Occupy Monterey — Press Conference

 

At Saturday's press conference for Occupy Monterey, Rose Aguilar from Your Call radio (KUSP, M-F, 10 am) asked this good question: "What does the Occupy Movement mean in a smaller town like Monterey?"

"It means we've started more slowly," she was told. "It means we've had a chance to watch and learn from what's happened elsewhere."

Very interestingly, unlike elsewhere, Occupy Monterey is beginning as a partnership with the City of Monterey. Occupy Monterey will have a permitted tent and table area at Colton Hall — but the encampment, also permitted, will be at Veterans Park. Veterans Park isn't as visible (or as confrontational) an encampment site — but the permit provides "a framework for partnership with the City and a legitimate context within which the City currently has agreed to waive local rules and city code...[and the permit] establishes a meaningful starting point for our relationship with our City partner."

For instance, currently the City has waived permit fees for the group campsite at Veterans Park — and "The eight-person (density) limitation is not applicable to area(s) within the group campsite."

A sign will be posted at the encampment that lists both the park's rules and Occupy Monterey's own "Code of Conduct." The intention is that an Occupy Monterey liaison should be available both at Colton Hall and at Veterans Park to meet City officials whenever such a need might occur.

Occupy Monterey retains the prerogative to move in another direction should its own integrity and the City's intentions diverge — but as the Occupy Movement matures and explores the ways in which it will need to evolve, it will be exciting to follow this local cooperative model between Occupy Monterey and the City of Monterey.

The rest of the text of this journal-post is better told by the signs themselves — and by the faces of participants.

Student activist Derek Bausek from CSUMB.

Helen Davis and poet Elliot Rokowitz from the Northern California chapter of the ACLU.

Chris Fitz of Unite Here Local 483.

Assembymember Bill Monning.