Protesters at proposed CVS site in Carrboro disbanded by police

Police disbanded their four-hour occupation of an empty, CVS-owned building in Carrboro Saturday, but protesters are already planning their next steps.

The group plans to take back the 201 N. Greensboro St. property using a new tactic — gardening.

“‘Guerilla planting’ is the term we like to use,” said Alanna Davis, a UNC student involved in the group, which calls itself the “Carrboro Commune.”

Davis said the group decided at a meeting Sunday to plant a community garden at the property, so if town officials tried to remove the plants they would be destroying people’s food.

She said the group might meet and discuss their course of action Wednesday.

The planning session would occur in Carrboro Town Hall during the same time CVS developers are scheduled to update the community on plans for the controversial property, Davis said.

Setting up the ‘commune’

Starting around 3:30 p.m. Saturday, the Carrboro Commune took over the property where CVS hopes to build a two-story, 24-hour drug store.

Some said the occupation was protesting the contentious CVS, which still needs Carrboro Board of Aldermen approval.

Others said the move protested Chapel Hill police’s armed break-up of an “Occupy Everywhere” encampment that took over the former Yates Motor Co. building in November.

“Obviously we’re in the position of feeling distrustful,” a masked protester who called herself Ellen Jones said prior to the disbandment. “The decision to do this is a political experiment.”

Jones said about 60 people gathered in all, though protesters later estimated 50 people had been involved. Protesters were building furniture, cooking dinner and discussing a dance party prior to the break-up.

Carrboro Mayor Mark Chilton and several aldermen visited the camp Saturday, and Chilton told a group of reporters that he wouldn’t leave the building until occupiers did.

“I’m here as an officer of the North Carolina government,” he said. “I’m not leaving till they leave.”

At about 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Carrboro police arrived at the scene and told occupiers they could either vacate the privately owned building or be arrested.

The occupiers left without incident or arrest, though some yelled at police and Chilton as they gathered outside the building.

“I think it’s great that people didn’t have guns pointed at their faces,” Davis said.

“It’s still possible, it’s still there,” she said.

Maria Rowan, another protester involved with the group, said that she was disappointed that the encampment was disbanded.

“We don’t have a collective community in either building, so I don’t think we could say either event was really successful,” she said.

Rowan said taking over the building — for a community garden, for example — would meet the community’s goals for the property, rather than resigning it to corporate purposes.

But Jeff Herrick, who lives in the residential neighborhood where the CVS property is located, said he worries the protesters could make those who oppose the CVS through regular, governmental channels seem less legitimate.

“It’s a little bit frustrating because I feel like a lot of their information is not completely informed,” he said. “We’re just going to be lumped in with that.”

Herrick emphasized that the CVS will not be approved until later this spring at the earliest, so to say that it is inevitable — as some of the protesters’ literature stated — is incorrect.

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