I spent part of last night observing and participating in the Occupy Florida/Orlando event. Just wanted to share what I saw below the squiggle.
There was a group of about 400 people rallying at the Orange County Regional History Center in downtown Orlando--located immediately east of Wall Street Plaza. The park there is rather small with a fountain (that was turned off) and a few statues of gators around the place. This took place at 7pm, and the sun was just going down, which didn't help the light situation. But the spotlights that illuminated the makeshift stage they had set up worked just fine.
My cameras were totally fubar (my phone's camera didn't have enough flash, and my digital one was acting odd), but the Orlando Sentinel covered things pretty well. They've got a pretty good video up. And I'm sure the page will be posting pics and vids up soon. Fox News 35 Fox News 35 Report covered it with a pretty biased Power Panel afterwards. From what I could see, WKMG Channel 6 and WESH Channel 2 were there as well.
I got there about 45 minutes into the event. I didn't expect it to be as big as it was, but was impressed when I saw the contingent of people gathered to listen to speakers air their grievances to the world to thunderous applause and chants.
The crowd was more or less the same demographic that we've seen at Occupy Wall Street. UCF and Rollins College were representing--they seemed to be the ones who were organizing the protest, along with a man known only as Reverend Faux. There were some elders there, some parents with their children, and a lot of students and/or post-grad types. I ran into a couple of friends there--one of whom was a coworker of mine. There were a few anarchists, LGBTs, and from what I could tell old school hippies out as well. There was no real political ideology shared among everyone. It seemed as if it was a smattering of Democrats, Republicans, and random Indies from across the spectrum. Lots of religious-leaning people as well. There was someone in a Guy Fawkes mask, which meant Anonymous was involved in some capacity.
Why were people there? Because they knew something was seriously wrong with the system and they were dedicated to trying to come together and fix it. They were motivated and mobilized by the other protests happening across the country.
A bit after the speeches (organized by a general assembly), the myriad working groups sat together to discuss what their demands were going to be. I sat in on one briefly. We talked about Campaign Finance Reform, derivatives, and about the big crash that caused this (double-dip) recession. I had to interject for a minute because not everyone knew what a derivative was. Fortunately we had an accountant in the group and he explained it in plain terms to everyone. There was knowledge from all sectors of society here.
It was a good experience. I've never seen anything like this before. The occupation begins on October 15th at the Orlando Regional Chamber of Commerce at 4pm. I plan on joining them as best as I can.