Occupy Buffalo Hangs Tough

By Doug Draper

With less than two weeks to go before the official start of winter,   Buffalo, New York has already had its first blast of snow off Lake Erie. And as on this past Sunday, December 11, a chilly wind was whirling around downtown buildings surrounding Washington Square where the canvas covers of tents were flapping wildly.

Paul Rozzman, a U.S. army veteran andan occupier at the Buffalo encampment. Photo by Doug Draper

Yet those hunkering down in these tents – all part of an Occupy Buffalo encampment now into its third month and still surviving in the shadow of Buffalo’s city hall while ‘Occupy’ encampments, including those in Toronto, Calgary, Vancouver, New York City, Boston and so many  other cities across the continent have been folded  by the powers that be – remain determined to tough it ought, even as forecasts call for another blast of icy rain and snow in the days ahead.

“I have survived through the ‘Blizzard of 77’ (an epic winter storm that shut down much of Buffalo, New York and Niagara, Ontario and cost some lives back in 1977)) and mayt other ice storms in Buffalo,”  John Rozzman, a member of the Buffalo encampment and, among other things, A U.S. Army veteran, told Niagara At Large during a recent visit to the site. “So this isn’t so tough,” he added, as he went on to talk about how much more tough it is for so many millions of Americans who have lost their jobs and homes in an economy he believes is rigged to enrich Wall Street and unjust for middle and lower income people.

Occupy Buffalo encampment with court building looming in background. Photo by Doug Draper.

Rozzman, who is 47 years old and was a computer technician before he went from being under-employed to unemployed, has been living in this encampment, established in early October, for about a month now. After leaving his duties as a sergeant in the U.S. Army in Germany during the Cold War years of the 1980s and 90s, he said he became “an activist” as he felt he watched governments in his country turn further away from the little guy in favour of big corporations.

“I have been patiently waiting for years and now I feel I see an awakening in America,” Rozzman said of an Occupy movement he is convinced is not going away but is only going to grow, even if all of the encampments in every town and city across North America is swept away. If  politicians don’t address the concerns of ordinary people, he said, the system may collapse on its own since, in his view, you can’t go on ‘printing money on toilet paper’ without it ultimately imploding.

So far, said Rozzman and others, the City of Buffalo has co-existed with Occupy Buffalo. But how long that will last, nobody really knows.
Occupy Buffalo members have welcomed Niagara, Ontario residents  supporting them and you can find out more by visisting Occupy Buffalo’s site at www.occupybuffalo.org .

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