime?
