Governor misinformed or misleading?

I heard and interesting story two weeks ago while engaged in the weekly Saturday Occupy Rapid City protest on a corner along Main Street in Rapid City.  The story was being related in a casual and conversational way, similar to discussing the weather or some other interesting incident of a less than cataclysmic importance.  When hearing this type of recounting of a seemingly innocuous happening some my reply, “That doesn’t surprise me.”

A delegation of visiting members of British Parliament and other British officials were visiting South Dakota in the early part of June.  On June 6 they were in Pierre where the story has it that one of the members of the group asked Governor Daugaard about the Occupy Movement in South Dakota.  In the story, the Governor’s reply was something to the effect that “we don’t have that in South Dakota.”   The Governor must get his news from Rapid City news sources where the activities of the Occupy Movement are not reported on unless it offends an entity like Duhamel Broadcasting.  In addition to the every Saturday protests in Rapid City, members of Occupy Rapid City have given their support to and participated in the protests by several groups in Rapid City since their local beginning in October of 2011.

It is a little hard for outsiders to track the local Occupy Movement since it does not have a hierarchical structure or an official organizational membership list.  However, there are several South Dakota Occupy Movement group websites that list members numbering from seventy or so to nearly on hundred.  There are also quite a number of people that post on these sites that appear to think of themselves as members of the Occupy Movement even if their names don’t appear on a group page membership list. 

It is obvious that participation has waned considerably from what it was during the first exciting days when it was new concept for a lot of people with, perhaps, less than realistic expectations.  Still it is less than accurate for the Governor to tell our British guests that “we don’t have that in South Dakota.”

Note:  Here’s a few other Occupy websites to check out http://occupyrapidcity.org/, http://www.occupybrookings.com/, http://www.facebook.com/OccupyOfRapidCity, and http://www.facebook.com/groups/occupyblackhills