Whether or not Occupy Charlottesville is headed in a “downward spiral,” as former occupier Evan Knappenberger stated in a public email, the movement will have to rethink its protest strategy in light of the approaching expiration of the camping permit that has allowed members to stay in Lee Park.
The first chance will be on Monday night, when City Council, after a public hearing, will decide whether or not there should be a curfew in the park. Since city officials have said they intend not to renew the permit past Thanksgiving, Norris said occupiers could still use the park as a base for their operations during the day, but could not camp overnight.
“What is the nature of Lee Park? Is it a neighborhood park or is it a 24/7 free speech zone?” asked Norris. “Since that is more of a policy question as opposed to a procedural question, than that’s where City Council needs to weigh in.” He added that City Council has no role in the decision regarding the park’s permit.
The curfew was imposed and voted on by Council in 2007 in response to concerns from residents about what went on in the park at night. "We will be revising that question Monday night, not the question about the permit being extended," said Norris.
More after the photo.
A new sign in Lee Park.
According to the group’s website, members of Occupy Charlottesville will first rally in support of the movement on Monday night then march to City Hall to attend and speak at the City Council’s meeting. Although some members will ask Council to extend their permit to camp in Lee Park past the approved date, others will share their personal experiences and present their arguments for why Occupy Charlottesville is beneficial to the community.
“We are addressing issues like homelessness,” said one of the group’s organizers, Zac Fabian. “We are out there with them and bringing light to them, we are connecting with these people. If you ignore then, cast them in the shadows, there is no check on their behavior, there is no motivation form them to actually be part of society and they are just going to digress.”
To this point, Norris said that homeless individuals who are currently camping in the park, have the opportunity to sleep at PACEM, a local night shelter that Norris led as executive director, every night for the next four months.
“They all have a place to stay. Nobody is going to be homeless as the result of the permit not being extended or the curfew rescinded,” said Norris. He adds that PACEM volunteers will be out in the park “making sure people know the resources that are available to them.”
In terms of the permit, after a city official erroneously told reporters yesterday that Occupy Charlottesville’s permit would expire on Sunday, November 20, a few days before the expected date, Norris told the group that it was his understanding that the permit would last through Thanksgiving weekend. According to Fabian, the permit expires on November 26, exactly 30 days from when Knappenberger first signed it in early October.
“We are not expecting any violence,” said Norris. In contrast to what has happened at various Occupy movements throughout the country, Norris said that the camp in Lee Park won’t be raided.
“We are not going in in the middle of the night to evict them from the park,” he said. “We expect it to be a very orderly transition.”
Fabian agrees.
“Part of our promise is that we were going to leave the park in a better condition that we found it when we came,” said Fabian. “If they pulled the permit early, we just wouldn’t be able to uphold that.”
Occupy Charlottesville has recently passed a declaration of non-violence that states, according to their website, that some of the members “may choose to participate in nonviolent civil disobedience. We believe we best serve our community through nonviolent direct action which may include sit-ins and other methods of passive resistance. These may result in our arrests. We consider it ethical to physically but nonaggresively shield ourselves and others from violence in the course of such actions. We will not retaliate against any member of law enforcement or anyone else.”
Although big decisions are looming for occupiers around the country, Fabian thinks that the recent decampment of Occupy Wall Street won’t cripple nor weaken the movement as a whole.
“What happened in New York is great. It really pushed things forward in a way because it exposed the corrupt power hand that is dealing with them,” he said. “There is really no stopping this, the physical space doesn’t matter, it’s the beliefs that people hold in the head.”