November 2011

This semester I have served OrangePolitics as a student intern to complete a minimum 30-hour service-learning requirement for a sociology class entitled “Social and Economic Justice.” The course is a capstone requirement for all social and economic justice minors like myself and has allowed my professor the opportunity to chronicle the development of the Occupy movement over the course of the semester. Admittedly, I am privileged. But, having studied the birth and spread of this movement, I was shocked when a local demonstration against corporate hegemony of the wealthiest Americans (unaffiliated directly with the Occupy Chapel Hill demonstrations) took a dramatic turn a little more than a week ago, as a police tactical team of more than 25 officers arrested eight demonstrators in a vacant Franklin Street building.