The Occupy Boulder movement has decided to join the
Halloween festivities this weekend by urging participants to wear costumes to
the rally scheduled for Saturday, Oct. 29, beginning at 11 a.m. at the Broadway
and Canyon intersection.
The slogan paired with the event is: “Because the corporate
empire is scary stuff and we’re not going to let them scare us anymore.”
Participants are encouraged to dress as their worst corporate nightmare.
“We thought it would be a fun way to reach out to families
and people with kids and make sure that it is a really fun and playful event
but still about very serious issues,” says Fiore Grey, a member of the Occupy
Boulder movement. “We want to engage a wide demographic because that is what
the whole idea of ‘99 percent’ is really about.”
Grey is planning to dress as “the Wicked Witch of Wall
Street,” an idea pulled from an entire “Occupy Oz” play she and a group of
artists are planning to produce in the future. The play will include the Wicked
Witch of Wall Street, the munchkins (who are little people but realize that
together they are a large group, or 99 percent, that can make a difference) and
the flying monkeys, who decide to strike because they no longer want to suffer
the general abuses of the Wicked Witch.
Grey says she is making an effort to engage people in fun
ways while still keeping the goals and messages of Occupy Boulder in mind.
“For the last two weeks we have been talking about very
serious issues because this is a very serious time that will determine the
state of not just my generation, but my children’s generation,” Grey says. “I
think this is a very intense process, and there are very serious undertones.
Anything we can do to keep the energy happy and upbeat is really important to
me and the movement.”
Grey says she is bringing her 5-year-old son and 8-month-old
daughter to the rally on Saturday dressed in Halloween costumes. Her son, who
drew sad and angry faces in chalk on the sidewalks to represent his
interpretation of the people at Occupy Wall Street when it first began, will be
wearing an elephant costume. Though his costume isn’t related to the Occupy
Boulder message, Grey says he wants to be a munchkin in the “Occupy Oz” play
once it is produced.
The intersection at Broadway and Canyon will also host a
general assembly, beginning at 1 p.m. on Saturday, and an open forum
immediately afterwards.
Karen Conduff, another member of Occupy Boulder, says there
is also a general assembly scheduled for tonight at 6 p.m. at the corner of
Broadway and Canyon. Conduff says tonight’s meeting will be to discuss a
proposal to increase occupation of the intersection to a daily presence, from
12 to 6 p.m. each day of the week, indefinitely.
“We had our first rally two weeks ago, and we had 750
people,” Conduff says. “Last week, we had about 300 people. So now, we’ll see
what kind of people can contribute to a daily occupation.”
“The thing about this movement is that it is not going to go
away,” Grey says. “It isn’t like we can just sign a petition and go back to our
regularly scheduled programming. It is really and truly about radical changes.
We are in it for the long haul.”
