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Community Corner

Occupy Movement Makes a Stop in New Britain

A small but dedicated group of protestors continue to make their opinions known.

The crowd had dwindled to but a handful on Thursday, but the passion and commitment of those making a local stand in the Occupy Wall Street movement remains.

Only about nine people turned out for a scheduled hour-long protest at the corner of Tamanend Avenue and Route 202 in New Britain Borough, but their sentiments haven’t wavered in the least.

Many of the demonstrators had been to other Occupy protests, including two recent ones held in Doylestown.

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Organizer Rick Howe, of Doylestown, wasn’t disturbed over the small assembly bundled against the evening’s chilly temperatures. The beliefs of those who showed up to stand on a grassy public area along the busy street still were steadfast.

“There are people that are willing to stand up and say, ‘This ain’t right,’ ” said Howe.

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Those people included the likes of Rochelle Tormollen, of Hatboro, who has attended several of the Occupy rallies.

“I care about people who come behind me,” she explained, holding a placard for drivers to see. “It’s my own personal belief we’ll leave nothing but debt and hardship for the next generation if we don’t try to change things now.”

Artist Theresa BrownGold, of New Britain Township, also has attended several of the demonstrations, bringing with her portraits she has painted of people she said have suffered because of the country's health insurance system.

On Thursday, she displayed a portrait of an unemployed 51-year-old Philadelphia man who managed to get on President Obama’s high-risk pool of insurance after discovering a heart problem – and this was only after his payments to Cobra were ending and he was using savings and retirement funds to pay for it.

The portraits are part of BrownGold's “Art as Social Inquiry” project, which she says emphasizes how complicated the current insurance system is and how it needs to be addressed.

The Occupy Bucks County demonstrations are meant to demand systematic change, said Howe, outlining the tenets that the local group believes in:

  • "Investment in public services - spending for education, mass transit, and protection of the environment, job training, and infrastructure rebuilding." 
  • "Strict regulation of multi-national corporations, banks, and Wall Street."
  • "Restoration of the citizen as the primary authority in our political system instead of money. Our Democracy should not be for sale to the highest bidder."
  • "A conversation about income inequality. Should 1% of the US population possess greater net worth than the entire bottom 90%?"
  • "Stop our police, in their homeland-security-approved riot gear, from torturing peacefully demonstrating United States citizens with pepper spray, tasers, & billy clubs."
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