“Don’t think it is just about the cold — the real purpose is to use indoor space to work more effectively to build the movement,” Zeese wrote in an e-mail.
The group had debated its future for several weeks last month, and a small group was adamant that some protesters remain on the plaza despite the chilly weather.
Explore Occupy D.C. up close
MORE LOCAL NEWS
At Freedom Plaza during a wintry night this week, the wind gusted, and tempers began to fray.
“People get a little bit more irritated,” protester Kyle Szolsek said as he jumped up and down in the frigid air. “I’m from Maine, so it’s not so bad. I think I might go inside our warming center and teach an aerobics class.”
Blair Rush, a 41-year-old homeless woman in her tent on Tuesday night, knows cold. She said she has been without a permanent home for four years, since she stopped being able to make her mortgage payments. She doesn’t stay in shelters because she has a dog, she said.
“Thank God I have blankets,” she said, her body warmed by at least three layers of clothing. “I don’t do cold.”
Her tent, big enough to hold nine, was covered in blankets that sat atop more blankets. She sat on a blanket-covered milk crate in front of her hot plate, huddling over a pot of steaming water.
Watching the camp empty out as winter arrived reaffirmed to Rush that there were class divisions among the 99 percent: those who can’t go home again and those who choose not to. When the mercury began to sink, Rush noticed there were fewer occupiers occupying. Some went home for the holidays, and many spend hours out of the wind in nearby restaurants and coffee shops.
Not that Rush faults those who spend the cold nights in a heated place with a roof over their heads. She’d do the same if she could.
Jerry Jackson, another occupier, said he wondered whether the temperature will do what the police and politicians haven’t: Shut the place down.
“I’m here as long as we need to be here to make our point,” he said. “The people that are going to stay are the people who truly believe they are making a difference. The other people will just blow away.”
The Post Most: LocalMost-viewed stories, videos and galleries int he past two hours
Loading...
Comments