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One Protester Getting College Credit For Occupying Wall Street
By
Ben Yakas
Published Nov 6, 2011
Modified Nov 6, 2011
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By
Ben Yakas
Published Nov 6, 2011
Modified Nov 6, 2011
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The NY Post continued their hit job on Occupy Wall Street today with a first-person piece from an undercover reporter embedded among the unwashed masses in Shurja Zuccotti Park. Their reporter spent the night talking with Kombucha drinkers, rape victims, and someone named “Conscience,” and came to the conclusion that "the parcel is now a sliver of madness." One person they didn't talk to? University of Alabama junior Henry Perkins, who is neither a smelly vagrant, an owner of an "Anarkitty," or filled with madness—he's earning college credit while protesting at Zuccotti.
The Daily News reports on the 21-year-old Perkins, who says he regularly checks in with professors, Skypes into class twice a week, and gives other students updates from OWS. “I asked my professors and they said to go for it. They’re living vicariously through me,” he said.
For an independent learning project, one professor, Catherine Roach, allowed him to research and write about "the Occupy Wall Street movement” and how it fits into “the larger context of civil disobedience within American History.” Carrying only a computer, toothbrush, cell phone, some books and a tarp, Perkins came by train to NYC three weeks ago: “I learned a lot here. I realized that I never want to be in any system, and you can make it work.”
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alabama
college credit
occupy wall street
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Zuccotti Park
Ben Yakas
Ben Yakas is a former Gothamist reporter.
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