The Portland Police Bureau has issued a preemptive warning about the long-planned nationally organized Shut Down the Corporations rally and march—essentially telling anyone who’s going to be downtown on Wednesday, February 29, to expect to wait a few minutes longer at traffic lights and, also, maybe, you know, ogle as officers in riot gear come […]
Occupy
Posted inComic Books
Archie Comics to Take On Occupy Wall Street
Bleeding Cool broke the news yesterday: Apparently, Archie Comics #635… …will tell the story of the global protest against massively unequal redistrubution of wealth and power, under the title Occupy Riverdale, echoing the Occupy movements present around the world…And just as Betty and Veronica are divided over Archie, so here they are divided by being […]
Posted inOccupy
Giving Occupy a Bum Name
A new police strategy for messing with/discrediting Occupy encampments—this one in Tampa last month: About a dozen Occupy Tampa demonstrators were having a meeting around the campfire last night when four patrol cars pulled up across the street. A smiling police officer opened one back door, and out stepped a disgruntled 40ish-year-old woman in a […]
Posted inCity Hall
Why the City Hall Camping Vigil Is Allowed to Keep Its Tent
Photographs by Denis C. Theriault Nameless keeps warm Wednesday morning at the camping-ban prayer vigil outside City Hall. For nearly three months now, since December 1, a dynamic man who prefers the moniker Kernel Loose-Nut (but who also answers to Moses Wrosen) has done his best to keep alive a 24/7 prayer vigil outside City […]
Posted inOccupy
American Income Inequality Looks a Lot Like 1928
The Senate budget committee held a hearing last week on income inequality, discussing some graphs that will make you shake your head in shame: As Mother Jones notes, “The 1 percent hasn’t controlled such a large share of the economy since the eve of the Great Depression.” Dance our worries away, girls!
Posted inOccupy
About That Rift Between Occupy and the Longshore Workers…
In the days before a planned Occupy shutdown of West Coast ports last December, you might remember reading a series of articles that all talked about a newly opened rift with organized labor—essentially a turf war over labor-port politics that would chip away a vital piece of Occupy’s support bedrock. In Portland, local International Longshoremen […]
Posted inCourts
Judge’s Ruling on Occupy Prosecutions Threatens DA’s Reliance on “Violations”
Thanks to a potentially far-reaching ruling by Multnomah County Judge Cheryl Albrecht, a whole mess of Occupy Portland-related misdemeanor cases that had been busted down to time- and cash-saving citations, or “violations,” may now have to be prosecuted as vigorously as any other criminal case. Instead of the usual routine for so-called violation trials—hearings without […]
Posted inOccupy
The Simmering Battle Between Occupy and the Black Bloc
Last night’s anti-police-brutality march—a chaotic brew of nuisance vandalism, bickering among participants, and, yes, reports of heavy-handed arrests—was maybe more useful than it seemed in the dim glow of all the talk of smashed windows and hyped news releases. (H/T to Jess E. Hadden for the Ustream video above.) It’s brought back to light, on […]
Posted inCops
Woman Arrested in Last Night’s Police Brutality March: “I Was Outside My House”
We’ve been hearing more and more this morning about some of the rough conduct by police during last night’s anti-police-brutality march in Southeast—including the story of a woman who said her face was cut open, with her glasses broken, after officers grabbed her from a sidewalk and shoved her to the ground. Witnesses say the […]
Posted inOccupy
Black Bloc Trashes Belmont; Cops Make Arrests
Belmont store window smashed. Shortly after 6 pm, with red-and-black flags waving, several dozen protesters left Colonel Summers Park, as promised, for an anti-police-brutality march that had the Portland Police Bureau concerned enough that it sent out a pre-emptive arrest warning earlier in the afternoon. The marchers were chanting in unison, “NO JUSTICE, NO PEACE, […]
Posted inCops
Proactive Cops Worry About “Tone” of Anti-Police-Brutality March
Portland police, in a proactive messaging play, are sounding an early alarm over an anti-police-brutality event planned for tonight at Southeast’s Colonel Summers Park—tying it to Occupy Portland and warning they’ll be prepared to make “arrests as necessary.” The unpermitted rally and march—in solidarity with the 400 protesters arrested last month in Oakland—is planned for […]
Posted inBikes
Police Release Disco Trike!
The sparkly gold Disco Trike impounded during last week’s Occupy solidarity march has been freed! Though police initially told disco tricyler Dan Kaufman that they would hold onto the iconic bike until the court date for his “unlawful operation of sound producing equipment” citation, apparent intervention from the mayor led police to spring the bike […]