Occupy Baltimore makes up a movement as it goes along

[struggle4progress]

... Melissa Rowell sits on the edge of the fountain smoking a cigarette. She says she’s here in solidarity with the protesters. She also says she has a friend on the New York City police force who “spent the night in central booking” after arresting some people at the New York protest. Another friend works on Wall Street and had accompanied Rowell on a trip to New Orleans the week prior to celebrate their 40th birthdays, Rowell says. “She made a comment that the protesters are dirty hippies, and I guess some of them are,” Rowell, who has a sign that says why isn’t wall street in jail, adds. “So we don’t talk about it.”

Rowell says she’s here on her lunch break from a job at Johns Hopkins. She has to take a cab back to work soon, but “might come back here with my son.” ...

The Occupy Together web site (occupytogether.org) went up with calls to coordinate “occupations” around the country, claiming meet-ups in 1,294 cities as of Oct. 11. “People recognized that not everyone could go to New York,” says Cullen Nawalkowsky, a founding member of the collective that operates Red Emma’s Bookstore Coffeehouse, “and that there were local concerns not being addressed by the national movement.”

The Baltimore offshoot started on Saturday, Oct. 2, with calls to Nawalkowsky, who helped arrange the first public meeting at the Red Emma’s collective’s 2640 Space on St. Paul Street. The Sunday and Monday evening organizational meetings were attended by between 150 and 200 people, who debated the wheres and whens of the protest (Will it be in front of Wells Fargo? The Washington Monument?) as well as key logistics ...

http://citypaper.com/news/occupy-baltimore-makes-up-a-movement-as-it-goes-along-1.1216497

[lg59kis]

1. nm