Author: chiara-canzi

Occupy Charlottesville evicted from Lee Park, members arrested [PHOTOS]

Occupy Charlottesville’s permit to camp in Downtown’s Lee Park expired yesterday at 6pm. By then, tents and the occupiers’ belongings were gone. At 11pm, the exact time when the curfew for the park kicked in, that Charlottesville Police issued their first warning to the protesters.

After a few warnings, police arrested 18 occupiers, two of whom were issued summonses, reports the Daily Progress.

About two dozen police officers removed the protesters, who were sitting, arm in arm at the north side of the park, one at a time. Most were handcuffed and walked to the police vans, while a couple were dragged and two more were taken into custody on stretchers.

Meanwhile, protesters huddled on the sidewalk chanting Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech and thanked those who decided to get arrested for their courage.

Among the bystanders was City Councilor Kristin Szakos. “It’s no secret that I actually support the Occupy movement,” she said. “I wanted to be there as an individual, not getting arrested.” As a Councilor, Szakos said she felt that it was important to be there as a witness, without taking an active role.

As for the future of the movement, Szakos said that it may be beneficial to the group to now focus on the issues that brought them together.

“The kind of logistics of first setting up camp and what’s allowed and all of that, have taken up a lot of the dialogue time, a lot of action time. It may be at this point that there can be more discussion of some of the issues that brought folks there,” she said.

According to the Occupy Charlottesville website, occupiers are planning to meet at the Free Speech Wall on the east end of the Downtown Mall tonight at 6pm for their daily general assembly meeting. 

Occupy Charlottesville protesters on the sidewalk chanting.

Protesters holding signs before in Lee Park. 

Protesters who were willing to get arrested sat in a circle.

A protester stripped down in sign of protest.

Police Chief Tim Longo briefs protesters on the eviction procedures.

One of the first arrests at Lee Park.

Charlottesville Police officers stood in front of those protesters sitting on the grass blocking the view.

City Councilor Kristin Szakos among the protesters.

One of the protesters who was arrested is walked to one of the police’s vans. (Photos by Chiara Canzi).

 

Ken Cuccinelli will announce run for governor

Current Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli is set to announce he will be running for governor in 2013, reports The Washington Post. 


According to the article, Cuccinelli was previously interested in running for re-election or for Senate against Democratic Senator Mark Warner, but changed his mind.

Lt. Governor Bill Bolling, in the meantime, has also expressed interest in running for the governorship in 2013 and Bolling’s spokesperson told the Post that “Lieutenant Governor Bolling has made clear that he intends to run for governor in 2013, and we hope that Ken will be a part of our ticket,’’ he is quoted as saying. “We think that would be best for the Republican Party.”

Cuccinelli has made a name for himself for suing the federal government over the constitutionality of the health care law; he filed a petition against the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA); he wrote an opinion telling institutions of higher education in Virginia that they did not have the legal authority to ban discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, and distributed a pin with the state seal that had the goddess Virtus, who is usually pictured with an uncovered breast, dressed with an armored breastplate.

For more on Cuccinelli’s opinions and controversies, read C-VILLE’s cover story here. 

Occupy Charlottesville prepares to move from Lee Park, chooses new location

As temperatures dropped last night, the members of Occupy Charlottesville huddled around the campfire to discuss their next move.

After hours of conversation, some members made it clear that they were willing to remain in Lee Park after their camping permit expires and the curfew is reinstated at 11pm tonight, thus facing arrest. Those who don’t intent to get arrested will support fellow occupiers by gathering at Lee Park at 11pm to document the removal and police action.

However, the majority of the group’s members decided to start packing their belongings and proceed with an orderly removal from the park. On Thursday, Occupy Charlottesville plans to re-locate to the George Rogers Clark statue near the University of Virginia campus, in front of the Red Roof Inn.

Although only a few members opposed the new location, it was ultimately chosen for its visibility and access to public transportation, both criteria the group deemed vital. For some members, the new location also has the potential to create the opportunity to work closely with the Living Wage Campaign at UVA in asking for a living wage for all employees of the University. For others, occupying a property so close to what some called an “elite” institution was a powerful statement. One occupier, however, protested that she “was not excited about going towards the UVA bubble.”

More after the photo.

Member of Occupy Charlottesville huddled close to the fire during last night’s general assembly. 

