Occupy Movement Takes Chicago By Storm
By Ashley Huntington, Robert Odden and Margaret Thompson
Check out a slide show of pictures and audio clips from Occupy Chicago.
RYAN METZ
By Nov. 1, the Occupy Chicago protestors were facing what is likely their largest obstacle yet — inclement weather.
But Metz wasn’t phased.
As a member of the Occupy Chicago secretariat and coordinator of the general assembly, Metz, 24, is working tirelessly for the movement organizing events and making legal and financial contacts for the movement.
“Surprisingly,” he said, “our numbers have actually been increasing despite the onset of the cold weather. We’ve never topped the turnout when had on the first night in late September, but we’ve had better and better attendance for the scheduled marches and general assemblies.”
He said he believes this is because of the movement’s national momentum, and because of the outrage in early November at the Occupy Oakland protests, where police used teargas and sandbags to break up and arrest demonstrators.
Chicago was one of the first cities to jump on the Occupy Wall Street bandwagon in late September, vehemently protesting everything from foreclosure rates to military spending to the 2008 financial bailouts. The Occupy Chicago movement has since attracted thousands of demonstrators each week to the South Loop.
Metz also works full-time at DePaul University’s Brownstones Café in Lincoln Park — a job which he says pays the bills, but is not what he was looking for after gradating from DePaul in 2008 with a degree in biology.
“There are people down here who have it way worse than me,” Metz said. “I have a job with healthcare; tons of the people out here tonight are unemployed, and rightly angry about it.”
The anger was apparent during the Nov. 1 march from the corner of Jackson Boulevard and LaSalle Street to Grant Park. Megaphones, drums and makeshift protest signs dominated the protest route from 7 p.m. to 7:30 p.m., where hundreds of Chicagoans spoke — or rather, yelled — out against corporate greed.
“Our democracy has been usurped,” Metz said. “We are no longer represented, and that’s why we’re out here.”
Metz added that participating in the Occupy movement has been one of the most incredible things he’s ever been involved in. “
That first night when over two thousand people showed up,” he said, “I felt like my whole body was turned on. It was one of the most amazing feelings I’ve had so far in my life.”
WYL VILLACRES
Villacres, 23, a Columbia College Chicago student, shares many of Metz’s grievances, but has remained skeptical of the movement’s organizational style since the beginning. This has not stopped him from getting involved.
“I’ve been observing the movement from day one via the internet,” Villacres said. “About a week in, I went to my first general assembly, and I grew skeptical of their intensely democratic process.”
However, Villacres said he has been on the “losing side of corporate greed,” and agreed with the basis of the Occupy protests, which fueled his interest in the movement.
“I have tens of thousands of dollars in student loans,” he said. “And the job market is dismal.”
Villacres mother, Lisa Villacres, is a teacher in Chicago, and he said her ongoing struggle also led him to the movement.
“The state has been borrowing against teachers’ pensions with very low priority on paying the money back,” he said. “I think we’re all being personally affected by corporate greed pretty much all the time.”
When Villacres heard of the mass arrests of protestors in Grant Park, he decided it was time to take a stand and formally join the movement. He has since decided to write a book based on the Occupy protests, interviewed many fellow demonstrators, submitted a formal petition to the Chicago mayor’s office regarding the protestors’ rights to peaceably assemble, and been arrested himself.
“Five days after I started the petition, I had more than 10,000 signatures,” he said. “Seeing that amount of people come out in support of something I believed in, even something as basic as peaceable assembly rights, was just amazing.”
Villacres said that the Internet has been at the heart of the movement’s success.
“I got the petition out to that many people using one tweet and two Facebook posts,” he said. “The internet is very powerful.”
Villacres plans to continue working for the movement indefinitely, on top of his job working in the computer labs at Columbia and being a full-time student.
STEPHANIE HOFFPAUIR
Hoffpauir, 29, and has been participating in the Occupy Chicago protests since the movement’s fourth day. She currently holds two part-time jobs, and has chosen not to pursue a degree due to the high costs and low return of a formal education in today’s economy.
“I just fail to see how it’s feasible with how much I already have to work and how much debt I’d have to put myself in just to go back to school,” she said.
Like many of the movement’s dutiful participants, Hoffpauir first heard of the Occupy Wall Street protests on Twitter.
“When I attended the first general assembly,” she said, “I already agreed with everything that they were protesting against. I felt angered and robbed when the banks were bailed out on our dime, and pissed off that Wall Street basically played with people’s money stocks.”
Hoffpauir has participated in nearly every major march since the movement arrived in Chicago, and says that she will continue to work for the movement until regulations are put into place for financial institutions.
