Occupy Fargo Protest Targeting Rick Berg Fails Miserably

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Written By:
Rob Port

Jun 4, 2012
12:55pm

The Fargo/Moorhead iteration of the Occupy Wall Street movement was supposed to have protested Goldmark Property Management over the weekend, alleging dirty-dealing with renters. Goldmark also just happens to be a company founded, in part, by Rep. Rick Berg who is running for the Senate this year against Democrat Heidi Heitkamp.

So what happened at the protest? Nothing, apparently. Search of Fargo/Moorhead media outlets shows no coverage of a protest. There does seem to have been an article most on the Fargo Forum’s website (it was also linked for a while on reporter Teri Finnemna’s Facebook page) but it’s not online now. The Occupy Fargo/Moorhead website is still advertising the protest for June 1st, but hasn’t been updated with the outcome.

The only evidence I could find that anything happened over the weekend was this Facebook posting on the Occupy Fargo/Moorhead Facebook page seeming to indicate that rain kept the protesters away:

As you can tell from the comments, there is some question about whether or not it was raining in Fargo on June 1st. I checked the historical data for that day and while there were some “light showers” indicated for around 5:00pm (the protest was to have started at 3:00pm) there was no rain accumulation.

Which is to say, it was probably more lack of interest than weather which kept protesters away.

What’s interesting is that the Forum didn’t cover the flop. Again, they had an article up, but it was taken down (from what I read of it while it was online it was written before the protest and was just a description of what was supposed to take place). The Occupy movement has made a lot of headlines around the country. The fact that they tried to protest, and failed, is newsworthy I think.

It speaks to the state of that movement in North Dakota. That the state of the movement is that it is almost non-existent outside of a few noisy cranks doesn’t mean it isn’t newsworthy.