In the event the group is forced off of the property near the Clark statue, they discussed the possibility of setting up camp at the Free Speech Wall at the east end of the Downtown Mall, a site the Rutherford Institute has suggested could be a better fit.

“In light of the fact that the First Amendment monument, which is situated in the area outside of City hall, includes a podium ‘intended to serve as a contemporary soapbox from which individuals may address both planned and impromptu public gatherings,’ this would seem to be a natural place for individuals wanting to petition their government for a redress of grievances,” wrote John Whitehead, founder and president of the institute, in a memo to Charlottesville Mayor Dave Norris.

Many other locations were considered, including one side of Lee Park, the green space next to Friendship Court, a city owned property that is currently vacant, an empty field on Fifth Street Extended and, finally, Monticello. Some members of Occupy Charlottesville argued that an occupation of Monticello would create national headlines and push the movement forward.

Over the last few weeks, Norris has told both occupiers and reporters that police won’t be wearing riot gear and that they expect the removal process to be peaceful.

“We are not expecting any violence,” he said at the time. “We are not going in in the middle of the night to evict them from the park. We expect it to be a very orderly transition.”

Check back for more updates throughout the week. For more information about Occupy Charlottesville, click here and here.
 

UVA tells Occupy Charlottesville not to come to the Corner

Less than 24 hours after Occupy Charlottesville designated the area around the George Rogers Clark statue as its new home, the University of Virginia notified occupiers not only that “such an encampment will not be permitted on the University’s Grounds,” according to a letter signed by the school’s new Chief Operating Officer Michael Strine, but that UVA “will take enforcement action to prevent the attempted establishment of an encampment on University property,” including issuing notices for trespassing.

The statue that occupiers singled out as a potential site is located in an area in front of the Red Roof Inn and is owned by UVA. Campus administrators appeared to be trying to head off a potential showdown by sending a message to Occupy’s local membership.

“While the University cherishes and protects robust exercise of the rights protected by the First Amendment, the University must continue to fulfill its core functions of education and patient care,” Strine wrote. The occupation, he continued, would create safety, health and hygiene problems.

“Quite simply, the University is not a campground and is not set up to support an indefinite encampment.”

Occupiers told C-VILLE that the letter, and their response, will be discussed at the group’s general assembly tonight. In the meantime, the clean up of Lee Park commenced. At last night’s meeting, members of the movement agreed to begin getting their belongings out of the park before the camping permit expires, at 6pm.

While a few members plan to remain in the park and face arrest, the majority of occupiers vowed to show solidarity by documenting the removal, but elected to vacate their camp.

Occupy Charlottesville has begun cleaning, gathering and moving their belongings out of Lee Park.

More cleaning. 

This is where Occupy’s kitchen used to be. 

The group’s bulletin board and instruction for the clean-up. (Chiara Canzi photos.)

 

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Occupy Charlottesville from a media perspective

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.

Old Coca-Cola building on Preston to undergo historic rehabilitation

The CityCampus Biotechnology Center on Preston Avenue, the new tenant of the historic Coca-Cola Bottling Company building, may become a catalyst for the creation of an “urban neighborhood,” according to its owners.

The vision for the space is one of a center for innovation and entrepreneurship, said Martin Chapman, co-owner along with Madeleine Watkins and President of Indoor Biotechnologies, Inc. He added that being “a beacon for historic rehabilitation” was just as important.

"The development of this space is really predicated on the fact that functional wet lab space is really not available pretty much anywhere in the state of Virginia," said Chapman. "So, we think we are fulfilling a huge unmet need for this kind of activity."

The old Coca-Cola Bottling Company building is the largest art deco structure in the city, and, at almost 40,000 square feet, it was deemed the perfect stage for the creation of a biotechnology hub close to Downtown Charlottesville with Indoor Biotechnologies as its anchor tenant.

More after the photos.

Rendering: the building’s entrance with broad staircase.

Rendering: the courtyard with a translucent roof.

According to Chapman, who presented the vision at City Space this afternoon to an audience of elected officials, scientists, entrepreneurs and architects, CityCampus will provide a "stimulus for economic development" with the estimated creation of 75 to 80 jobs in the project’s first phase and more than 150 total when the second phase is completed. 

In the first phase, the building will undergo a complete rehab, under the watchful eye of UVA Professor Daniel Bluestone, Director of the Historic Preservation Program, to create wet lab and office space in addition to an open office area, much like Donwtown’s Open Space. The second phase includes the construction of a new building in the adjacent parking lot, adding 30,000 square feet.

