The Occupy Charlottesville movement got its start Wednesday evening at the nTelos Wireless Pavilion, with dozens of people coming together to go over fundamentals of how the group will work.
They also discussed which space they should actually occupy, though that decision hadn’t been finalized by press time. Among the contenders were the University of Virginia and a number of locations downtown: Lee Park, Court Square and a section of the Downtown Mall. In general, the downtown options appeared to have more support than the University of Virginia at about 8 p.m.
Donna Carty of Charlottesville said she’d been waiting for such a group to come together.
“I have been following Occupy Wall Street since the very first day. … It reflects something I’ve been thinking for years,” the Charlottesville resident said.
She said that Charlottesville has some things that need fixing, and the nation as a whole plenty of them. She said she has given up on voting as a means of fixing them, because she feels the politicians are bought and paid for.
“I was delighted to see that we were going to have one here,” she said.
Before the group began discussing locations, they ran through the unique hand signals the Occupy Wall Street protests use to communicate: twinkle fingers for support (because clapping makes it impossible to hear the speaker), thumbs down or downward twinkle fingers for opposition, a triangle for a point about the discussion process itself, etc.
A number of participants at the Charlottesville meeting had taken part in occupations elsewhere; New York and Washington were mentioned.
Among those at the event was Brandon Collins, a socialist running for Charlottesville City Council. Before the meeting, he said that he hoped to help take part, but didn’t want the public to conflate his campaign for City Council and his role in the protest.
Charlottesville author and activist David Swanson was in Washington midday Wednesday, but said he hoped to make it back to the event.
“I think it’s terrific,” he said.
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