“They can’t be trusted,” she said. “They’ve already shown us that their greed is unending, and there’s no end to where they’ll destroy this country.”
View the story “Starting a movement in the age of social media” on Storify]
Coverage of Occupy Chicago
This is a Storify account of the reactions and pictures of the Occupy Chicago protests that have been occurring for the past two weeks. Occupy Chicago is one of the many spin-offs of the Occupy Wall Street movement that started nearly three weeks ago. Protesters are attempting to shed light on corporate greed and how it is severely impacting those who are not wealthy.
Coverage from the Chicago Board of Trade
Messages from citizens at Occupy Chicago
| “ | We remind everyone that #OccupyChicago is a nonviolent movement, and anyone who incites violence is not welcome. | |||
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Occupy Chicago7
Photo by R.Raven Photography on flickr
| “ | And to the 1% in Chicago mocking #OccupyChicago let me wish upon you the Divine’s retribution for your lack of charity & humanity. | |||
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| “ | Occupy the minds of those who CHOOSE 2 remain ignorant to societies issues. #OccupyWallstreet #OccupyChicago #OccupytheWorld | |||
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| “ | If they were really the 1%, they’d be over at Goldman Sachs, not CBOT. #StayClassy #OccupyChicago #Jerks http://t.co/HPk8girS | |||
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Backlash against the Occupy movement and Occupy Chicago
| “ | RT @windycitizen: Board of Trade has a message for Occupy Chicago: We Are The 1% http://ow.ly/6OcNz #occupychi #OccupyWallSt | |||
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| “ | Thinking globally, all those signs should probably read "we are the 99% of the 1%". #occupywallstreet | |||
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| “ | #Money is #occupy – ing my #wallet #wearetheonepercent | |||
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| “ | Go back to watching reality television and leave the money stuff to me. #wearetheonepercent | |||
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Points of Interest near Chicago’s 79th Street CTA Red Line stop
This map focuses on the CTA Red Line’s 79th Street stop. The stop featured is located in the Chatham neighborhood, which is located on the City’s South Side and is one of Chicago’s many residential areas.
The points of interest on this map include places to eat and shop, parks to play at, churches, schools and places for entertainment. Some of the points of interest on this map go into neighboring areas, such as the Auburn Gresham and Avalon Park neighborhoods.
This map was created by Ashley Huntington and Jenna Leon.
View Larger Map
Chicago Website Gapers Block Looking to Expand Despite Problems with Hacking
Andrew Huff speaks to a DePaul journalism class on Sept. 12 (Photo by: Mike Reilley)
Gapers Block, a website that focuses on the news, events and other happenings in Chicago, is looking to expand.
Despite fighting to keep hackers out of his site for the past week, Gapers Block co-founder and non-Chicago native Andrew Huff made time to speak to a class of Journalism students at DePaul University on Sept. 12.
With more than 80 volunteer writers, 90,000 unique visitors and 500,000 page views a month, Gapers Block is steadily growing, Huff said.
While he admitted that the food and music sections of Gapers Block are well-respected because of their information and variety, Huff is seeking to add a business section to his website. Not only is Huff looking to expand the content of Gapers Block, but he has big plans for himself as well.
“I want to make this my full-time job,” Huff said.
Huff said making Gapers Block a full-time job may prove to be difficult, however, due to the lack of ad revenue that is being generated by the site. Although a handful of advertisers are reaching out to the Chicago-centric website, Huff is hoping to gain the interest, and ad revenue, of local advertisers. But also vying for the spotlight and money from local advertisers is fellow competitor and fellow Chicago-focused site Chicagoist.
Gapers Block launched in 2003 when Huff and Naz Hamid decided to meet at a Lakeview coffee shop after first talking on blogs and via email. Within an hour, the co-founders had the general layout for the site decided upon. One month later, Gapers Block was started.
“We had 12 other bloggers on staff with us, all volunteer. It started out as a labor of love,” Huff said.
After graduating from Ohio State University with a degree in Journalism, Huff was unable to find a job as a journalist. He went in to public relations for 10 years, although he never really fell in love with it.
“Journalism is just a conspiracy of older journalists trying to keep jobs from younger journalists,” Huff said.
After leaving the public relations world and finding his way into blogging, Huff has written for a number of unique blogs, including one for the A&E television show Paranormal State, Kenneth Cole and Starwood Resorts.
“A lot of my career has been about finding my voice,” Huff said.
Huff got his start in blogging in 2001 when he began his personal blog, me3dia, as a creative outlet and way to keep family and friends up-to-date on his life.
