No doubt my site is going to have a few issues over the next couple of days - I started out intending to upload some photos of the camp from today and yesterday, and ended up... er, switching hosting companies entirely and planning to switch blog platforms too. In the meantime I'll stick these photos up on photobucket or something because today's ones especially are kinda impressive solely because of the ten people still actually in camp when the main living area has two inches of water on the floor! Thank god it's stopped raining now, and hopefully it won't start again overnight.
ETA: Here's the album with photos from the last two days. The first six are yesterday, the wet ones are today.
Showing posts with label occupy christchurch. Show all posts
Showing posts with label occupy christchurch. Show all posts
Wednesday, 19 October 2011
Day Four
Christchurch locals will know that the weather was miserable today. I had flax weaving during the day but afterwards made my way to Hagley Park with some paint and tea and a ginger loaf, where people were sitting and moving around wrapped in blankets and warm clothing. A few people were fixing a tent which had collapsed in the wind, which was having a bit of a go at some of the others too, but once I settled down under the gazebo and got my sewing out I got into some conversations and everyone was still cheerful, if cold. The general consensus was that at least people seeing that we were still out there meant they might realise we were serious and not just out for a lark.
We had a couple of people drop things by too, which was awesome - someone brought muffins, and a lady came by to donate a blanket and a couple of big bottles of drinking water. Later on we had a workshop on dealing with the police in a worst case scenario, especially as there's a somewhat disturbing story going around at the moment, but as things stand we are getting on quite fine with the police and I hope that continues obviously.
At eight is the evening general meeting which I got to stay for and quite a few people turned up for that since the meetings are pretty much the most important part of the day. Someone volunteers to facilitate to make sure anyone who wants to speak gets heard and move through the agenda - there were twelve items on it tonight that had been added through the day and at the end people can raise any other points. It's open to everyone so any locals who are interested, they're at 10am and 8pm every day and go for up to two hours, maybe a bit more. They're basically for covering the pragmatic details, and the meeting minutes are posted online on the website.
I did goof and not double check when buses finish now so when we finished I ended up walking home. It was a bit surprising - the city goes dead at night. I saw maybe three other pedestrians the whole way home, and not that many cars either. I probably should have expected that, but it was still a little eerie.
We had a couple of people drop things by too, which was awesome - someone brought muffins, and a lady came by to donate a blanket and a couple of big bottles of drinking water. Later on we had a workshop on dealing with the police in a worst case scenario, especially as there's a somewhat disturbing story going around at the moment, but as things stand we are getting on quite fine with the police and I hope that continues obviously.
At eight is the evening general meeting which I got to stay for and quite a few people turned up for that since the meetings are pretty much the most important part of the day. Someone volunteers to facilitate to make sure anyone who wants to speak gets heard and move through the agenda - there were twelve items on it tonight that had been added through the day and at the end people can raise any other points. It's open to everyone so any locals who are interested, they're at 10am and 8pm every day and go for up to two hours, maybe a bit more. They're basically for covering the pragmatic details, and the meeting minutes are posted online on the website.
I did goof and not double check when buses finish now so when we finished I ended up walking home. It was a bit surprising - the city goes dead at night. I saw maybe three other pedestrians the whole way home, and not that many cars either. I probably should have expected that, but it was still a little eerie.
Monday, 17 October 2011
Occupy Day Three
Disclaimer: This is purely my opinion and isn't vetted by the Occupy Christchurch group as a whole.
As I said before I had work this morning, but once I was done it was back to Hagley Park to see how the occupation was going. I caught the end of the morning General Assembly and then we moved the tents around - something they do every day to protect the grass. There was a table set out with food that people could grab and I added my spare bananas to it, as fruit is in high demand, most people eating pretty healthily. For a while I sat with a group just chattin and cross-stitching, answering questions for anyone who came past. We're lucky to ahve a great spot for foot traffic, right by the Parkside bus exchange, so a lot of people stopped over to see what was going on. Only one group was vaguely negative, some teenagers who turned up with a megaphone to troll us, but then even they came over to talk amiably.
Around 2:30 we started up the media and communications meeting, which was relevant to my interests so I joined in with that, which filled up the next couple of hours discussing topics like signage, social media usage, a final edit of our public statement, and what the mainstream media's saying - which isn't much! One of the guys from Unite expressed a bit of concern that we hadn't gotten anything out earlier because Unite had made a statement supporting the occupation and a couple of places took that and started labeling him the organiser which he thought might lead to attacks claiming the whole thing was a union ploy when it's so much bigger than that. I volunteered to look around and collect anything I see, so if you spot anything, dash off an email. You can just put the link in and send it to thelittlepakeha@gmail.com so don't worry if you don't know what to say.
People are pretty much settling in for the long haul, so any time you're around town feel free to stop by and see what's going on.
As I said before I had work this morning, but once I was done it was back to Hagley Park to see how the occupation was going. I caught the end of the morning General Assembly and then we moved the tents around - something they do every day to protect the grass. There was a table set out with food that people could grab and I added my spare bananas to it, as fruit is in high demand, most people eating pretty healthily. For a while I sat with a group just chattin and cross-stitching, answering questions for anyone who came past. We're lucky to ahve a great spot for foot traffic, right by the Parkside bus exchange, so a lot of people stopped over to see what was going on. Only one group was vaguely negative, some teenagers who turned up with a megaphone to troll us, but then even they came over to talk amiably.
Around 2:30 we started up the media and communications meeting, which was relevant to my interests so I joined in with that, which filled up the next couple of hours discussing topics like signage, social media usage, a final edit of our public statement, and what the mainstream media's saying - which isn't much! One of the guys from Unite expressed a bit of concern that we hadn't gotten anything out earlier because Unite had made a statement supporting the occupation and a couple of places took that and started labeling him the organiser which he thought might lead to attacks claiming the whole thing was a union ploy when it's so much bigger than that. I volunteered to look around and collect anything I see, so if you spot anything, dash off an email. You can just put the link in and send it to thelittlepakeha@gmail.com so don't worry if you don't know what to say.
People are pretty much settling in for the long haul, so any time you're around town feel free to stop by and see what's going on.
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