Activists took a stand against greed and financial corruption with their own Occupy Wall Street movement at Waverly Park.
More than 30 people participated at the Occupy Thunder Bay rally on Saturday. The group gathered in a circle and discussed ways to change the city including helping the poor, making the city more accessible to everyone and having everyone become equals.
The protest was in part of a global movement to protest against greed and financial corruption and originated in New York over concerns of corporations influencing political decisions.
Kate Rookes, a spokeswoman for the group, said they wanted a leaderless gathering in order to give everyone a chance to speak. While she expected close to a hundred people to attend in the early morning, she said she was happy with the number of people who did come.
“Cities across the world are taking part and kind of rising up and they can actually contribute something,” Rookes said. “In other cities it is a lot bigger. It is different than it is in Thunder Bay. I’m running into a lot of people that don’t know about it and never heard about it. We’re here in solidarity with them. We are here because we are the 99 per cent. Thunder Bay as a city can change. We can work on our demands.”
In New York, the protesters were about corporate lobbying and greed. In Canada, there’s a different structure so it’s important to find our own issues and work on ways to change the country for the better, she said.
The protest was expected to move to Bay Street but Rookes said they didn’t have any solid plans to do so unless everyone wanted to. She said she wanted to make sure that everyone knew that going to Bay Street was more symbolic of the financial district in Toronto that shares the same street name.
“There’s a lot of visibility on Bay Street,” she said. “We were originally going to set it up to protest on Bay Street but we don’t want to look like we’re protesting the local businesses because that’s exactly what we are for.”
For Rookes, the most exciting aspect of the rally was that it brought people together.
“We aren’t just a society we are all individuals and we’re all in this together,” she said. “We don’t need other people to speak for us. This is happening. It’s not something that’s going to go away. It’s what the world needs. We’re making this (movement) bigger by spreading it to Thunder Bay.”
Larry Brigham was one of the participants at the rally. The 65-year-old retired social worker has worked with the poor most of his life and he said that’s what he wanted to see changed first. He said there’s a growing gap between the rich and the poor and that needed to stop.
“I’m here for the people who need more money to live,” Brigham said. “They are poor and having difficulties living and getting along. There’s lots of them in the city. People on Ontario Works don’t get enough money to live on. People on disability pension don’t make enough to live on. Elderly people all across the city have to go to food banks. That’s not right.”
McKellar ward Coun. Paul Pugh attended the rally and said it’s important that people participated in both active demonstrations and politics. There’s many avenues for people express their points of views from elected officials to the media, he said.
“I think it’s been long overdue that people started protesting the trends that we’ve been seeing for the last three decades,” Pugh said. “The extreme rich are getting much richer and all the rest of us are actually losing ground. It’s about time that people started speaking up and say enough is enough. I don’t think people should sit back and say we elected people to speak on our behalf and yes people do that but that’s not the only voice people have.”
