Occupy KC March -- October 9th

It took me a while to figure out how to transfer stuff from my camera onto my computer, but here are the pictures and videos that I took at the Occupy KC march. These are from October 9th, and the march began at 4pm and ended sometime around 6:30pm. We went from the park next to the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City on Memorial Drive to a fountain in the plaza, and then back around. The whole march was around 5.5 miles, and there was a head count of somehere around 570 people.

Here's a picture that I took when I first showed up, with Guy Fawkes holding a poster and the person speaking on-stage in the background (who is unfortunately covered up by that guy):
I had to take a picture of this guy's sign:
Here's some of the crowd with the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City in the background:
This is a better image of the KC Fed, with a close-up of some of the attendees. As you can see, the age range was all over the charts:
I took this one right as the march began:
This was the first turn we took on the march with a driver who seems to be following and filming:
Here's a view from that same street crossing, except pointed to the right of the last one, which is the direction that we came from:
Guy Fawkes was there to give hugs to anybody who was feeling down because of the state of our country:
A local news channel KCTV5 News showed up no more than 15 minutes into the march:
Here's a picture of some guy's sign, and in the background is a man with one leg who I assume is a veteran:
I took a picture of this guy's T-shirt when we arrived at the fountain, and you can see some of the crowd behind him:
This woman's sign took a spin on the stereotypical, loony, "The End Is Near" sign:
And as we made our way back, Guy Fawkes was waving the American flag with a peace sign on it in front of a statue in the plaza:

The quality of my videos are garbage, but I took this one right as we began the march. I was standing up on a wall, so that gave me a good view of all of the people:

This video was taken just as we began arriving at the fountain which was the destination of the march:

Here's another video of the protesters gathered at the fountain. I took this one once everbody arrived, and there are also some people on the other side of the street:

We also had a police encounter on the way back. Some guys were walking in the street, so the cops rolled up and basically told them to stay on the sidewalk. Before this happened, we were chanting "Get on the sidewalk", but they were being stubborn, basically asking for trouble.

We were chanting "the whole world is watching" because a few people had a live feed of the march up on the internet. After the cops decide to let the guys off with a warning, they shake hands with the protesters, and even hug one of them.The quality of this video is a refreshing alternative to mine, and the quality of those police officers are a refreshing alternative to some of the pigs over in New York:

I found this video that shows what led up to the police encounter. As you can see, the police van is behind those two guys honking, and we chant "get on the sidewalk", but they were just too cool and rebellious I guess:

And finally, here's a video of some drivers that were honking to the tune of our chant

I have more stuff that's saved onto my camera, but not onto the memory chip that I had in there, so I need to find some program that will let me convert the videos and put them on my computer. I have a few interviews on there, and more videos too.

This is why I like this site. Thanks for recording real news that a majority of media stations won't cover. I don't know how many times I read threads on this site that are relaying events that national media stations either don't cover or don't televise until three days later. Our members are more informative than the national media!

Thanks again for taking the time to record this protest. S&F for your effort to record news worthy events like this.

reply to post by WeRpeons

Unfortunately my coverage was pretty delayed too, it took me over 3 days to figure out how to put that stuff on my computer. But I did make a thread about the march the night that I went to it, and included another video of the entire march that I found online.

What are they protesting? The signs are not helping me understand.
seriously ,what is the objective of all these occupies?

reply to post by 12voltz


This 4 minute video should explain it to you:

reply to post by TupacShakur


Thanks for the pictures and coverage!

Thread update


I just returned from the daily occupykc march, and have some pictures and videos to share.

I took these two pictures of the crowd gathered up right before the march began:

We had police escorts today which was awesome. They would block off every street crossing and intersection and allow us to pass safely:

One might expect to see this flag at a tea party rally, but as I and many others have been saying, this isn't an issue of left vs right. There are people of all ethinicities, ages, and political affilliations taking part in the protests:

Once we arrived at the park, there were several speakers. Here was the first one who introduced the occupy movement and thanked everybody for being there:

The next speaker briefly talked about racism in that area:

This woman talked about Monsanto and what they're doing to the food supply, specifically corn, and informed people of another meeting which will discuss that subject in depth:

This ex-convict talked about the prisons in this country, and how (if I recall correctly) 42% of prisons are owned by corporations and how they profit from that:

This man talked about the XL pipeline, which is an oil pipeline which plans to cut through the only freshwater aquifer in the United States which is in Kansas:

This woman talked about her organization whose goal is to amend the Constitution in order to state the corporations are not people, and do not have any of the rights granted to people:

Here are some of the cops that were chilling nearby and waiting for us to head out:

This guy talked about his home being foreclosed on due to an accounting error by Bank of America in 2010:

The next speaker described how he has applied everywhere for work, and would get the same answer each time "We'll call you" or "We'll e-mail you", but they never would:

This guy gave an amazing speech about how he originally perceived the occupy protests compared to how he now does, among many other things (bad picture, sorry):

There were a few other speakers, one of which used to be homeless and described her experiences with the job market. I really hope to find these online, because they were great speeches which covered many though-provoking subjects. Since there is no real leadership at the protests, whoever wanted to speak could come up and speak. There were a few others that I forgot to photograph, but here's one guy who briefly spoke:

I wish I could have recorded all of the speeches, because they were all excellent, and my descriptions are just a half-assed paraphrasing from memory, but unfortunately I had limited video recording time.....Many other people recorded them, so once I find them online I'll post them here.

Here's a video that I took after we arrived in the park which was the destination of the march. Everybody was getting situated on the hill and preparing to listen to the people that were speaking for that day:

Here are the people gathered in the park:

I took these pictures from up on a small hill after we left the park and were waiting for everybody who was cleaning up in the park to catch up:

I took this video after we left the park, and were letting the rest of the protesters catch up with us. They were left behind because they were picking up trash in the park, so we just hung out there for a few minutes. The people were really sluggish and tired on the way back, as their lack of motivation and enthusiam in the chants reflects:

I saw this sign and snapped a picture:

I took these pictures from "base-camp" after the march: Free hot dogs, chips, pretzels, and soda for the marchers: