After weeks of organising our working groups in Occupy Liverpool, we were finally ready to set up camp. With just two days off work, I decided to take the chance to visit some of the other Occupy camps around the country to share information, gain some tips for our upcoming camp, and do some friendly networking.
After an hour or so of great conversation I said goodbye to Wayne as he dropped me off at Woodall Service Station. I took two minutes to change my sign, then two minutes again to find my next lift with Gary; who was so interested in what I had to say and the conversation we were having that he went out of his way for five miles to drop me right in the centre of Sheffield, my next destination.
Sign in hand, I walked towards the slip road to where I would start hitching from, and a car stopped just ahead of me, a girl frantically waving her arms in my direction. Have I seriously just got a lift without even waiting?! YES! Holy moly, I had no clue it would be this easy to hitch in this country, the one place on earth where everyone is scared of each other!?
I spent the next half an hour or so in a car with three Muslim girls and an inflatable doll. Yes, it’s definitely on my list of the most random moments of my life.
I arrived at the Occupy Leeds camp just as it was going dark and just as dinner was about to be served. Perfect! Surrounding the city’s Christmas tree in the centre square, I don’t think there could have been a better place for the camp to be situated. They had only set up their camp one week before and were still in the early stages of ideas and development, and were all putting so much effort in, and that’s what counts in the beginning. It was a cold night and I gave up trying to sleep at 5am, headed to the train station and got myself home in time for the next
meeting of Occupy Liverpool.
After visiting all these camps, I got so many ideas to take home but also a sense of how important it will be in the near future to maintain and build ties with other camps around the country and the world. We are not individual groups; we are a global movement who are all striving for the same achievements.
As always, what I gained the most from my trip was inspiration. I came away with inspiring memories of the amount of good, thoughtful people who were willing, and wanted, to put all of their time into the same cause that I believed in through and through.
So I would like to say thank you to the people I met on this short trip, because inspiration lasts forever.
So I would like to say thank you to the people I met on this short trip, because inspiration lasts forever.