Occupy Atlanta Encamps In Neighborhood To Save Police Officer’s Home From Foreclosure
Occupy Atlanta has repeatedly run into hurdles, as it has been evicted from Woodruff Park in Atlanta multiple times by the city’s unsympathetic mayor, Kasim Reed. Yet the group was invigorated yesterday as it moved to a new location to take action for economic justice.
Last week, Tawanna Rorey’s husband, a police officer based in Gwinnett County, e-mailed Occupy Atlanta to explain that his home was going to be foreclosed on and his family was in danger of being evicted on Monday. So within a few hours Occupy Atlanta developed an action plan to move to Snellville, Georgia on Monday to stop the foreclosure. At least two dozen protesters encamped on the family’s lawn, to the applause of neighbors and bystanders:
Nearly two dozen protesters assembled Monday afternoon at Tawanna Rorey’s four-bedroom home in a neighborhood just south of Snellville, clogging the narrow, winding street that runs in front of the house with cars, vans and TV trucks. Many neighbors stopped to gawk at the spectacle and even honked their car horns in support of the crowd. [...] [The protesters] set up two tents in the front yard, draped a “This Home is Occupied” sign over the porch railing and handed out bottled water and granola bars to other members.
A local CBS station filed a report about the new occupation. Watch it:
The Sheriff’s Department did not come to evict the Roreys that day. A spokesman for the department told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that the foreclosure process is still ongoing and that it has not scheduled an eviction. “It’s a good cause,” said Diona Murray, one of the Roreys’ neighbors, about the occupation. “If we don’t take a stand, who will?”
I am heavily in favor of this:) There are those who yearn for non-violent civil disobedience and this is the right place for those energies. It is a great leap, I think, to move from intentional communities to an embrace of the larger community. As more and more people resist the banks with the backing of sympathetic Occupiers the more banks will be forced to deal with current tactics. A release of records could be helpful too.
Back in the Sixties we used to occupy Universities. Occupying something gets attention it seemed. Now, in acts of compassion and sacrifice for Americans who have been living in a continuous nightmare, activists will occupy Homes. Much more important than Universities in the scheme of things.
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