The design, by architects UVA Professor William Sherman and Willard Scribner of SMBW Architects, will include a new entrance highlighted by a large-scale staircase and a translucent roof overlooking the courtyard. One of the existing loading and trucking docks will be the new home of an indoor coffee shop.

Sherman, founder of OpenGrounds, an upcoming collaborative and interdisciplinary space at UVA, said that CityCampus will “create the capacity for many possible futures” for the building and establish a culture that values connections between disciplines, in line with the University’s new administration’s goal of creating a "more fluid ecosystem across the University, between external partners," said Sherman.

The idea is to have CityCampus open to the community for events and arts exhibitions. Chapman also mentioned that since the center will include incubator space for new and rising technologies, he envisions weekly seminars with invited or local speakers to fulfill that purpose.

"We forsee this not as a sort of fortress biotech research park," said Chapman. "We want this to be an open space so that we can have events going on, art projects going on, film projects going on and you’ll see that there will be plenty of space that we can make that kind of thing happen."

In terms of green features, Scribner said the building will be sustainable “in every way,” striving for a minimum of LEED silver.

The timeline for the project is contingent upon securing financing. Although Chapman said that one of the advantages for investors in CityCampus are state and federal tax credits, he estimates the construction to begin in October of 2012, after the architectural design and engineering are complete.  

Occupy Charlottesville debates possible new locations

Since City Council’s decision to open a dialogue between Occupy Charlottesville and city staff to find an alternate occupation location, the local Occupy group has been contemplating its next move.

At last Monday’s meeting, elected officials delayed a vote to reinstate the 11pm curfew at Lee Park but also expressed their desire to not “stifle” the movement’s actions. City spokesperson Ric Barrick told C-VILLE that the occupiers received their latest permit to camp in the park on Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving.

Before Monday’s meeting, the permit was set to expire on November 26, a month since the first was signed, but Barrick said the current one has no end date since the city is working with the group to find for a “suitable space.”

In the event that the group is forced to move from Lee Park, occupiers have been discussing priorities for a new location. According to notes from the November 22 general assembly posted on the group’s website, the new location should be accessible by public transportation and city services, it should be visible and livable. Suggestions for possible new locations include the land containing the George Rogers Clark statue, next to the UVA hospital and McIntire Road.

Before anything is decided, Barrick said the city is asking Occupy Charlottesville for $36 in electricity usage for the month of November.  

City Council defers curfew decision, opens discussion with Occupy Charlottesville for possible alternate location

The crowd gathered in the City Council chambers for Monday night’s meeting was the largest Councilor David Brown had ever seen in almost eight years as an elected official. Occupy Charlottesville members and symphatizers came out full force to sway Councilors to let them stay in Downtown’s Lee Park indefinitely, thus lifting the park’s 11pm curfew.

After more than three hours of heartfelt pleas and moving confessions, they got their wish. City Councilors deferred the curfew decision, thus delaying a formal stance that would define the future of the camp. They proposed, on the suggestion by The Rutherford Institute, opening a dialogue between the group and the City of Charlottesville to find alternate locations for the occupation and possibly extend the camping permit.

The overwhelming majority of speakers supported Occupy Charlottesville’s current camp ground in Lee Park. Occupier Bailee Elizabeth Hampton told Councilors she had collected 27 letters from residents and 434 signatures in support for Occupy Charlottesville. Former City Council candidate Brandon Collins asked for the curfew to be lifted and acknowledged the city’s “legal right to remove us” and the “legal right to leave us there, too.” 
“We are asking you which side you are on,” he said.

It was UVA Professor Daniel Bluestone, however, who caused the biggest uproar and was granted a standing ovation. Bluestone, a vocal opponent of the Meadow Creek Parkway and a known figure at City Council meetings, told Council that if occupiers were forced to leave their current occupation space, then the Robert E. Lee statue that anchors the park should leave as well; if the group were to follow the curfew rules, so should the statue.

More after the photos.

Occupy Charlottesville rallied at Lee Park before marching to City Hall.  

Occupiers marched on the Downtown Mall on their way to City Hall. 

 

The crowd in the City Council chambers wearing red in sign of passion and solidarity. Chiara Canzi photos.   

