For the last 21 nights, University senior Cimmeron Gillespie@@http://directory.uoregon.edu/telecom/directory.jsp?p=findpeople%2Ffind_results&m=student&d=person&b=name&s=Cimmeron+Gillespie@@ has slept in a tent — first on cold concrete in the park blocks on East 8th Avenue and Oak Street, then in the cool grass of Alton Baker Park and now along the Willamette River in the Riverfront Research Park.
Gillespie is part of Occupy Eugene and he, along with close to 100 other protesters, has been camping out since Oct. 15 as part of the national movement to demand change to the nation’s political and economic systems — systems, demonstrators say, that put power in the hands of the nation’s upper class at the detriment of the rest of its citizens.
“These are people who have spent years crying out for help, and no one was helping them,” Gillespie says. “Capitalism isn’t cutting it. This is us deciding for ourselves how we want to do it, and there’s something beautiful about that.”
Gillespie has followed the Occupy movement since the first days of the Occupy Wall Street protests in New York and says he has supported the occupations from the beginning. However, he says making the decision to camp out for an unforeseeable number of nights wasn’t one that was easy to make.
“Sleeping in a tent and sharing in poverty is not a fast decision but a moral one,” Gillespie says.
For him, this dedication to the Occupy movement stems from a larger commitment to civil activism that began when his family came on hard times financially. Forced to go to food banks, he says he witnessed the pitfalls in the nation’s economic system firsthand.
“I saw them run out of food and turn people away,” Gillespie says. “Any system that lets its people starve in the streets is a failed system.”
Yet many students, he says, have never personally felt the effects of poverty, which he feels may be barring them from getting involved.@@is this a poor person’s struggle only?@@
Feeling compelled to engage in this type of activism, Gillespie says, “starts when people recognize that other people’s problems are their own.”
Other students involved in the occupation have similar sentiments.
“People need to start caring about each other,” University junior Stella Baldwin says. “We’re all connected, this impacts everyone.”
The poor economic conditions and social disparities that the Occupy movement aims to highlight may not affect students today, but may eventually, she says.
Through a new student group, Occupy Eugene Education Alliance, she and organizers from other groups hope to help students see this.
“It’s kind of appalling that there’s not more student involvement,” Baldwin says.
The Education Alliance has set up an information booth in the lawn outside the Collier building and plan to meet every Tuesday and Friday afternoon from 3 to 5 p.m. in the EMU Fishbowl to garner support from more of the student body.
“I think people just need a taste but they’re not willing to try it,” University sophomore Mary-Kate Moroney@@http://directory.uoregon.edu/telecom/directory.jsp?p=findpeople%2Ffind_results&m=student&d=person&b=name&s=Mary-Kate+Moroney@@ says.
Moroney feels students are too comfortable with their daily routines. She says that since getting involved with the movement, “this new energy is flowing through me, I can’t sit still, I can’t get comfortable.”
If the conditions at the Occupy site are any indication, there will presumably be ample time for students to get involved.
Powered by generators, the encampment has everything from a kitchen to first-aid stations, and donations have been consistently pouring in from the community. And according to Gillespie, the site has formed a tight-knit community of demonstrators who don’t plan on giving in.
“It’s not a trivial game,” he says, explaining that for a lot of the demonstrators the site has become their permanent home. “A lot of people don’t have a home to return to. For a lot of people, this is survival.”
Gillespie does have a home to return to but has no intention of doing so any time soon.
“I’m going to be here as long as this is here,” he says.
Students align with Occupy Eugene, national movement
Daily Emerald
November 3, 2011
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