Occupy Wall Street will come to both Port Townsend and Port Angeles this week, with rallies organized in both North Olympic Peninsula cities, and carpools are planned from both Clallam and Jefferson counties to the ongoing protest in Seattle.
Occupy Port Townsend will be Friday. Occupy Port Angeles will be Saturday.
Carpools to Seattle are planned today and Sunday.
Today’s will travel from Clallam County to Seattle’s Westlake Park for the ongoing urban rally, one of many in the nation in support of the Occupy Wall Street protest in New York City.
Those interested can phone Sam Woods at 360-683-1954.
Sunday’s carpool will be from Jefferson County. To participate, phone Mark Stevenson at 360-385-9037.
Port Townsend rally
Friday’s Port Townsend rally is organized by Jefferson and Clallam counties’ MoveOn councils.
The rally for “Jobs/Not Cuts” will be from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. in the triangle in front of JPMorgan Chase Bank at Kearney Street and Sims Way.
“Increasingly, it’s Main Street versus Wall Street,” said Jefferson MoveOn Council co-chair Stevenson.
“We’re committed to Main Street, with its concerns for jobs, healthy local businesses and the community. Wall Street is increasingly damaging to everyone but the super-rich.”
The Port Townsend rally will feature music, speakers and a string of Burma-Shave-style signs along Sims Way.
MoveOn council members will staff a table with informational handouts and petitions addressed to the congressional supercommittee calling for an end to corporate tax breaks and demanding budget decisions that will create jobs and strengthen social safety net programs, said Carol Gallup of the Jefferson County MoveOn council.
Unemployed people will find information at the table about an upcoming free class for those seeking a job or help in starting a small business, she said.
Port Angeles rally
Participants in Port Angeles will gather at Veterans Park on Lincoln Street, just north of the Clallam County Courthouse, at 11 a.m. Saturday.
The route of the march from there will be decided then.
No speakers are scheduled, said Nelson Cone, an organizer. Some participants will speak.
“We’re protesting the corruption in government,” Cone said.
“Elected officials no longer pay attention to the voters; they pay attention to the money. The money has corrupted the process,” he said.
“We need to reform our health care system and protect our Social Security and get the jobs started, get money back in circulation.”
Cone, who is a member of the Clallam MoveOn council, the Green Party and Veterans for Peace, said those organizations are sponsoring the rally along with Radical Women, the county Democratic Party, members of the Occupy Port Angeles Movement and others.
“The overwhelmingly successful ‘American Awakening’ event we held in Sequim in September illustrated our communities’ yearning for ways to wrest control from the corporations over the lives of the 99 percent of us who really keep our economy going,” said Clallam MoveOn organizer Bill Kildall.
For more information about Friday’s rally in Port Townsend, phone Carol Gallup at 360-379-4795.
To sign up for the rally, visit www.moveon.org.
