Occupy Inland Empire Holds Its First Protest

Despite the cold and rain, Occupy Inland Empire made a unified stand on Saturday while Occupy San Bernardino set the wheels in motion for its own local movement.

About 100 fellow Occupiers from Redlands/Loma Linda to Victorville stood with the newly formed San Bernardino group participating in a protest and march.

The group gathered at the intersection of Third and D streets in downtown San Bernardino. With Chase Bank and the San Bernardino Civic Center to the west of them and Bank of America to the east, the group chanted the familiar “Banks got bailed out. We got sold out.”

San Bernardino really needs an occupy movement, said members of the fledgling group.

“What I would like to do personally is raise the spirits of the people of San Bernardino,” said Hector Guzman, 19, a student at San Bernardino Valley College. “Basically they have been (mistreated) so many times over and over between corruption and foreclosures.”

Residents are beaten down, Guzman said.

“I want to raise their spirits so they can come and fight with us,” he said.

He wants to see the residents of San Bernardino rise. It’s time to stop waiting for a city so hard hit by the recession to continue to wait for politicians to make a difference, he said.

San Bernardino is just the latest city to join the list of cities with an “Occupy” movement. Several other groups across the region, from Ontario to Palm Desert, came before them.

Guzman said the group has been to several Occupy meetings, including most recently Redlands and Riverside, learning how the different groups are managed.

“We’re basically helping get over that learning curve that everyone has to go though,” said Stephen Kemp, a committee member with Occupy Redlands. “We’ve been there. We’ve been running for about a month.”

“We want to help them by showing them the things that worked,” Kemp said.

Many of the Occupation groups have very similar procedures, Kemp said. Most of them have general assemblies during which some decisions are made, through hand signals and a philosophy of non-violence, he said.

“We are drawn together by a common sense of outrage and it gives us a great sense of purpose,” he said.

Guzman said a number of people have responded to the effort, even though there is a sense of apathy that stems from what he called years of abuse from politicians looking our for their own interest.

“I guess a lot of people have lost hope for change,” Guzman said. “I think once they see how much power and how much momentum this Occupy movement has and how it can create a difference for San Bernardino more people will come out.”