Occupy Half Moon Bay Kicks Off Weekly Protests

By now, the images are familiar: masses of people congregating in cities around the world in solidarity with Occupy Wall Street — the self-proclaimed "99 percent" protesting against what the movement describes as the "greed and corruption" of the remaining 1 percent of the population.

Among the first such groups to organize in San Mateo County, Occupy Half Moon Bay brought together a small group of local residents for a protest on Saturday at the corner of Highway 1 and 92.

The movement has no leaders and no stated goals, according to Karen K. Anderson, a member of Occupy Half Moon Bay.

"It is a movement that sprang from people's frustration with the fact that in the wealthiest country in the history of the world we have people living, and dying, in the streets because their jobs, homes, and health care — if, in fact they ever had any — have been taken from them," said Anderson.

"The insatiable greed of Wall Street has turned our great country into a place where 1% of the population controls the majority of the wealth," she continued. "The American Dream will never be reachable by our children because they are strapped with enormous debt and no jobs from the minute they leave college."

Occupy Half Moon Bay will be meeting at 12 noon every Saturday at the corner of Highway 92 and Highway 1 "for the foreseeable future," Anderson says.

The group invites members of the public to join the Saturday protests.

See photos of the Oct. 22 protest here in the media box to the right of this article.

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