Occupy Maine Summer Camp got underway yesterday in Kennebunkport as campers began setting up tents, activity stations (banner painting! button making! and drumming circles, natch).
Signs I brought along: the assephant that Occupy the NH Primary folks gave me, and the No East-West Corridor sign that my friends Abby and Fang gave me. Their friend Bozin made many of them to help us protect our state and its natural resources from the private-public partnership our governor and the CEO of Cianbro Corp. are in cahoots to build across the Maine wildnerness.
Some people really have this encampment thing down!
Following a terrific communal dinner, we held a GA with about 35 people participating. Hearing why everyone was there and seeing the generational diversity was very inspriring. A Norwegian artist named Una Hunderi who is traveling in the US to investigate "idealistic communities" came from the farthest away to be with us. We were also grandparents, young farm interns, and several videographers and writers. Something we all had in common -- the desire to occupy mosquitos!
As the GA wound down, who should arrive but a NYC contingent bringing activists from the New School to talk about resisting mountain top removal coal miming in Appalachia. It was so exciting to see the big van I've only seen in photos pull into our bucolic camping site.
Codepink Maine members Curtis Cole and Pat Taub posed in front of my favorite side of the first vehicle in the Occupy Caravan. There will be many more assembling over the next few days to head to the National Gathering in Philadelphia. Occupy the Roads!
Today we'll hold a Feminist GA at camp, in advance of the national one at NatGat on July 1.
3 comments:
Report much appreciated! Thanks for giving me a taste of what's going on.love the simple observations and light hearted humor.
The east-west highway touches on the Indian question, and I wonder if activists have carefully considered the security implications. I will hazard a rough guess that ten percent of all Indians are Muslim. The continuing violence in India between Hindu and Muslim demonstrates the continuing strength of Islamic influences even today in India, hundreds of years after these many Indians came to our shores as refugees and immigrants. I am not assuming that just because, arguably, ten percent of our Indians are Muslims that ten percent of them are terrorists, but there is undoubtedly some correlation there. "The apple does not fall far from the tree."
So what starts out as an innocent effort to save our wilderness so that our Indians may shelter there in their traditional way may turn out to be harboring the very terrorists that the US was set up to combat against, going right back to Biblical principles. When God told Moses to kill all the Canaanites, man, woman, and child, it wasn't because God is hateful or prejudiced, but simply that God is a masterful strategic thinker. Obviously. We cannot afford to take shortcuts in our politics.
Phui Yi, do you have a blog? If so, please share a link with me!
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