Plans for Occupy Kingston protest

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Connor Edington
Image by: Justin Chin
Connor Edington

Tomorrow the Occupy Wall Street movement is scheduled to come to Kingston. Protestors plan to occupy Confederation Park at 1 p.m.

Though there’s no official organizer for the Occupy Kingston movement, participants met over the past week to discuss occupation strategies. They plan to demonstrate against what they believe to be issues surrounding global inequality.

“There’s a lot of problems in the world and I think they all stem from economic reasons,” said Connor Edington after a meeting at Skeleton Park on Wednesday night. “I don’t think I’d be protesting for a specific cause or anything, but I’d just like to see this movement grow.”

The Skeleton Park meeting was the second planning session for the Kingston protest.

Edington, ArtSci ’12, said he’s never participated in a protest or any form of activism but the publicity surrounding Occupy Wall Street made him want to get involved in Occupy Kingston.

The Occupy Wall Street movement started on Sept. 17 with a few dozen protestors demonstrating against worldwide unequal wealth distribution.

Since then, it has spread to major cities in the US, and is also scheduled to come to parts of Canada, including Vancouver and Toronto this weekend.

“It’s really moving in the right direction, I like the fact that many people can join the protest and voice why they’re upset about the current economic and social system,” he said. “The inclusivity about it is very key to the movement, and it doesn’t exclude anyone.”

So far, there’s no confirmed number of protestors for Occupy Kingston, but the event’s Facebook page had received over 240 likes as of yesterday.

“If this movement here grows to a certain size, something that’s very noticeable, then maybe … some of these problems will be addressed more acutely,” Edington said.

Organizers of the Kingston movement plan on networking with several local nonprofit and activist groups to increase attendance at the protest. Edington was one of a small handful of Queen’s students present at the Wednesday meeting.

Though he said five of his friends will likely participate in the protest with him, Edington said he doesn’t expect much participation from the Queen’s student body.

“The stigma surrounding Queen’s doesn’t really help with the turnout we might expect from Queen’s students, because you have a lot of privileged students who don’t pay their way through university,” he said.

“Hopefully this movement can also bring about educating people on the injustices that have been done to people.”

Tags

Activism, Local Politics, Occupy Kingston, Occupy Wall Street

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