UPDATE: Occupy Richmond protesters march downtown

Credit: P. KEVIN MORLEY/TIMES-DISPATCH

Rose Olsovsky of Richmond took her message high above the crowd during the Occupy Richmond rally in Monroe Park.

By: Times-Dispatch Staff | Times-Dispatch
Published: October 15, 2011
Updated: October 15, 2011 - 8:36 PM

The Occupy Wall Street movement spilled onto Richmond’s streets tonight as more than 300 protesters marched from Monroe Park to Kanawha Plaza for the start of what they said would be a local occupation.

“If we can get through tonight, we can do anything,” Graham Evans, one of the facilitators for Occupy Richmond, told the group after it had spent more than two hours in a circle trying to reach consensus over where to go.

The group finally opted for the plaza in the heart of Richmond’s financial district as “our Wall Street” over Monument Avenue, where some had wanted to camp between statues they said were “symbols of oppression.”

But another “general assembly” meeting was planned for Sunday to decide whether to keep the occupation in Kanawha Plaza or move elsewhere.

“We really are taking the public’s power back,” said Vivek Jain, who joined the protest wearing a physician’s white lab coat. He said he is a doctor planning to specialize in psychiatry but wanted to stay with the occupation “as long as it takes” because of the multiple crises the nation faces and the lack of civil discourse to solve the problems.

“The two-party paradigm has failed,” he said as he marched along Cary Street, where the protesters drew curious stares and some words of encouragement from people leaving the Richmond Folk Festival.

The march to Kanawha Plaza, at Eighth and Canal streets, had been preceded by the general assembly meeting in the park near Virginia Commonwealth University.

The protesters held signs representing a range of concerns, from the environment and the economy to women’s health and student loans. One that seemed to sum up the mood said: “If you aren’t ticked off, you are not paying attention.”

Using techniques popularized by the Wall Street occupation, the group tried to reach consensus on how to proceed using “the people’s mic” – in which each speaker spoke in sentence fragments that were then repeated by the entire group – and “spirit fingers” pointing up or down to agree or disagree.

A suggestion to take the march through the Richmond Folk Festival drew a quick fingers down.

“This is our first time with occupy anything,” said Kimmy Certa, a resident of Fulton Hill, before the start of the general assembly. She was there with her husband, Chris Farmer, and their daughter, Anwen Farmer, and son, Cruxien Farmer.

Seven-year-old Anwen held a sign that said “I share. Do you?”

Certa said her husband had lost his job three years ago at the start of the recession, and they’re worried they’ll lose their house.

“We’re feeling it,” she said.