Sunday R&R at Occupy Dame Street

Quiet day today at the camp, at least when I was there up til about 5p.m.  The march this coming Saturday 22nd October is now definitely going ahead, it was suggested and enthusiastically agreed at the march yesterday. It'll start at the Garden of Remembrance on Parnell Square at 2p.m.

Also went across to Coolock for a radio programme with Near FM, nice to be travelling around Dublin with a fellow interviewee from the camp who I didn't know 10 days ago. At the radio station gained some valuable experience in how to stop a conversation being dominated by the self-described right-of-centre trouble-stirrer invited on to liven things up. Good roundtable discussion overall and hopefully the two of us from the camp got across the main messages from the Occupy Dame Street statement.




Supposedly I and a good few others were taking time 'off' away from camp today yet we all ended up there for a while nonetheless. Just hard to leave - as another person commented, it really does feel like home. People were tired but seemed to have gotten some reasonable rest yesterday.  Folks were continuing to wander up and express interest, take flyers, get talking etc. Muffins and much else were donated. And there was a very nice vibe, very chilled, everyone taking it a bit easier as it was Sunday. Against all odds the 'security' tent of stuff that I'd tidied yesterday had remained tidy for 16 hours while being used continuously. There were plans for a 6p.m. assembly which may have happened after I left. News was circulating about the numbers at over 1500 locations worldwide yesterday for the global democracy day. Another supporter played an incredible video of a glowing sea of 500,000 people gathered last night in Madrid. Wow.

There was a tarp stitching effort - let's call it a workshop, come on, people were learning - going on in the open walking area to the right of the camp, laying out all the tarps as they would fit over the camp, creating new eyelets with duct tape and cable ties. The somewhat ineffective bit of marquee that had been covering the main camp central space had been taken down and grandiose plans involving a latticework of ropes to be tied at intervals to the patchwork of tarps were being effected instead.




Everyone was in good form. A few more tents had appeared overnight and there were about 70-80 people sleeping at the camp last night. A few folks who'd been there since Saturday left for a night at home. The excess of adrenalin over the last nine days has brought me so beyond tiredness that I've been inhabiting some kind of pleasantly altered physical unreality. After getting to bed only after 5a.m. this morning, my body thought it would help matters to wake up at 8a.m. Yay. I have now spent a strange evening in my flat doing unusual things like eating at a table, off plates, with cutlery, while seated on a chair.  How weird.  Tomorrow, it's onwards with week two. So different to how we felt last Sunday evening, heading into only the second night, giving impromptu legal advice workshops in case the Gardai decided to boot us out early on Monday morning, wondering how long the camp could possibly last.  It's already been better than most people had dared hope. Day 10 tomorrow, and sustainability will be the watchword, of people as well as the camp.