Covering Occupy Charlottesville is like trying to catch an eel barehanded. You think you have a good grip, but it keeps slipping away. When the first members of the group began camping in Downtown’s Lee Park in the middle of October, they occupied in the name of economic justice, against wealth disparity and corruption on Wall Street, strictly following the national movement’s ideology and autonomous structure, deliberately eschewing a leader or a spokesperson.
It was only after witnessing firsthand the struggles of the homeless community that shared their public space, however, that the group’s message shifted to a more local dimension. Ending homelessness became the driving force behind the group’s newly found, graspable agenda.
|
Zac Fabian is one of the members of Occupy Charlottesville. The movement recently got its wish when City Council delayed the decision over the curfew at Lee Park and instead discussed opening a dialogue with the group about a possible alternate location for the occupation. (Photo by John Robinson) |
Over the past month, in essence, Occupy Charlottesville has moved from a tiny cell group of something much bigger than itself, to a growing local collective with an almost-spelled-out missive. Occupy Charlottesville had to account for the presence of the homeless in Lee Park, a population it said has been marginalized, and has connected the marginalization to the larger economic issues that have inspired the national movement.
“What I see happening is we are engaging these people that society forgot about,” said one of the group’s organizers, Zac Fabian. “It’s amazing seeing, in some of them, a real transformation in just participating in [general assemblies], they are talking, some of them are not even drinking anymore. To me, this is the most effective way to bring people back. It really re-establishes their grounding and why they are alive in this world.”
I have not slept in Lee Park, unlike some reporters have done around the country. I have merely acted as a bystander listening and jotting down words and ideas, but I have attended the group’s General Assembly more than once. I have observed their leaderless, consensus-driven process and at times restrained myself from adding my two cents when the topic fell on the media and its coverage both locally and nationwide.
In San Francisco, two papers ended up writing about each other’s coverage of the local occupation and here in Charlottesville, the group’s website specifies that members should speak to “friendly” media outlets.
Covering Occupy Charlottesville, a mi-nute microcosm in a larger universe of collective protest, has not been easy. It’s not the subject matter, so much as finding reliable sources. Without a clear spokesperson, much less a leader, and multiple members not wanting to go on the record, it has been frustrating infiltrating, for lack of a better word, the camp. I was given the runaround multiple times—“I don’t know, ask someone else”— and conflicting accounts or information regarding the future of the movement—“The city is going to force us out” vs. “I have told the city we may leave the park in a couple of weeks.”
In the wake of the departure of Evan Knappenberger, the organizer who signed the initial permit that allowed Occupy Charlottesville to camp in Lee Park, the group was skeptical about letting media in. Just a week before, Knappenberger gave a candid interview to the Daily Progress announcing, to the surprise of some in Lee Park, that the group had begun spinning out of control. For Fabian, who had worked on the well-being of the movement up to that point, the declaration of factions within the group was plain wrong.
“What he says in public is completely different than what he says in private,” he said in an interview at the time. “Then the news picks up on it and they are reporting it as if what he says is true. I was very upset at the news because what they are writing is yellow journalism.” Knappenberger left, and the movement has persisted.
The media has been with the Occupy movement nationwide from its inception, but as a Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence report states, the week of November 14 has seen the largest media footprint to date thanks to successful, forceful attempts by police to break up the camps around the country. Cameras, photographers, and reporters descended upon encampments to follow, record, and shoot police raids and the occupiers’ reactions. The Occupy movement constituted 13 percent of the “overall newshole,” stated the Pew study.
Occupiers, though suspicious of the media’s intervention, have learned how to use the power of the press for their own purposes. And now, after its shaky beginnings, Occupy Charlottesville has managed to get the city’s elected officials on its side and claimed a decisive public victory. At the City Council meeting last Monday night, the over-100-strong group made its case with moving testimonies and personal stories about the hardships of living on a few bucks a month, not having a roof over their heads, and sharing their space with the homeless. They won the approval of Council to keep the occupation going—perhaps in a different location, paving the way for a longer movement.
For me, after spending a little over a month listening and covering Occupy, I felt a certain sense of accomplishment. Occupiers are still angry about the state of financial inequality, about the lack of resources for the homeless, but have begun to value the work of the local media.
No one knows how the Occupy movement will alter the public or social landscape. There will still be snide remarks about them moving back home with their parents, or getting a job, but up until now they have at least raised the local discourse beyond water and roads.