WE KNOW, WE KNOW. The Occupy Portland movement that’s set up for a long campout in downtown Portland (replete with a kitchen and chessboards!) is not about specifics. The whole protest is a general outpouring of anger over our unfair economic system. But can that anger be useful? Now that Occupy has a soapbox—here and across the world—what are some concrete ideas for actually fixing our unequal country? We asked a handful of Occupiers for good ideas.
DITCH YOUR BANK
Reid Parham, 26, software engineer
I haven’t been with a commercial bank since 1997. Credit unions keep the money local, you get better interest rates, and the assets of the credit union represent homes that could be right next to yours. Credit unions have fewer pressures from investors, and it’s much better to bank with someone who directly answers to you as a customer rather than trying to squeeze out every little bit of profit. My wife has a Chase account—they’ve created some obnoxious fees. She’s been unemployed for three years and they’ve been hassling her about the lack of regular deposits to her account. November 5 is the official national day to quit your bank, but it’s never too soon or too late.
RETHINK IMMIGRATION
Shizuko Hashimoto, 30, legal assistant
I don’t champion one cause over another. Each problem is just one of many, many problems that support the current system of injustice. But immigrant rights are really important to me. Very specifically, there’s an increase in programs [called Secure Communities] that perpetuate the collaboration between police and immigration and customs enforcement. Someone who’s picked up for driving without a license is now put into this deportation pipeline. Folks are scared. It’s a public-safety issue—it’s less safe when people are afraid to go to the police.
CREATE CHEAP, PUBLIC INTERNET
Teresa Boze, 57, consultant and writer
We need to recognize broadband as a general-purpose technology, get the infrastructure in, and quit having it throttled by the telecoms. It’s going to have to be a public-private partnership, but we need to get the foot off the throat of broadband. Once that opens up, there will be a lot more economic opportunity for everybody. The City of Portland right now is developing a broadband plan and as of this month, the Portland Office of Cable Communications and Franchise Management is now, sweetly and simply, the Office for Community Technology. Isn’t that nice?
ABOLISH THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE
Yossi Ben-David, 24, traveling Israeli and volunteer chef
Change the sham, the façade that is the two-party, so-called democracy. I wouldn’t say Israel is a functioning democracy; we are occupying and oppressing another people. But as far as the electoral system, [Israel] is more representative. It’s parliamentarian and we don’t have the ridiculous thing with the winner-takes-all electorate, which guarantees that the two parties backed and financed by the elites and corporations will always stay in power. If winner takes all, how will new forces establish themselves?
BROADCAST TEACH-INS
Ali Reingold, 26, server and tutor
A lot of people are thinking that all these protests are great, but where do we go from here? We have this idea of doing teach-ins across the country, combined with a website that’s similar to TED Talks. We want to bring together people who care with some people who know, have that filmed, put it up on a website, and make it available to people in an easily digestible format where it can continue to be discussed. The website could be a living library of history of all these issues.
KILL CORPORATE PERSONHOOD
Casey Wagner, 19, Lewis & Clark student
Corporations shouldn’t have the same rights as people. It’s pretty simple why. Corporations are conglomerations, there’s too much power concentrated in the hands of just a few people, and they can put way too much money into politics. Elections in this country are won by the people who spend the most money.
END THE WARS
Robert Ziggy Walker, 19, high school dropout
I guess this could be considered national and personal: Stop the wars. My grandpa was an agent orange veteran and he died of cancer. It’s better for families to not have to worry about their sons going to war. I don’t think they should stop the troops cold turkey, they should pull them out gradually over a couple years, like Obama promised.
In Other Occupy News:
• Commissioner Nick Fish split with Mayor Sam Adams this week, saying city arborists have estimated the tent city has caused $19,000 worth of damage to trees in Lownsdale and Chapman Squares, and that the parks are not good for long-term protest.
• Eight protesters were arrested early Thursday, October 13, because they refused to “un-occupy” SW Main as the city opened it after six days of closure. Since then, there’s a beefed-up police force of two full-time cops at the site.
• The city turned off the electric-vehicle charging station at SW 4th and Madison that protesters were using as a power source. Looks like the outlets at city hall and Seattle’s Best are about to get occupied.
• Occupiers voted Sunday, October 16, to push ranked-choice voting in Portland, and were scheduled as of press time to bring the proposal to a committee reviewing the city’s charter Tuesday, October 18.
To the Israeli : go home and fix your own version of Democracy, which has its’ own severe problems and leave us to mend our own.
And quit taking our tax dollars to help prop up your own system.
Learn how to cook a decent burger here and go home.
frankieb, if you said that about the Mexicans, you would be called a racist. But the left wing in Poorland embraces Nazis like you. You must have be indoctrinated, I mean taught, in government schools. Israel has the closest form of government to a democracy in the entire Middle East.
Ranked Choice voting?
Andy, it may be the ONLY Democracy in the Middle East, but is not to say they don’t have their own set of problems. Their system also ensures that hard line right-wing religous zealots stay in control over more of their government than they should.
Don’t try to paint me as ‘anti-semetic’ either. One can be critical of Israel while embracing the Jewish faith.
There are Jews in my family, and I’ve participated in many of the ceremonies. I’ve been to Dachau and seen first-hand the horror of what happened.
You casually throw out ‘Nazi’, when I just think that I shouldn’t have to read critisism about our form of democracy from an Israeli in regards to this ‘occupy’. Or any foriegner.
Check yourself.
There are also good reasons why we use the electoral college.
@bruce: Ranked choice voting is a much cleaner option that what we have now, the winner-take-all system. If you want to see an excellent summation of what Ben-David was referring to, check out these videos. The guy who made them clearly lays out the problems with different kinds of electoral systems, and does so while using pictures of cute animals. That is always a good thing.
