Occupy Cheyenne activists interviewed during OWS cross-country odyssey

Occupy Wyoming!

Arun Gupta and Michelle Fawcett blew into Cheyenne today to interview some of us involved with Occupy Cheyenne.

We kidded them about the wind. Nary a breeze today but they should have been here last night or maybe last week. Those were real wide-open-spaces windy Wyoming days and nights! Wind sculpts us and we speak of it often.

A mighty wind is blowing (to borrow a movie phrase) and it's called the Occupy Movement or more specifically OWS. Arun and Michelle are traveling the U.S. talking to those involved in local Occupy entities. They were in Denver and Boulder yesterday. Albuquerque and Santa Fe before that. Later this afternoon is Laramie, and then on to the Wasatch Front and Boise. They will be on the West Coast by the weekend.

Arun is an indie media reporter based in New York City. He traces his activist roots to The Battle in Seattle, the now-famous anti-globalization protests that rocked Seattle for three days in 1999. He covers social movements for The Indypendent, an actual "physical newspaper" in NYC. It has a web site but hits the street regularly just like in olden times when we all read print. He covered the first three weeks at Occupy Wall Street and considers it "an historic event."

Michelle runs the camera and audio. She's a media professional and teaches as an adjunct prof at NYU. She organized NYC's first citywide indie media conference.

From edenpictures on Fliker via occupyusatoday.com

Eight OC people were able to get off of work and school and other obligations today to meet with Arun and Michelle. We range in age from 25 to 62 and no, I wasn't the oldest one. I only knew one of the people in the room before OC. Nobody but me professed an affiliation with the Democratic Party. An independent-minded group (Independent, too). I have no real desire to recruit for the Dems, as this alleged member of the two-party system is ineffectual in Wyoming. It wasn't always to case, but it is now.

Arun asked about our motives for being involved with OC. We each have our own particular reasons. All of us are angry at the rampant inequality caused by the unholy alliance of our political and financial systems. The fix is in, and we're none too happy about it and want to change it.

You can find out more about Occupy Cheyenne on its Facebook page.

Arun and Michelle will be posting audios, videos and written narratives in The Indypendent and on Salon, The Progressive, In These Times, and The Guardian.

Read the chronicles of their journey at occupyusatoday.com.