As you know, I periodically request the citizen voicemails left for Mayor Sam Adams’ office (here are the gems). While going through the batch from this fall, we realized basically the entire October voicemail box was stuffed with Occupy Portland complaints. Here are the best, plus a helpful pie chart of October complaints (and about […]
Occupy
Posted inOccupy
How Bad is the NDAA? Even Occupy Haters Joined With Occupy’s Protest March Last Week
There’s got to be hope for Democrats and Republicans and cats and dogs and the vampire movie fans from 2009 or so who bickered over which of the two pretty young male protagonists they liked best. Because at last Saturday’s Occupy Portland march against the police-state-like National Defense Authorization Act, guess who showed up IN […]
Posted inOccupy
Activists Protest Courthouse Auction of Single Mom’s Foreclosed Home
Every day, a group of entrepreneurs holding tiny laptops show up on the Multnomah County Courthouse steps, eager to pick up homes on the cheap. The foreclosed home auctions are the end of a long, terrible financial episode for many local homeowners. Today, one day before Christmas Eve, the house of 49-year-old Southeast Portland resident […]
Posted inOccupy
Occupy Joins With Immigrant Groups to Protest Deportation
On Wednesday night, roughly 30 supporters of the Northwest Immigrant Youth Alliance gathered in the dark outside City Hall, lighting small candles for Gustavo Romero Alvarez, a 19-year-old undocumented Portlander who is slated to be deported today. Gustavo’s parent, foreground, form a circle with their son’s supporters. “We all make mistakes. But for undocumented kids, […]
Posted inCity Hall
Another Occupy Portland Sitdown with Mayor Sam Adams
Mayor Sam Adams sat down with Occupy Portland’s nearly-always-on livestream crew this morning for a wide-ranging chat about, among other things, Adams’ own plans to advance the Occupy movement’s national goals, his thoughts about what’s worked and what hasn’t with police actions, and a discussion about camping and what he’d have done differently. Adams first […]
Posted inOccupy
ACLU Pushed to Remove Fences at Schrunk Plaza
Denis C. Theriault “I keep a close watch on this park of mine. I keep my eyes wide open all the time.” Terry Schrunk Plaza, the former home of Occupy Portland’s nightly governing meetings, was reopened Monday, December 12—a development that was cheered during Occupy Portland’s port shutdown demonstration when someone interrupted a dance party […]
Posted inCops
And Now Some Interesting Facts About Pepper Spray
Yesterday, Occupy Portland mustered enough people to shut down three Port of Portland terminals for more than 12 hours—and it all happened with nary a substantial clash with police, despite the looming presence of a small cadre of riot cops throughout much of the day. Other occupy movements in other cities didn’t fare as well. […]
Posted inOccupy
Vanessa Veselka on Trying to Unionize Amazon
Local author Vanessa Veselka (we reviewed her book Zazen here) has an Occupy-inspired piece in the Atlantic about her attempts to unionize Amazon during the early 2000s. It’s a good, ranging pieces that touches on the WTO protests, the difficulty of unionizing on an assembly line, and Amazon’s transition from selling books to selling everything. […]
Posted inOccupy
OccuPIE Follow Up: No One Got Hit in the Face With a Pie
Yesterday afternoon, about 150 people came out to the Cleaners at the Ace Hotel for Your Slice of OccuPIE, a Mercury/Bus Project-organized discussion on ways to promote economic equality beyond camping out. Every single ounce of donated pie was consumed—which is pretty impressive considering Whiffies donated 100 handpies and Random Order Coffeehouse donated 10 of […]
Posted inOccupy
The Nation On the “Fracturing” of Occupy Wall Street: Depressing—But Required—Reading
General assemblies and the consensus model empowers crazies and obstructionists. You can talk about the purity of the process, and about democracy being messy and painful, but eventually there’s no one left in the room/at the GA who isn’t either a batshit obstructionist-by-default or a malicious obstructionist-by-design. And then what?
Posted inOccupy
Occupy Rallies 500 at Port, Two Terminals Shut Down
Photo by Justin Riley, via Portland Occupier.org Today, Occupy protests along the West Coast are coordinating a mass action to shut down ports. Before protesters even arrived on the scene, the Port of Portland shut down the two terminals slated for protest, telling the workers of terminals five and six to stay home. News Editor […]
Posted inOccupy
Details on Occupy’s Planned Port Shutdown
Monday is the big day where supporters of the Occupy movement are aiming to shut down the ports of up to 23 cities American cities, including ours. Portland’s own group held a brief press conference this morning about their plans for the wee morning hours at the Port of Portland. I condensed the essentials into […]