NEW YORK –– Pneumonia and hospitalization were small bumps in the road for one woman with her sights set on changing the world.
Channing Creager slept in the rain for the first two weeks of the Occupy Wall Street movement at Zuccotti Park in New York. She contracted pneumonia from the cold and was hospitalized for nearly two weeks — but she couldn’t wait to get back out to be a part of the growing movement.
“At the beginning, the cops wouldn’t let us have tents out here,” Creager, a 22-year-old realtor from Brooklyn, said. “But the day I was discharged, I pretty much came running back here. It felt like home.”
The Occupy Wall Street movement is heading into its fifth week of operation, and the set-up at the inhabited park in downtown New York City is becoming increasingly developed every day.
Working stations have popped up all across the park, bringing groups together that specialize in certain areas. There is a kitchen-working group with chefs that stress vegetarian and vegan foods. There is a recycling and sustainability-working group, a medical-working group and even a library-working group.
There are more than 20 different working groups that hold scheduled meetings to brainstorm how they can serve and help the hundreds of people camping out and rallying every day against corporate greed.
“The working groups are a way to show everyone that we can work together in harmony and we don’t want or need a leader or an executive,” Creager said. “That’s what we’re fighting against: power.”
Creager also said the movement has goals to prove the criticisms wrong, saying people from all walks of life are a part of the 99 percent. The movement is not just made up of college-aged liberals.
Fifty-year-old Barbara Bohizic from Ellwood City, was decked out from head-to-toe in colorful splatters of oranges and purples, sporting a sign that read “Clowns Against Capitalism.”
Bohizic said she had more than enough reason to take part in the events of the Occupy Wall Street movement. She is currently in a legal battle with Wells Fargo in order to keep one of her most prized possessions — her home.
“I’m not here today for myself. I am here because I don’t want other people to have to go through the same things that I have,” she said. “There has to be changes. We have to end greed, power and control from the corporations.”
And while people dressed in costumes and teenagers playing drums fill the park, a darker undertone is felt.
NYPD cars, buses and vans line the streets for miles around the protest. Police officers with batons in hand are standing by. Outposts surround the land plot where the movement is taking place. And people are sick of it.
“It’s a very sensitive movement and it’s a progress organization so I’m not really sure why there are so many officers here,” said Sandie Luna, an artist from the Dominican Republic. “But despite the police, we’re willing to stay here until there is some change. Beliefs don’t have an expiration date.”