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Occupy Houston is modeling its protest on what’s happening on Wall Street, where people have taken over Liberty Park in New York City and rally day and night.
Nick Cooper is a member of the band Free Radicals and is involved in the local effort to protest greed and corruption in the business and political sectors.
“This cause is — it’s not a single-issue group. This is a disenfranchised populace that is coming together out of their frustration with a system that isn’t listening to them. And the demands are kind of wide and they’re big things that people are asking for and they’re important things as we go into this economic crisis.”
Cooper says issues of concern include corporate influence on campaign financing, ending the drug war and police accountability among others.
The group will march from Market Square to the JP Morgan Chase tower Thursday morning before moving on to City Hall and later assembling in Hermann Park. It’s difficult to say how many people will participate, although the Occupy Houston Facebook page has nearly 4,000 fans.
“I think that the idea of occupation is certainly in the air. Whether or not there’s actually an occupation at any location in Houston, I don’t think anybody could really predict. I think to some extent it depends on what people want to do and what the numbers are.”
Similar events are happening Thursday in Austin, Dallas and a number of large cities across the country.
