A group of Occupy Wall Street protesters are on a march from Washington DC to Atlanta, Georgia to raise awareness of their cause. Although the march began earlier in New York, the official march beginning was when on December 1st, the group of 11 started hiking from DC roughly coming down side roads near Highway 95, then 85, then #1. Thursday, December 14th, they reached North Carolina, passed through Manson, Middleburg, and stayed in Henderson that night.
They stopped at Wise Truck Stop, which gave them all coffee.
Stopped in Norlina (I think) for a break.
In Norlina, they met James, a local who participated in the Million Man March, that just stopped to thank them. He was also on the bridge at Selma when the police released dogs on him. He had the scars to prove it. James bought the group lunch.
Here he describes his experience on the bridge.
They passed through Middleburg, stopped at Middleburg Grocery, which gave them two sandwiches.
With a hard wind blowing against us, Garth and I labor up a gigantic hill in the unseasonably warm afternoon. On the opposite side of the road there’s a white brick house with the words “Greystone Bar” spray-painted on the side. A dog barks next to a trailer house behind it.
We catch up to Turtle and take a seat on a patch of grass. I stretch out on my back and watch telephone wires reach across the sky. Sometimes, lying down on the grass, in the sun, is the best thing ever.
After the rest of the group catches up with us, a young fellow stops his car and sits with us. He hands out bottled water, gives us a sack of potatoes.
“What do y’all think about Ron Paul?” he asks. “Out of all the candidates I think he’s probably the least evil.
The fellow’s name is Alex. He’s an EMT and freelance journalist. He says he’ll visit us at our camp tonight.
And further down near #1 intersection Alex Mengel stops to chat as well
Here they are seen entering Henderson on Norlina Road
We stop at a gas station for snacks and a woman approaches me with a few dollars in her hand.
“Are y’all homeless?” she asks.
I explain who we are. She gives us the money as a donation.
They stopped at Food Lion on Norlina Road and were donated more food
Later, we stop at Food Lion to buy groceries. A woman drives past us in the parking lot with her little daughter in the back seat.
“I’m very patriotic and I saw your flag,” she says, handing me five dollars.
Garth, who had gone ahead to do the shopping, is inside paying for the food. He tells the cashier about the march.
“Look out the window,” he says, just as we’re crossing the parking lot.
“Y’all aren’t gonna shoot anybody are you?” the cashier says.
We do look a bit like a mob of extras from a Mad Max film. Maybe we should get ourselves some nice suits.
I mix peanuts, raisins and Reese’s Pieces in a bread bag and walk to the trash can to throw away my empty containers. A young fellow pushing a row of shopping carts stops me. His name is Richard. I talk with him for a few minutes about why we’re marching and about non-violent civil disobedience.
“I’m really glad I met y’all,” he says. “I’m trying to start a community organization to keep youth out of gangs.”
He walks back into the store, inspiration lighting up his face.
While the milk man is unloading a shipment for the store, he donates three bottles of chocolate milk and a gallon of regular milk to us.
and came down Garnett Street, where they stopped for a break.
We arrive in Henderson around 3pm, having only walked about 9 miles. Our pace has slowed significantly over the past few days. We’re getting tired and our packs are getting heavier.
“We’re in gang territory now,” Bo says. “I saw some signs.”
A set of railroad tracks runs between rows of brick buildings. Grass grows thru the cracks in sidewalks and vacant lots. A shiny silver Licoln drives by with the bass booming, a Playboy Bunny symbol plastered to the door.
In downtown doing outreach, they met Jihad, who owns several buildings, one of which is vacant. Jihad offered the group to stay the night.
Owen and Cologino stop to talk with a man named Jihad and he offers us his empty shop to sleep in for the night. There’s no electricity, no light, no water. In order to flush the toilet, you fill a bucket with water at the hose out back and dump it into the bowl. This is perfect. It’s even legal.
Dylan and Turtle paint protest signs on cardboard and tape them to the shop windows so people walking by can see them. Owen makes a dream catcher with bird feathers that stick out like rays of sun and hangs it next to them. Spiderweb cracks crawl along the glass. It’s been shot. Street lamp glow spills in thru the clear packing tape that holds it together. On a building across the street, there’s a beautiful mural of a moonlit clock tower and church steeple. A train rattles and honks thru town.
Kid re-joins the group after having been gone all day. He made $20 pawning his spoons. They were antiques from the 1920?s. Alex calls to tell us he’s bringing dinner. A man sticks his head in the door.
“What’s going on in here?” he says with a tone of curiosity.
“This place is occupied,” Garth says with a grin.
“By who?”
“We’re a group of marchers…” Nathan explains.
The man’s name is Pastor Taylor. He’s having a Bible study next door and he’s renting this building. He flips a switch and the lights come on.
“Y’all can go back to candle light if you want…” he says.
“No, no, this is great!”
He invites us to his Bible study and goes back out the door.
Garth plugs in the computer’s power adapter. It works.
