Wednesday, October 5, 2011

New Haven Exports "Free"-dom To Occupiers | New Haven Independent

New Haven Exports "Free"-dom To Occupiers | New Haven Independent
by Paul Bass | Oct 3, 2011 3:03 pm
"New Haven’s sending support to the growing anti-Wall Street protest in New York in the form of white crew socks—and an alternative-to-greed model of distributing merchandise.

That help is coming from organizers of New Haven’s Free Store. They’re working on setting up a Free Store outpost in Zuccotti Park—renamed “Liberty Park” by demonstrators who have occupied it over the past two weeks—to get needed items like clothing to the 300-700 people who are sleeping there, even in the rain. The idea is to build the on-site “store” into a self-sustaining enterprise that “sells” goods for free to the public at large in keeping with the larger theme of the protests.

Thomas MacMillan File Photo

Thomas MacMillan File Photo

That’s the goal of New Haven’s Ben Aubin (pictured). Aubin, a 26-year-old biofuels salesperson, founded New Haven’s Free Store earlier this year. He traveled to the New York “Occupy Wall Street” protests over the weekend. He brought 20 pairs of donated socks and scoped out what else organizers need for the burgeoning ranks of anti-corporate park occupiers in New York’s financial district. He started making arrangements with protest organizers to carve out a weatherproofed “Free Store” in the midst of Liberty Park, which organizers have subdivided into sections dedicated to, say, media, medical care, and book-sharing.

Aubin has been traveling back and forth between Liberty Park and New Haven. He was amid the thousands who demonstrated Saturday at the Brooklyn Bridge (pictured at the top of the story). He said he twice broke away from police lines when officers surrounded protesters and made mass arrests.

Aubin and other New Haven organizers are now meeting back here in town to finalize plans for the store and to explore how else to tap into the growing protests, which in the past two days have begun spreading to cities across the country as well as abroad.

“The intention would be to keep the occupiers supplied. It would also be a form of constructive direct action,” Aubin said Monday." Full Article HERE | New Haven Independent
posted on Occupy New Haven by Ben Aubin
www.newhavenindependent.org
New Haven's sending support to the growing anti-Wall Street protest in New York in the form of white crew socks -- and an alternative-to-greed model of distributing merchandise.

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