By Virginia Bridges

The Durham City Council unanimously approved a resolution Thursday supporting an amendment to the U.S. Constitution ending “corporate personhood.”

The resolution, presented by Occupy Durham’s Committee to End Corporate Personhood, rebuts the U.S. Supreme Court’s 5-4 landmark decision in 2010 that said the First Amendment’s freedom of speech guarantee prohibits governments from restricting political contributions from unions and corporations.

The Durham resolution states that only human beings have constitutional rights and that political spending is not equivalent to free speech.

"The current campaign finance system creates an unequal playing field and allows unlimited corporate spending to unduly influence elections, candidate selection, and policy decisions,” the resolution states.

Sara Appel, a graduate instructor at Duke University, plans to close her Wells Fargo bank account this week. It wasn't a difficult decision, she said. She'd never opened one.

The 32-year-old literature grad student, had been a Wachovia customer for several years and only became a Wells Fargo client when the California-based bank bought Wachovia.

"One day I was a Wachovia customer and then I was a Wells Fargo customer, whether I liked it or not," she said.

Next Saturday (Nov. 12) , organizers with movemoneydurham.org, part of Occupy Durham, hope others will join Appel, as the movement seeks to move money from big banks to local banks and credit unions.

About 75 people attended a rally yesterday in CCB Plaza, where credit unions provided information on their services. Among protesters' main points, printed on a flier at the rally, were these:

- Credit unions are nonprofits; banks are for profit.

- Credit unions educate their members; banks have negotiated mortgages even though they gave borrowers mortgages they would be unable to pay back.

- Credit unions reinvest in their communites; most major banks took a government bailout but retain "staggering profits."

"I think banks are banking on us forgetting what happened a few years ago," said Appel, one of the organizers. "They're responsible for the situation we're in."

Lamont Lilly listens to the lengthy consensus-driven decision making at Sunday's Occupy Durham rally on CB Plaza. Lilly, who works two jobs and participated in Occupy Wall Street in New York City earlier this month, wanted to see decisive action taken in Durham. "This is not the energy, this is not the passion, this is not the sense of urgency," he told me as he left the plaza. "Either you make a decision and you ride with the struggle or you don't."

See more photos from this weekend's Occupy Durham and Occupy Chapel Hill events here.

A delegation from the Occupy Durham protest arrived at City Hall while the City Council was meeting tonight. Mayor Bill Bell adjourned without giving them a hearing, but City Manager Tom Bonfield and City Attorney Patrick Baker stayed behind to meet with the group for about 20 minutes.

About 45 protesters wanted to know what city ordinance prohibited them from pitching tents at CCB Plaza, where the demonstration began on Sunday. They said they had been informed about 4 p.m. today that the city sanitation department would remove the tents if they were not taken down by 5 p.m.

By 5 p.m. the tents were gone, but demonstrator Mary Grace said police, when asked, had not cited an ordinance.

At City Hall, Baker said the city code does not specifically ban tents at CCB Plaza, but it is standing policy of the city parks department that erecting shelters there – "camping" – is not allowed without a permit.

City Councilman Mike Woodard, who stayed to watch the exchange, said afterwards that he had told protest organizers more than a week ago that they needed to apply for the permit in advance, but they had not done so.

Baker and Bonfield said the demonstrators were welcome to remain at CCB Plaza as long as they like, but not to raise tents or other structures.

They also refused to turn on the Plaza's electricity, which was cut off after demonstrators used it Sunday without authorization, despite a request from City Council candidate Victoria Peterson.

Questioned further, Baker offered to meet with Occupy Durham representatives on Tuesday after he consults with Bonfield.

Bonfield appeared to become testy as the meeting went on and questioners pressed for specifics such as the city's definition of "camping" and whether the shelter ban would be enforced in case of bad weather or in the case of homeless persons.

"You're going to do what you're going to do," Bonfield said. "We'll respond when you do it."

The group thanked Bonfield and Baker and returned to CCB Plaza, where an unsheltered "general assembly" continued the Occupy Durham demonstration.

About 110 people outside the Franklin Street post office Saturday for Occupy Chapel Hill, billed by organizers as a day of resistance and occupation.

Bill Sward of Hillsborough held a simple pole with an index-card size sign that said “99 percent.” Sward lost his cabinet maker job two years ago at age 66 when the company’s work slowed.

“The people who want there to be a point don’t get the point,” he said of the broadly anti-corporate Occupy Wall Street message. “This is about living, the quality of people’s lives. The government should be helping us live. Businesses should not determine how we live.”

Participants included young anarchists, veterans of Vietnam and other protest movements and several people who said they had lost work in the past few years.

“Someone asked me what groups are here,” said Katya Roytburd, 34, a UNC-Chapel Hill researcher and one of the organizers. “I said I honestly didn’t know. We’re just representing ourselves.”

Participants broke into small groups and planned to return later Saturday to discuss next steps.

In Durham, organizers were to meet at 3 p.m. Sunday for a People’s Assembly to consider proposals for an encampment. That meeting takes places on CCB Plaza downtown.

Look for more on local Occupy Wall Street events in tomorrow's N&O and coming Wednesday in The Chapel Hill News.