Occupy Bristol & Bath Updates

somerset | community | feature Tuesday November 15, 2011 10:58 by Simon occupybath at gmail dot com

Occupy Bath has been in Queen Square now for over two weeks.  It has created a forum for change for many local residents, who have felt comfortable to come into the park and interact with us, to sit around the fire, and discuss about the issues that they are concerned about.  We have had an overwhelming amount of support from almost all people that we have interacted with.  There is a strong group of us who do not wish this to end, but the effects of being so heavily involved in Occupy Bath is taking its toll on a number of us, hence the people pulling their physical support out of the movement.  We need more people to commit to the cause now in order to continue demonstrating and creating the positive change that we have so far.

The occupation in Bristol continues despite the low murmurs of annoyance from various city authorities. It could be in the wake of the failure of the Church to call in the rozzers to evict the protesters, so as to allow the money lenders to do business as usual' has trickled down to other places in the UK and so put the brakes on here?

Also its great to see that individual occupiers are putting out statements about what and why they are doing this - which shows that they come from a borad spectrum of backgrounds and are not just the 'usual suspects' - A view from an occupier (2 links) a-view-from-an-occupier-2 a-view-from-an-occupier

As I am sure that you are aware, Occupy Bath have now outstayed the 'initial 12 days' that the media misquoted us as being our occupation length.  We are still in Queen Square, and we are still keeping our voices strong, but the nights are becoming a bit of an issue for some of us.

Quite a few people pulled their support out of Occupy Bath on the weekend, and in doing so we are now shorter on numbers of people staying overnight.  Recently, almost everyone staying overnight has had to do one of the security nightwatch shifts.  These shifts, combined with commitments that some of us have to fulfill elsewhere, are very tiring and result in lower numbers attending meetings and staying overnight for the next night.

My plea to you, as supporters of the Occupy movement, is to come along to Queen Square, especially to stay overnight.

We are currently working at improving our daytime profile by introducing different workshops in the day (Felicity has been the first to confirm to do regular workshops, being T'ai Chi every Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday mornings at 11am)

Please, if you can spare some time/can share some skills, come to Queen Square now!

Yours,

Simon
- Occupy Bath Media Working Group