What exactly did Occupy Charlotte accomplish before it was dismantled? That is hard to tell from what is probably the most comprehensive “inside” article written about it to date by the Huffington Post. It follows the self-appointed leader of the Charlotte group before what remained of the occupy movement here was disassembled.
“I’ve gotten a lot of criticism, especially in the local paper, because one of the reporters said Vic Suter, 22, quit her job to come out to occupy and everybody just started responding, oh she must be an idiot you know,” Vic Suter says, referring to what Charlotte Observer readers said about her in the comments section of the paper. “Why would you do that, why would you give up a job to go sit on a lawn and protest? My way of seeing it is I quit my full time job because this is a more important one.”
Suter, Occupy Charlotte’s self-appointed leader, lead daily marches on behalf of a bevy of ever changing causes while the uptown camp was up and running. The second she left town for a few days though, the marches stopped and the campers fell into disarray. This was because, as even Suter admits, a lot of the Occupiers could be lazy.
She was tired of seeing too many activists sitting around. She’d sometimes had to barter with them to march: I’ll give you a cigarette if you get out of your tent. She and others even had to march on their own camp to motivate the laziest camp squatters. They’d tromp through the haphazard rows of tents shouting, “Out of the tents and into the streets!”
Even Suter admitted to being afraid living at the camp at times.
During the first week Vic lived at Occupy Charlotte, she says someone stole her clothes, her jacket and her ID. She eventually got a tent and a lock. She says she was afraid to leave the camp. She’d only leave for an hour or two a day.
“I was always scared — What’s going to happen while I’m gone? What am I going to come back to?” she recalls thinking. “I was just scared that somebody was going to do something stupid and get us shut down and I was going to come back and tents were going to be destroyed.”
And then there was the general mayhem.
The marches were addictive. Vic says she yelled so much that no one heard her real voice for long stretches. For the first three weeks, her voice was constantly hoarse. But it wasn’t powerful enough to silence the camp’s in-fighting that sometimes got physical. On a few occasions, people got caught bringing drugs into the camp.
One leader left in a well-publicized dispute over the direction of the camp. Restraining orders were exchanged, the scope of which banned one of the main organizers from the camp and from participating “directly or indirectly” in general assemblies.
At one point, Suter and others got arrested for blockading the front entrance to Bank of America’s headquarters. They stretched out a banner that said “Bank of Coal.”
Another time they stopped an eviction of a Latino family by a land lord, says Creative Loafing Editor Mark Kemp. Why the family was being evicted was never explained. But beyond that, it now all seems kind of pointless. And as the months wore on, a movement the liberal powers that be here initially saw as hip and cool quickly began to embarrass them, causing the Charlotte Observer editorial board to flip from viciously defending Occupy Charlotte’s right to their protest, even if city land got trashed in the process, to calling for the protest to be quashed.
Part of the problem is that these people ultimately weren’t very relatable. Suter, despite her rough edges, comes across as likable enough on video, but how does the average person relate to this:
As one of the only female campers, she stands out — a girlie gutter punk with piercings (tribal) and tattoos (personal), a sea-green streak manic-panicked through a mess of matted, light-brown curls piled high above her round face. You don’t want to mess with that. You want to follow that.
The guys are waiting for her orders. One is wearing a dress.
“You guys want to mic check?” she hollers down toward them. They want to mic check. “IF YOU’RE GOING TO MARCH, WE’RE LEAVING NOW!”
Suddenly, stragglers appear and grab signs. They display them for Vic to sign off on. Vic asks for a cigarette. A guy rolls one for her.
Vic asks for a light. She leans into the flame and exhales a fat cloud. She eats a banana that someone drops on the ground. She laces up her stepfather’s boots. She tells everyone that marching in untied boots is lazy. Fifteen Occupy Charlotte activists — all men — are ready to join her.
Ultimately, the fact that the movement may have used a sewer as a toilet, leading to an intervention by a hazmat team and concerns about the impact on local wild life, may ultimately be the most memorable part of the protest.
