'Occupy Wall Street' movement gains support in Eugene
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EUGENE, Ore. – The Occupy Wall Street protests have been going on for the past three weeks in New York City and some people in Eugene have been involved in the movement.
Sam Chapman is a senior at the University of Oregon. He noticed that several other cities across the country had movements in support of Occupy Wall Street, so he wanted to create a group for Eugene.
“If there’s one other city that can pull this off, its Eugene,” Chapman said. “So I said, ‘there’s no harm in making a Facebook page and seeing what happens ,‘ and within 24 hours we had over 200 members and a dialogue was rolling.”
His Facebook page “Occupy Eugene” has over one thousand members.
“People are not happy with the current state of the economy, with unemployment, with injustices in general,” Chapman said. “This is just one venue, umbrella, that everyone can come together to stand in solidarity against the things that we wanna see changed in the world.”
Chapman says social media including Twitter and the web has played a huge role in spreading news about “Occupy Eugene.”
“We can inform so many people through these channels and they can inform other people,” said Chapman. “It’s just so easy to hit the share button or the like button and then a thousand people can see that and we just get reaction from that.”
Occupy Eugene will be holding a meeting on Tuesday, October 4, at 5 p.m. at the EMU Amphitheatre at the University of Oregon.
One local man had a chance to travel to New York and see firsthand the Occupy Wall Street protests. Aaron Pulley was on the Brooklyn Bridge when he saw the protesters coming towards the Brooklyn Bridge.
“It was really cool to see all kinds of people really fighting together as one. You couldn’t help but be moved by the spirit of the people. That was what was so intriguing about the whole thing,” Pulley said.
Pulley said police officers guided protesters towards the Brooklyn Bridge from Wall Street and then began arresting people once they got to the bridge.
“They just started arresting folks. It wasn’t like a guy running around yelling, they were just randomly arresting folks out of the crow and it was strange,” said Pulley.
He said he saw people of all ages getting arrested, including a young teenage girl.
“She looked scared. She was very young and they took her cell phone from here and threw her into a wagon without knowing if her parents were there or what,” he recalls.
