Occupy Chapel Hill-Carrboro meeting attendees once packed a plaza, but these days they barely surround a coffee table.
Since the group announced it was leaving Peace and Justice Plaza in January, General Assembly meetings have seen attendance as low as two members, according to the Occupy Chapel Hill website. That’s down from the more than 30 attendees October head counts recorded.
“To say it disbanded implies that it was a formal organization,” said Carrboro resident Maria Rowan, who has been heavily involved with the movement for months.
She said members of Occupy Chapel Hill-Carrboro — which she considered an informal association that was open for anyone to come and go — have moved on to other social movements.
Rowan herself is an example of Occupy’s devolution. She said she has continued to facilitate a few General Assembly meetings but now devotes her time to Carrboro Commune.
Last month the group staged a protest on the site of a proposed CVS in Carrboro in which they tossed “seed bombs” made of compost and clay over the site’s fence.
Rowan said she enjoys being involved in Carrboro Commune because it emphasizes challenging existing social structures.
“Occupy Chapel Hill was a little too middle-of-the-road for me.”
Sophomore Cammie Bellamy was involved in Occupy early on but said she stopped after New York’s Occupy Wall Street camp was evicted. That was two days after a police raid at the Yates Motor Company building in Chapel Hill ousted Occupy Everything, a separate protest from Occupy Chapel Hill-Carrboro.