Although a handful, those who opposed letting the group camp in Lee Park came forward and stated their case. Elizabeth Breeden, who is on the board of PACEM, the seasonal night shelter, voiced her concerns about the homeless who choose the sleep in Lee Park rather than seek shelter. Because many before her invoked their First Amendment rights of free speech for remaining in the park, she said she did not see any connection between free speech and camping in a public space. 

Mark Kavit, president of the the North Downtown Residents Association, said residents feel unsafe walking down the Mall and around the neighborhood. 

In the end, however, City Council chose to side with the group. Both Mayor Dave Norris and Councilor Brown told the group they did not want to “stifle” the movement. “I want to see you continue,” said Norris. 
Councilor Satyendra Huja said he would have extended the permit until the end of the year and Kristin Szakos argued that free speech didn’t “expire at 11pm” or at Thanksgiving. 

The group’s permit is set to expire on November 26, the day after Thanksgiving and it is unclear what the city’s actions will be. In the event that city officials decide not to renew the permit to camp in Lee Park, as they have indicated, Norris said he expect an easy transition. “We are not going in in the middle of the night to evict them from the park,” he said last week.

For more on Occupy Charlottesville, click here. 

 

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College from jail

Inmates at Fluvanna Correctional Center for Women in Troy, Virginia will soon be able to earn a degree from behind bars. The Piedmont Virginia Community College (PVCC) will expand its offerings at the facility to grant a General Studies Associate of Science degree and expects to graduate the first four or five students in the spring of 2013.

PVCC has been offering classes at Fluvanna since 2004 and this fall semester, about 40 inmates are enrolled in eight courses ranging from English composition and literature courses to sociology and statistics.

 

John Donnelly, vice president for Instruction and Student Services at PVCC, said the college is working to find alternate ways to provide Fluvanna inmates the same learning experience as students at PVCC’s main campus.  

Adding more targeted courses, such as science courses, though, has proven difficult because Fluvanna doesn’t come equipped with science labs.
“Traditional classes like history and sociology, we can offer in a standard classroom that has technology to put up a PowerPoint, and Fluvanna has traditional classrooms,” said John Donnelly, PVCC’s vice president for Instruction and Student Services. “The challenge for us to get a student to finish the degree is how to provide science laboratories, because there are no lab facilities at Fluvanna.”

Donnelly said inmates are able to use computers, but according to the Department of Corrections rules and regulations, they are not allowed to access the Internet, and because some of PVCC’s science courses are designed for online use, college officials are looking for alternate ways to allow for the same student experience.

Donnelly said one of the possibilities is the use of “lab packs,” a packet that consists of instructional material that is brought into the facility by the instructor. Simulating online laboratories is also an option.
“We are trying to figure out how to simulate [online material] so that we can put a CD-ROM in and put it in a computer and it will allow students to simulate what they would be doing in a lab,” said Donnelly.

He added that the college wouldn’t be offering these courses right away, but will use next semester to find the best solution for the inmates at Fluvanna.
Joanna Vondrasek, professor of biology at PVCC, is helping to craft a plan to teach a biology class called Life Science that covers biology principles from cells to ecosystems and includes a lab component.

“It’s a matter of what sort of lab experience we can develop for those students,” she said.
“The real challenge will be whether we could pull enough of the virtual labs onto a downloadable software that could be installed on computers, so that it would be a closed system.”

The other option, she said, is to offer traditional, in-person labs “and modify them a little bit to deal with any restrictions on materials.”
Regardless of the teaching method, Vondrasek said she hopes that the inmates will have “an equivalent experience.”
“Our goal is to give them a legitimate lab experience that works in the environment that they are in, and I do think it’s possible,” she said.

Because the General Studies Associate of Science degree allows a student to earn more than 50 percent of college credits at an off-site facility, the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS) had to grant PVCC a new accreditation to offer it at Fluvanna. SACS has already sent a review team to Fluvanna and has ruled that the program provides “comparable” services to those offered at PVCC.

Donnelly said the next major obstacle to the program’s expansion is funding, since inmates are not eligible for either state or federal aid.
“About 80 percent of our students at Fluvanna, their tuition is funded by private foundations and private donors,” said Donnelly.

 

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Occupy Charlottesville looks to the future, readies for inevitable

In the two months since the first organizers occupied Zuccotti Park in New York City to protest national economic inequality, similar encampments sprung up throughout the country, each of them claiming public space as a way to spread their messages. Since cities around the nation began breaking up these groups, the movement is facing the difficult task of having to rethink the nature of its protest.

