Occupy prepares to make bold showing at Monday's council meeting

Members of Occupy Charlottesville will present a petition to the City Council tonight asking that they be allowed to stay in Lee Park beyond Thanksgiving, when their current permit is set to expire.

The presentation will be part of a public hearing to discuss the movement’s occupation of the park.

Protestor Bailee Elizabeth said the petition focuses on the belief that the movement has a right to be in the park, regardless of city ordinances.

“[The petition] is basically saying, why do we even need a permit when it’s our constitutional and human right,” Elizabeth said.

Elizabeth said she wasn’t sure how many signatures were on the petition, but that the response to it had been good.

“My understanding is that people were fairly cooperative,” she said.

In support of the petition, Occupy Charlottesville will hold a rally in the park at 5 this evening before heading to the council meeting at 7. Group members will attend the meeting en masse, and many said they will use the opportunity to address the council.

At the hearing, occupiers will read a statement as a group, before sharing stories on how the movement has affected individual lives. Though the statement will be repeated by the group in unison, members stressed Sunday the importance of individual people to the movement as a whole.

“We have a group statement, but beyond that we’re acting as individuals,” said Zac Fabian, who guided the group’s general assembly meeting Sunday afternoon.

Fabian said that his aim for tonight’s meeting is to inform city officials on the movement’s goals and ideals in the hope that the occupiers not be made to leave the park.

“Tomorrow is really more for the city than for us,” he said Sunday. “It’s about having a public dialogue and not making a brash decision.”

Fabian added that the movement is what he sees democracy being about.

“Democracy thrives on dissent; otherwise, you have an oligarchy,” Fabian said.

At Sunday’s general assembly meeting, occupiers helped Elizabeth to compose the statement to be read to the City Council. The statement clearly defines the group’s goals and beliefs, and reiterates the protestors’ commitment to the movement.

“This is not easy for any of us. This is not a camping trip,” the group statement says. “We are here to express ourselves politically and to try to build a better life for us all. And we’re sorry for any inconvenience; we’re trying to change the world.”

Fabian and Elizabeth said they will stress that the occupy movement has been good for the city. Elizabeth said that some occupiers have a history of substance problems, but have used the movement to stay clean.

At the general assembly meeting, Elizabeth said it is important to try to stop separating occupiers from the rest of Charlottesville. Up to now, she said, the movement and its members have been presented as separate from the rest of the community, which she said isn’t true.

“We’re citizens of this city,” Elizabeth said. “We need to make it clear … that we are citizens of this city, as well as members of the occupy movement.”

Occupier Frank Richards said the movement’s ideals are nothing without organization giving those ideas life.

“We’re not reinventing the wheel,” Richards said. “We’re like a magnifying glass focusing a beam of light on a blade of grass. The sun’s always been there, but now it’s focused into something powerful.”