Take Back the Capitol!

I spent the past week in Washington, DC at an event called "Take Back the Capitol." It was an event by the SEIU to bring roughly 3,000 individuals to the capital to protest corporate greed and unemployment. It was a union attempt at the Occupy Movement. Occupiers from across the country welcomed the unions, but feel that the unions are too partisan for a nonpartisan movement.

We took a bus from Minneapolis to DC.

This was the SEIU's attempt at a tent city on the National Mall. We called it Camp Co-opt.

Since the police wouldn't let the unions pitch tents and camp overnight, the unions bought hotel rooms. A lot of the occupiers disliked the idea and so we joined Occupy DC at their McPherson Square encampment. (They also have an encampment at Freedom Square.)

Cool New England townhouses.

So the only time I did sightseeing was at night, like after midnight. This was at the Vietnam Memorial.

Lincoln Memorial. A good thing about sightseeing at night is that there are no other tourists that you have to deal with. 

On our first day there our goal was to go a congressmen's office and do a sit in until we got a meeting. Of course we got Duluth's own Republican Chip Cravaack. When people saw that we had him people were like,"Whoa man, how'd you score that one? Cravaack is such a douche bag."

This is my friend Jeff being epic. 

Everybody marched up to Capital Hill to swarm the offices of our legislature. 

Our Duluth group soon got to the offices of the House of Representatives. 

And we go invade Cravaack's office. 

So we pretty much hung out in Cravaack's office for hours waiting to get a meeting while watching live congressional hearings and Fox News on the television.

Eventually we got a meeting.

We presented him information about economic inequality, unemployment, and all that fun stuff. He pretended to take interest.

In the end he said that he talks directly with CEOs of major corporations and the corporations want more tax cuts and so he is going to give it to them. 

Later that night we had for the first time ever National General Assembly. This was a pretty historic moment. There were people from occupations in Boston, DC, New York, Miami, LA, Austin, Honolulu, Madison, Chicago, Seattle, Oakland, Portland, Minneapolis, Detroit, Philly, Pittsburg, Kansas City, Duluth, and many many more. 

There were several hundred people attending. When we were done I counted 16 cop cars on the sidewalk(yes, sidewalk) near our General Assembly. 

This is when things start to get epic and black & white makes things dramatic. Occupy DC had a planned to have a dance party on K Street and the Unions planned to have a march there also at the same time. And so the two groups somewhat joined. It pretty much formed into a shut down K Street event. In case you didn't know K Street is the street in DC that is sort of the national center of lobbyists and lobby firms. 

The occupiers started pitching tents in the intersections. 

Police started to arrive.

Eventually Occupy decided to march to the corner of K and 14th which is one of the busiest intersections. 

The cars were not happy about it.

Paper stands make great drums.

The police tried to take some of the tables, but as more people gathered in the intersection it didn't do any good.

Then people started to link arms to block the intersections. 

It was great. All of the lobby firms on K Street had locked up their doors and hired extra security because they were scared. 

The police presence grew dramatically with probably more than ten cop cars at each road. 

Eventually cops came and arrested a bunch of people. It was the rainiest day in DC history, so right as arrests started my camera got too wet and glitched out. By the end of the day four intersections got shut down and 62 arrests were made. Whenever somebody from Madison got arrested everyone would start chanting "Recall Walker!" After all of the arrests were made and people were being cleared out the cops held their ground. People were then making sarcastic comments to the cops like "We wanted to shut down K Street and you guys are blocking the roads. Keep up the good work!"

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In our final day Jesse Jackson stopped by the encampment on the National Mall and shared some words of solidarity.