Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

Occupy Las Vegas encampment to end, but backers say the movement won’t

Occupy Las Vegas

Sam Morris

The Occupy Las Vegas encampment is shown across from the UNLV campus on Feb. 16, 2012.

Click to enlarge photo

Occupy Las Vegas organizer Jason Vickrey is seen at the group's encampment on Feb. 16, 2012.

Occupy Las Vegas site

The corners of tents, held fast to the asphalt with concrete blocks, have frayed in the desert wind. A too-thin woman, her skin tanned and weathered, asks if she can have the last cupcake.

No problem, answers Jason Vickrey, smiling as he exhales cigarette smoke and peers over the last vestiges of the Occupy Las Vegas site.

Vickrey, 41, admits the promise of Occupy Las Vegas was never realized. The movement to protest big money — the so-called “1 percent” — and the damage Occupiers say it visited on society never gained the traction it did elsewhere. This may be the nation’s foreclosure and unemployment capital, but it’s not the protest capital.

And since its beginnings in late October, the Occupy site largely devolved into a homeless encampment. So Clark County is not going to renew a lease with the group, meaning that by midnight Monday, the Occupiers have to move.

Vickrey wasn’t here for the start of the disintegration, but he’ll be there Monday night as people gather up their tents and few possessions from the lot north of Tropicana Avenue, between Paradise Road and Swenson Street. About 30 tents remained Thursday.

“They’re running us out of here,” said Vickrey, a former corrections officer from Missouri.

Commissioner Steve Sisolak, who helped strike the agreement for the group in October, said county management told him the site had become a social services and homeless shelter, which was not the intent. “The services directed toward those issues are available in other parts of the valley,” Sisolak said.

So the homeless caused this?

Wincing at the suggestion, Vickrey admits that played a part in the encampment’s disintegration. The original Occupy Las Vegas organizers promised the county it would not become a homeless hangout.

But that led to some infighting as some in the movement argued if they didn’t stand up for the homeless, who exactly would they stand up for?

Occupy Las Vegas camp: Nov. 3

Henri Palnar holds a sign on Swenson Street in front of the Occupy Las Vegas site near Tropicana Avenue Thursday, Nov. 3, 2011. Launch slideshow »

“The homeless in here are the bottom ... of the 99 percent,” Vickrey said. “We have a duty not to turn our backs on them … Some of the homeless have become hard-core members. When we have an action, the homeless are the ones stepping up and doing it. No one can tell me they are of no value.”

He walks over to one of the campers, who goes by the name Sunshine, and holds up a 3 feet by 5 feet piece of purple fabric. It has the word “Freedom” painted in white on it and decorated with handprints. One is a print of Sunshine’s hand and another, which looks like an oval, belongs to “Knuckles,” Vickrey said.

“He’s missing all his fingers,” he said.

The 99 percent was the rallying cry for Occupy movements around the country. The wealthiest 1 percent, they said, control 40 percent of American wealth, while the 99 percent struggle to hold their ground, find food, shelter, education and other necessities.

Kristal Glass was one of the original members who stood before Clark County commissioners in October and declared that if they did nothing to help provide a space for Occupy Las Vegas, they would simply take over a space somewhere and let the bad publicity from police actions fall where they may.

Glass is a mortgage consultant, part of an industry tied to banking that the group spoke out against most often.

Glass said she and others in the industry saw the way the banks, which wrote high-risk loans when the real estate market boomed, contributed to the recession. She became a part of Occupy Las Vegas to voice that opinion.

Four months later, she shows up intermittently at the Occupy Las Vegas site. She’s not happy about what has happened to a movement that showed so much promise.

“They did this to themselves,” she said of those still tightly bound to the movement.

It’s not just the homeless, she explained, but policing campers so they don’t smoke marijuana or drink alcohol, all those issues helped it unravel. “So many of them put their own desires above the goals of the movement,” she said.

At this point, she agrees with the county: “It’s not an occupation site, it’s a homeless site.”

Vickrey, who vowed to be at the site to help ensure an uneventful decampment Monday night, doesn’t think this is the end, however.

“We’re not done,” he said, smiling. “It is time for Occupy 2.0. They haven’t beaten us. We have to go underground for a while. We have plans for how we’re going to do that. We’ll build our numbers and you can expect us, maybe in a month — we don’t have a date set, not even a secret date. We’ll be back. It won’t be here. It may not be in one location, either.”

He laughed.

“How’s that for a teaser?”

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