Occupy Charlotte

I have never been to a protest or a large gathering of this sorts before.  I have always wanted to and since I had the day off, I figured I might as well go ahead and get my feet wet.  I went downtown with really no expectations of what I was going to see.  I had seen clips of the protests in NYC and saw that some of those demonstrations had become violent but Charlotte is a different city. 

I ended up downtown in front of City Hall where about 300 or so people were gathered.  There were about 5 main people in charge and they took turns talking about the rules and that they expected there to be no violence at all.  There were people from the ages 5 all the way to 80 with signs with various slogans on them.  From there they marched to the Bank of America building and were shouting different chants all the way there.  There was police in heavy force making sure nothing got too out of control.  People would drive by and honk to show support and the crowd would go crazy.  After about 2 hours of chanting and shouting everyone made their way back to City Hall.  From here the leaders spoke again and they formed different groups who would lead certain tasks like:  fundraising, food, shelter (for the people occupying the lawn), writing letters, etc.... 

Here are some pics of the event that I captured, tomorrow I will have all of them edited along with some video.  If you would like to find out more about their causes and what they are protesting, here is a start, Proposed List Of Demands.  Or you can google "occupy" and you will find tons of stuff on the topic.  They have been protesting in NYC for almost a month now, who knows how long they will be protesting here in Charlotte.

Day 13/365 "Life is a "trip"...."