• PHOTO BY STEVE E. MILLER

Local residents took to the streets beginning Oct. 5, in solidarity with the Occupy Wall Street protests in New York and other cities in the country. Roughly 100 protesters attended the first gathering in front of the San Luis Obispo County Superior Court, but numbers dwindled in the days that followed. Organizers of the Occupy SLO movement, like their counterparts on Wall Street, seemed to have a difficult time clarifying their purpose. After the first protest, where someone showed up with a lost dog poster, organizer Pete Evans sent out an e-mail that read: “Bring sigs (sic) and try to stick to our message, this is not about lost puppies or the injustices in Burma (those are very important to us, we will address them as we grow stronger). We about social and economic justice … .”