I spent the morning at Penn Valley Park checking out the Occupy KC camp directly behind the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City. The camp is in it’s ninth day, and has a dedicated group of about 15-20 people who have been sleeping in the park every night since.

Today is something of a day of rest after they marched to the Crossroads Arts District last night and were joined by KC Art Institute students, and tomorrow they have a lot planned with speakers and musical acts from about noon to 4:00 p.m., when they are going to leave to march to the Ilus W. Davis Park downtown. If you’re near Midtown tomorrow, stop by and check them out and join them.

Monroe

This is Monroe. He is 28 years old, and realizes that the economic system that Ronald Reagan bequethed to us just ain’t working, and it never did for the vast majority of Americans. “I’m tired of living in a country that has capitalism without morals. We have outsourced jobs to slave labor in China and it doesn’t stop because America doesn’t rise up. So I’m out here, recycling and old hammock and trying to change the world.”

Occupy KC

Laura (in lime green) is 22 years old and looking at bankruptcy and then at least seven years of being a credit pariah because she is starting her adult life $80,000 in debt for hospital bills. How is she supposed to build a life after her life was saved, starting off that deep in debt? “I have nothing. I own nothing, and it will be a long time before I do, if I ever do.”  She’s been here since day one.

The kitchen

The kitchen. They’re digging in for the long haul. Should the authorities crack down on them, they will be decamping to some private land — but the Liberty Memorial in the background and the Fed is right across Memorial Drive from the camp. It’s appropriate that I snapped a picture of Amy (seated, with dreds) in the kitchen — her number one concern is food rights. A girl after my own heart, she really doesn’t like Monsanto or factory farming.

It's a real protest.

It’s a real protest movement…there’s a guy with an acoustic guitar. The only way it could get more protest-y is if there was a NUN with an acoustic guitar. I’ll check back tomorrow…

You can check out all the pics I snapped this morning by clicking this link.