If we’d gone our 17 miles today instead of just 10, we may not have met Jihad or Pastor Taylor. We may not be sleeping indoors. We may not have light and electricity.
I don’t care how many miles we do each day. I don’t care how long it takes us to get to Atlanta. I’m just enjoying the journey and all the unexpected things that are happening on the way.
They made signs to leave in the window of the storefront
Alex returned in the evening to cook the group dinner
Jihad sticks around for a while. A little lamp we’ve plugged in throws his shadow all over the walls as he talks and talks to us about his life and the town of Henderson. He speaks like a preacher giving a sermon. We all just sit and listen.
“Were you raised into segregation?” Kid asks Jihad. “Could you tell me about it if you don’t mind?”
“I was raised into Jim Crow,” Jihad says. “Henderson is the only town where KKK is in the phone directory!”
When people tried to speak against that, they were told about Freedom of Speech. Integration happened when Jihad was in fourth grade. Blacks had to go to white schools rather than visa versa. He remembers being chased by dogs walking thru the white neighborhoods.
“You can justify your wrong when you do it, and it becomes your right,” he says. “But it’s still not right. You got to understand history, or else you may look up one day and say, ‘What have I been doing? I’ve been doing someone else’s shit for them.’ People got sick and tired of being sick and tired. If it means we have to stand out in the cold, if it means we gotta get chased by dogs, so be it. But we’re ready to die right now for that change! I’m tired and I ain’t moving. What are you gonna do, kill me? So kill me. I ain’t moving. Y’all got to know the plight of my people. You don’t have to treat me superior. Let’s just stand side by side. I just wanna encourage you guys to keep doing what you’re doing. Race is an important factor. There’s the human race; that’s the first race, and I wish we could just keep it at that. Keep God in you and constantly question your actions. You didn’t start this, you’re a part of it. Stay focused. Like George Bush said; ‘Stay the coarse.’”
Everyone laughs.
“Just making sure y’all are paying attention,” Jihad laughs. “Every opportunity you get to enlighten yourself to these concerns, take it; because if you don’t you’re not being fair. I’m talking about all people’s concerns. You have to have that in your arsenal of knowledge.”
After dinner, the church next door New Life Church of the Open Door along with Pastor Taylor and wife and some of the congregation stopped by to include them in their prayer circle. They talked of Dr. King and his contribution to world betterment and made comparisons of OWS and the freedom marches of the ’60’s.
Just after Jihad leaves, Pastor Taylor and his wife, Arvella, from the New Life church next door, come over to pray for us. They bring a bunch of people with them and we all spread into a circle and hold hands. The pastor and his wife and a couple of other people all pray at the same time- a million voices cascading down out of the ether, each one rolling in its own gospel rhythm, but all of them backing each other like the high and low tones of a jazz quartet.
Arvella tells me it’s their wish to turn this building into a shelter for the homeless and for women and children who need protection from abusive situations. It’s a privilege to be among the first that they have taken in. I like that I’m staying in a place that will be a haven for others. It is somehow very fitting.
Out back, there’s a cookout going on. Soup boils in a pot on a camp stove. A tin pan full of chicken wings sits on the grass. There are bags of rations too. Alex cooked the soup and chicken. The rations were brought by Tim and Darnell, two guys that Kid met in town today. The three of them stay and talk with us for hours.
Afterwards, local supporters came to hang out with the group behind the building
Something is happening. There is an energy brewing. With every step we take, it will grow and spread. One by one, we will wake the people we meet, and they will wake the people around them, until everyone is marching together, until everyone is singing in one explosive voice that will knock down the walls of ignorance and complacency and shed light on the truth so that it may blossom.
Friday morning, the group started marching again, stopping at House of Toyz where owner Tim supplied the group breakfast.
Tim and friends, from House of Toyz, treat us to biscuits with bacon for breakfast. We stand on the driveway outside the shop window full of shiny rims and eat.
“I’m gonna cry when you leave,” Tim says to Kid.
I didn’t know anything about this group or them coming through here, I just happened to pass by them on my way to work Friday morning on Raleigh Road.
And they met a Henderson Police Officer who was inquiring about the group.
Clothes flutter from racks at yard sales. Little brick houses stand shoulder to shoulder, holding up chainlink fence, guarding their patches of grass. The sidewalks wear away as we near the edge of Henderson. Railroad tracks shed rusty tears into the gravel. A forklift wheels 2 by 4?s around a lumberyard.
An elementary school and the smoke stacks of a plant are the last structures we see before the pines close in all around us. Broken CDs, unopened bills and lottery tickets poke up from the brown grass on the roadside.
As the group leaves Henderson, they say “It’s hard leaving Henderson. Everyone is pulling over, rolling down their windows, and telling us their stories of struggle. We bring hope!”
The group made it to Franklinton by the end of the day Friday, and Saturday made it into the Raleigh camp. They will stay in Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill camps for a few days then continue on with a goal of reaching Atlanta by January 26th.
You can read more about the group at www.walkupy.org