{"id":9668,"date":"2011-11-29T12:17:05","date_gmt":"2011-11-29T17:17:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.raleighpublicrecord.org\/?p=9668"},"modified":"2011-11-29T12:17:05","modified_gmt":"2011-11-29T17:17:05","slug":"occupy-raleigh-gets-a-new-lease","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/news\/2011\/11\/29\/occupy-raleigh-gets-a-new-lease\/","title":{"rendered":"Occupy Raleigh Gets a New Lease"},"content":{"rendered":"

Occupy Raleigh caught its second wind during the Thanksgiving holiday when it made a deal to set up a tent city at the corner of West and Edenton streets.<\/p>\n

The empty, park-like piece of land is owned by three separate companies. The tent city is confined to Playmaker Properties\u2019 half-acre plot on the north end. An anonymous donor is renting the property from Playmaker Properties, LLC. The company wouldn\u2019t confirm the terms of the agreement, but said a deal is in place.<\/p>\n

Protestors, who moved to the new spot Friday, said the rent is $400 a month.<\/p>\n

Occupy Raleigh is an offshoot of the 24-hour Occupy Wall Street protest that started in September and has spurred similar round-the-clock protests around the country. Recently, protests from Manhattan to Oakland have been evicted from their encampments.<\/p>\n

Protestors in Raleigh plan to continue occupying the Capitol during the day, but now the property on West Street will become the base of operations, complete with a library, cooking facilities, a Porta Potty and tents.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Occupy Raleigh set up camp at its new location Friday, between Edenton and Morgan Streets.<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s going to be the foundation for the movement to start thinking about getting its message out, instead of thinking about where it\u2019s going to put its stuff,\u201d said 61-year-old retiree Joseph Huberman.<\/p>\n

The new area isn\u2019t as walker-friendly as the Capitol. It\u2019s a triangular island with no sidewalks surrounded by three busy streets. Still, protestors said it\u2019s better for signage and will be more visible to drivers.<\/p>\n

But Occupy didn\u2019t get its new home because the Playmaker Properties sympathized.<\/p>\n

Rob Baumgart of Playmaker said Occupy doesn\u2019t have a cohesive message.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not going to align myself with something that I don\u2019t know what it stands for,\u201d Baumgart said.<\/p>\n

When asked if allowing Occupy to lease the property indicated some level of appreciation for the movement he said, \u201cI appreciate capitalism enough to allow them to lease it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

The People's Library at Occupy Raleigh's new site.<\/p><\/div>\n

Regardless of the reason, Occupiers are grateful.<\/p>\n

Charles Hancock, who took a year off from Virginia Commonwealth University to take part in Occupy, said having a base camp has increased overnight occupiers.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere wasn\u2019t as many people who were willing to stay on the sidewalk, whereas now we\u2019ve had more and more people staying every night\u2014usually anywhere from 15 to 20 people a night,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Shawn Ryan has stayed every night but three since the Raleigh occupation began Oct. 15.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a lot less stressful here. We don\u2019t wake up every morning with cops kicking us in the feet,\u201d Ryan said. \u201cWe used to go to sleep at 1 then wake up at 5:30 or 6:00 and take everything down. It was just getting overwhelming and monotonous.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After losing a battle with the city to find a home, Occupy Raleigh has finally secured a base camp that occupiers say has brought new life to the movement.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24024,"featured_media":9670,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[15,23],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9668"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24024"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9668"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9668\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9670"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9668"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9668"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9668"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}