User:Robblaw/sandbox

Background
Born in England, but grew up in Worthington, Ohio, attending elementary school at Worthington Estates Elementary School, and graduating high school from Thomas Worthington High School.

Worthington, Ohio is a predominantly white (93.97%) upper-middle class (median family income $83,074 per year) suburb of Columbus, Ohio.

Holmes is a graduate student at Hunter College in New York City, studying integrated media. She considers herself a documentary filmmaker and activist.

Her father, Douglas Holmes, is a prominant lawyer, a member of the Ohio Bar Association and the President and CEO of UWC- Strategic Services on Unemployment and Workers’ Compensation, a national organization based in Washington DC dedicated to serving as the voice of business in unemployment and workers' compensation legislation and policy development.

More detailed information regarding Marisa Holmes is very scant, and while there is extensive media coverage of her thoughts and intentions regarding the Occupy movement, it appears no one in the mainstream media has to this point inquired as to the contrast between a self-avowed anarchist and someone who attends college and lives in Manhattan, N.Y. with the significant expense that would be associated with that.

Involvement in Occupy Movement
It is difficult to discern whether Holmes sought to be a leader in the Occupy Movement, or happened to become a vocal leader based upon happenstance, howeve, the reality is that over time, she has not only become a regular interview subject of the media seeking input from the movement but appears to clearly exert significant influence and control in the movement - something of an anthema to a movement rooted in anarchy.

Most recently, in the July 7, 2012 issue of Rolling Stone Magazine, Holmes is reported to be front and centre in what appears to be a decision on the part of the Occupy movement to refuse financial and organizing support from corporate supporters.

As reported in the Rolling Stone article:

Holmes was strongly opposed, and at the end of the day, the support as turned down. During a meeting of influential OWS (Occupy Wall Street) activists regarding the Ben and Jerry proposal, as again reported in the Rolling Stone article, "When Ben and Jerry unveiled their Movement Resource Group at a panel discussion at a church on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, Holmes attended. During the event, she stood up, her voice shaking, and said she assumed everyone present had the best of intentions, but that the MRG, with its top-down structure, was “exactly the kind of organization OWS is not and has never been about.” She went on, “I can’t get rid of this sinking feeling in my stomach that this will destroy the very foundation of the movement I tried to build."
 * "In early february, Marisa Holmes, a 25-year-old anarchist who had been one of the core organizers of Occupy Wall Street, was contacted by an assistant of Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield – yes, that Ben and Jerry – looking to set up a conference call. Over the course of Occupy’s long winter hibernation, when friends and foes alike wondered if the movement, not even six months old, had already lost its way, Ben and Jerry decided OWS needed a professional fundraising arm. The pair calculated that it would be possible, with help from fellow liberal activists like former Nirvana manager Danny Goldberg, to infuse nearly $2 million into the movement, in the form of grants to various Occupy projects around the country and a permanent headquarters for OWS in New York."

While there is no formal hierarchy in the movement, there do appear to be those who's opinions do carry weight and Holmes's opinions clearly carry weight.