It was a gorgeous late fall day for a march! Labor showed up in force and joined OccupyMN in a march on corporate greed. Today is the anniversary of the Black Tuesday stock market crash, so while it's true not many bankers might have heard us from their offices today, it's a significant day and allowed those of us who can't escape from our jobs during the week to participate.
It was so bright and sunny I had a little trouble with my camera!
more pics below the squiggle
our main speakers warming us up were(copied from OccupyMN website):
ELLIOT SEIDE - Executive Director of AFSCME Council 5, the union of over 40,000 Minnesota public sector workers
JAVIER MORILLO-ALICEA - President of SEIU Local 26, the union of over 5,000 janitors and security guards in the Twin Cities area.
MICHELLE SOMMERS - President of Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1005, the union of metro transit bus drivers
BERNADINE ENGELDORF - Minnesota Nurses Association 1st Vice-President and National Nurses United Vice President. MNA is the union of 20,000 nurses in Minnesota.
GERARDO CAJAMARCA - International Mission of SINALTRAINAL union of Colombia will speak about the devastating effect of corporate greed on workers in Colombia and other countries
Photobucket is being ornery about making a collage of all the speakers so I downsized the pics and hope they arrange themselves on this page nicely!
my pic of Gerardo did not turn out :-(
There were others, did not catch all the names sadly, though I know Phyllis Walker, president of AFSCME local 3800. 3800 is our sister union at the U of Minnesota, I'm in 3937, and I was very happy to see friends from both in the crowd.
I think it was Michelle who gave me this diary's title "Get off the couch!" pointing out that's its time to pay attention to the real world and take action rather than get sucked into tabloid TV about the more infamous of the 1%
Pallbearers volunteered while the speakers wrapped it up.
We then wound our way through downtown, our pacers and the police seemed well coordinated.
We stopped in front of the big banks and did a brief rant at each.
one of my favorite signs today
this young man did a great job leading the chant "We are the 99%"
then back to the People's Plaza
Lots of supportive honks from drivers, only one seemed irritated at having to wait for us. I am guessing this may have been the biggest march since the opening days of OccupyMN, maybe around 500 people
A few more speakers after, loved this teacher's shirt!
I made a quick exit so I could grocery shop and bring some hot food back for supper. I told my kid he should have come, he missed out on pizza, he would not have been stuck eating my vegan bean stew!
I stayed for a chilly general assembly. Our intrepid livestream team this evening
One working group brought their notes :-)
We had the same good facilitator as last Saturday who miraculously kept us from a meltdown and got the meeting done by 9:45. This was no easy thing with several issues coming up that people felt quite passionate about. One of these is winter strategy, and we were not even voting on a proposal yet, just generating ideas.
But even though my toes got cold, I was still able to be cheap and ride bike back to my free parking space this weekend. We know we are lucky it's not snowing yet!