“There comes a time when action needs to take over”: VCU students spearhead Occupy Richmond demonstration

Mechelle Hankerson
News Editor

It started on one block of New York City and has grown to occupy 46 states nationwide.

Occupy Wall Street is on its 20th day of occupation and since Sept. 17, when demonstrators began to gather,  cities across the country have mobilized in support of the effort, including Richmond.

Occupy Richmond is scheduled to take place on Oct. 15, and more details of the event will be finalized at the group’s public meeting Thursday evening.

Alexandria Vasquez, the president of VCU’s Students for Social Action and the unofficial organizer of the Occupy Richmond effort, said the occupations across the country are a way to show government and corporations in the United States that they American people are struggling despite the successes of government and corporations.

“It’s important to say … ‘I can’t pull myself up by the bootstraps’,” she said. “Not everyone can have a corporation so (the government) need(s) to start looking at the real American people that work and are contributing to society and (the government) need(s) to give them a break and not corporations. Not people who already take home three million dollars a year.”

Vasquez said some of the issues demonstrators are attempting to address are especially relevant to college students.

“We make up the majority of the United States: the students, their families,” Vasquez, a sociology graduate student, said. “We need to make sure that we have our voices heard.”

“There comes a time when action needs to take over,” she added.

Before the larger Occupy Richmond event, other students at VCU are rallying in The Compass on Friday, Oct. 7 to show support for the 700 demonstrators arrested from the Brooklyn Bridge over the weekend.

“We are there to ask people, ‘Why are you so frustrated? What is making you so upset?'” Christina Tyler, one of the organizers of Friday’s rally.

Tyler said that, to her, the biggest problem is the disparity of wealth in the country.

“The middle class is being rubbed so thin that it’s basically depleting,” she said. “Its becoming a mass of workers and then a small … elite class, and that is not what is progressive for this country.”

Joe Woods, another member of VCU’s Students for Social Action and another organizer of Friday’s rally, said there are many different issues among people who are taking part in “Occupies,” or cities were events like Occupy Wall Street are happening.

For him personally, he said that, like Tyler, the difference between economic classes is something worth addressing.

“People have to decide between getting care for cancer and sending their kids to college? It seems inhumane … on behalf of the people who are just stowing away the money without actually using it,” he said.

Tyler and Woods think that at the heart of the larger movement is the drive to motivate people to speak up for themselves and take a more active role in their own government.

Vasquez said Occupy Richmond is a chance for people to show the government what is best for them, rather than allow the government to make decisions without input.

“We need to speak for ourselves,” she said. “We cannot let people who don’t know us (and) who cannot relate to our lives talk for us.”

Vasquez said she comes from a lower-class family, but like most demonstrators nationwide, this should have no effect on how her life pans out in America.

“I still feel that I have power, and I feel like a lot of people around me don’t believe me and to inspire other people to know that – that is why we occupy Richmond.”