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Personal Narrative: Give Me Liberty, Or Get Me A Tent

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“Give me Liberty or get me a Tent.” There have been better signs of course. But that was what my protest sign read for the first Occupy action I went to. I carried it proudly to a number of Occupy marches and rallies; for womens’ rights, for housing reforms, for improved prison conditions, and for a better educational system. But I made it for that first idealistic action: the Daylong Nonviolent Mass Occupation. It was San Francisco, so it was mild and windy, and I was on a bus headed up a ridiculously steep hill. My mom pointed out the window to point out a sign that just said “99%,” that was stuck in someone's window. “That’s for that protest that’s taking off,” she whispered.
I had no idea what she was talking about. But she sends …show more content…

So the police and businesses always knew to prepare if they just stayed up to date on the forae. I have experienced few things more unsettling than seeing a line of police in riot gear coming towards me. They told us to move. We were slowly, physically, pushed and pressed down the block, away from the bank. When they had us a safe distance away they formed a line and kept us from going back. I have always supported the police, even then I was practicing what to say if some idiot Occupier decided to bully them. The average policeman’s salary in San Francisco is nearly 64,000 dollars a year, the average price of a house is 930,000. So they truly are the 99%, but that day they managed to pepper spray and arrest people who were on a mass action with nonviolent in its very …show more content…

My older sister used to complain about the marijuana smoke near the camp. Wall Street workers complained about the difficulty of getting to work past the Occupiers. What small things to worry about! The image of lazy hippies asking for “entitlements” became so entrenched in the minds of objectors to the protests that it seemed to me they were deliberately ignoring the real issues, and the real bravery of the people who were fighting for a solution. It was not only America that was Occupied. The people of Russia, and Egypt, and Eastern Europe rose up. The major Occupy movement is in China right now. I could not understand how so many people would dismiss such bravery; the bravery it would take to stand against governments that kill their own people even more often than ours

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