Although Occupy Charlottesville is still legally allowed to camp in Lee Park until Thanksgiving, accusations of factions forming within the group, arrests, and the looming expiration of its camping permit have cast doubt about the future of the movement.

Lee Park has been the home of Occupy Charlottesville for close to a month. The group’s camping permit is set to expire after Thanksgiving and city officials have indicated that they do not intend to renew it.

The first noticeable rift came when organizer Evan Knappenberger, who signed the initial permit that allowed the group to camp overnight in Lee Park, left Occupy Charlottesville, citing the formation of a radical sub-group that rejected the core value of non-violence.
“A group of individuals with personal vendettas, axes to grind, has gradually taken control of the park,” wrote Knappenberger in a public e-mail explaining his departure from the group.

He added that he was afraid the movement as a whole was headed in a “downward spiral.”
On his last day in town, Knappenberger, a graduate of Albemarle High School and a veteran of the Iraq war, told C-VILLE that the group was no longer representing the values he associated with the movement.
“When it started out it was about the 99 percent and cooperation and working together,” he said. “It’s just become a way for the anarchists and the radical feminists to push their agenda.”

Occupier Zac Fabian refuted these claims and said it was Knappenberger’s attitude, actions and his “mental state” that created the problem. Rumors about people leaving Lee Park once the permit expires only exacerbated speculation that the movement’s days were numbered, but Fabian said the group’s future is still not certain.
“We are not even at that point yet, because the group hasn’t decided to stay,” said Fabian. “We are not even that organized to come to a decision ahead of time.”

But that decision may have to come sooner rather than later. City Spokesperson Ric Barrick said the city does not intend to renew the permit after the 30-day mark. When Barrick erroneously told reporters that the permit was to expire prior to when they expected, occupiers were taken aback.

While the occupiers have strong ideas, the reality is that the movement was never intended to be militant.
“Mayor Dave Norris came to the park to make sure there was no confusion, because this is Charlottesville and no one here has an interest in turning to violence,” said Fabian. Norris, in fact, told the group that his understanding was that the permit was to expire on November 26.
“We are not expecting any violence,” he said. 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.”

Norris said occupiers told him that they want enough time to pack their belongings and move them off the park. Fabian, for his part, imagines a tidy end to the occupation, but the group has addressed the possibility of conflict with law enforcement.
“Part of our promise is that we were going to leave the park in a better condition than we found it when we came,” said Fabian. “If they pulled the permit early, we just wouldn’t be able to uphold that.”

The group recently passed a declaration of non-violence that states that some of them “may choose to participate in nonviolent civil disobedience” that “may result” in arrests. “We will not retaliate against any member of law enforcement or anyone else,” it reads.

Aside from the imminent expiration of the permit, another action that will affect the camp is City Council’s decision on a curfew in Lee Park. The curfew was originally imposed by Council in response to concerns from residents about illicit activities taking place in the park. For Norris, the curfew “served the neighborhood well,” but the bigger question revolves around land use.
“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, then that’s where City Council needs to weigh in.” (Check www.c-ville.com for an update on City Council’s curfew decision.)

Throughout the month of occupation, the movement was faced with the reality of having to deal with a portion of the population that they said was “ignored,” as the city’s homeless population gathered in Lee Park. Occupiers, then, began seeing the homeless struggle as part of their own message.
“We are addressing issues like homelessness,” said Fabian. “We are out there with them and bringing light to them, we are connecting with these people. If you ignore them, cast them in the shadows, there is no check on their behavior, there is no motivation for them to actually be part of society and they are just going to digress.”

But Norris said that each homeless person in the camp will have a cot available at PACEM, a winter night shelter, for the next four months.
“They all have a place to stay. Nobody is going to be homeless as a result of this permit not being extended,” said Norris, PACEM’s former executive director.

Regardless of what happens to the physical home of Occupy Charlottesville, and to the larger camps nationwide, both Fabian and Knappenberger believe that the movement has the strength to move forward.
“I see in certain places it’s going to keep going for a really long time,” said Knappenberger.

Fabian, speaking of the recent actions against the occupiers in Manhattan, said the action of police only helped the movement’s cause.
“There is really no stopping this, the physical space doesn’t matter, it’s the beliefs that people hold in the head,” he said.

But the notion of an occupation is about controlling a public space. Without it, the movement will have to find a new definition for the collective action.