When Occupy D.C. moved into McPherson Square nearly three months ago, protester Sophie Vic was so excited she couldn’t sleep.
“It was so hard for me to go to bed because it was so great at night,” she said, laughing. “People would walk through, wanting to talk about what we were doing.”
These days, though, she says she’s in “triage mode.” Arrests, violence and alleged sexual harassment in McPherson have made some protesters feel so unsafe they’ve left the park. Food shortages have sent Occupiers to Twitter, asking for donations. The alleged theft of nearly $10,000 from the Occupy D.C. bank account has made it hard to buy supplies or fund bailouts.
“It’s definitely become more volatile, and we haven’t held each other accountable in productive ways. That’s what needs to happen,” Vic said.
After three months of living in the park, Occupiers feel they’re reaching a turning point. Some have discussed leaving the park entirely. Most say they’re not ready to pack up camp. But many acknowledge that Occupy just isn’t equipped to deal with some of the problems facing the park.
“When you’re giving out free food in a public park you kind of de facto take on the responsibilities that a homeless shelter would have,” said Sam Jewler, a media organizer with Occupy D.C. Some of the homeless population that Occupy serves have mental illnesses that the group “simply isn’t prepared to handle,” he said. The camp, he feels, has “flipped” — from a community of people “really intent on the movement” to a majority that isn’t as actively involved.
Still, the movement spends significant time and energy on maintaining the camp, Jewler said. They’ve even formed a “de-escalation committee” that mitigates fights, patrols the park at night and has drawn up a set of guidelines — “no drugs, no violence, no alcohol” among them, Jewler said — to help police the camp.
With incidents like an altercation last Thursday that saw two U.S. Park Police officers assaulted, though, Vic said she “worries about how we’re reaching people now.”
“I think there’s a sense in which a few things have gotten away from us,” she said. “But I think we absolutely have the tools at our disposal to deal with it.”