The problem with first-past-the-post (what we have now): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7tWHJfhiyo
And alternative, aka ranked choice voting, explained: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Y3jE3B8HsE…
BOO! I thought there were going to be ‘good ideas’ for fixing out ‘unequal country’ in this article?
@Shizuko – Actually, the streets are safer when people without licenses aren’t out driving.
@Teresa-I agree broadband access is essential in creating a truly democratic system. In case you aren’t already aware there is a National Broadband Plan in place. It’s an ambitious but realistic set of well-defined goals connected to many local projects around the country. Unfortunately, it seems like it has gotten little attention in mainstream media.
frankieb, how about some Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.?
“. . . You declare, my friend, that you do not hate the Jews, you are merely ‘anti-Zionist.’ And I say, let the truth ring forth from the high mountain tops, let it echo through the valleys of God’s green earth: When people criticize Zionism, they mean Jews–this is God’s own truth.
“Antisemitism, the hatred of the Jewish people, has been and remains a blot on the soul of mankind. In this we are in full agreement. So know also this: anti-Zionist is inherently antisemitic, and ever will be so.
“Why is this? You know that Zionism is nothing less than the dream and ideal of the Jewish people returning to live in their own land. The Jewish people, the Scriptures tell us, once enjoyed a flourishing Commonwealth in the Holy Land. From this they were expelled by the Roman tyrant, the same Romans who cruelly murdered Our Lord. Driven from their homeland, their nation in ashes, forced to wander the globe, the Jewish people time and again suffered the lash of whichever tyrant happened to rule over them.
“The Negro people, my friend, know what it is to suffer the torment of tyranny under rulers not of our choosing. Our brothers in Africa have begged, pleaded, requested–DEMANDED the recognition and realization of our inborn right to live in peace under our own sovereignty in our own country.
“How easy it should be, for anyone who holds dear this inalienable right of all mankind, to understand and support the right of the Jewish People to live in their ancient Land of Israel. All men of good will exult in the fulfilment of God’s promise, that his People should return in joy to rebuild their plundered land.
This is Zionism, nothing more, nothing less.
“And what is anti-Zionist? It is the denial to the Jewish people of a fundamental right that we justly claim for the people of Africa and freely accord all other nations of the Globe. It is discrimination against Jews, my friend, because they are Jews. In short, it is antisemitism.
“The antisemite rejoices at any opportunity to vent his malice. The times have made it unpopular, in the West, to proclaim openly a hatred of the Jews. This being the case, the antisemite must constantly seek new forms and forums for his poison. How he must revel in the new masquerade! He does not hate the Jews, he is just ‘anti-Zionist’!
“My friend, I do not accuse you of deliberate antisemitism. I know you feel, as I do, a deep love of truth and justice and a revulsion for racism, prejudice, and discrimination. But I know you have been misled–as others have been–into thinking you can be ‘anti-Zionist’ and yet remain true to these heartfelt principles that you and I share.
Let my words echo in the depths of your soul: When people criticize Zionism, they mean Jews–make no mistake about it.”
From M.L. King Jr., “Letter to an Anti-Zionist Friend,” Saturday Review_XLVII (Aug. 1967), p. 76.
Reprinted in M.L. King Jr., “This I Believe: Selections from the Writings of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.”
It’s hilarious Franklieb and Andy from Beaverton are fighting! HAWHAWHAW
Tom, funny, eh?
Andy, you can write 17 pages of scripture, quotes from the great minds of our time and past times, etc etc fucking etc….
It still doesn’t change the fact that I am most certainly not a Nazi – and lobbing those accusations so carelessly I think speaks more to your own self than me.
It is also worth a million yuks that the reappearance of Andy From Beaverton in our ranks means the invocation of Godwin’ Law at an unprecedented second comment in! Congratulations, Andy! Beaverton must be proud to have ya’!
And of course, that was “Godwin’s” law, with a final ‘s’…
If I figured anyone would listen, I would let the people currently occupying those two parks know that they’ve already done what needed to be done. That is to say; they’ve garnered publicity for a slew of issues that we weren’t talking about as a nation, and needed to. Now we are. Good job.
Now you need to stop camping in a fucking park and calling it a protest. What happens now is that You become the story, and that’s not what is needed. Because when the story becomes about You, it becomes about that young’un who prefers natural fibers and smokes copious amounts of herb, has a dog named Kaya, etc. etc. etc. When stereotypes like that become the public face of a movement, the movement is its own worst enemy.
Disband Occupy Portland, and live out all your suggestions in real time.
“unfair economic system”
Explain in detail exactly what it is you imagine to be “unfair” about our economic system.
“Someone who’s picked up for driving without a license is now put into this deportation pipeline”
WAAAAAAAH!
There is an awesome and easy solution to this problem:
Don’t drive without a license.
That “Reid Parham” is only 26 and he looks far older than I am, and I’m almost 45! What the fuck?
“software engineer” = unemployed
“consultant and writer” = unemployed
“traveling Israeli and volunteer chef” = unemployed or spy
“server and tutor” = unemployed
“Lewis & Clark student” = unemployed
“high school dropout” = unemployed
LOL
Dear Mercury:
I don’t know if this says more about you or the people you chose to interview, but I found it astounding that no one mentioned campaign finance reform. If there was one cause to rally around, this should be it! As it stands, our elected officials spend an unwarranted amount of time trying to muster up money to support their election campaigns, time that would be much better spent, oh maybe, gathering the necessary information required to make informed decisions and solving actual problems. Instead, they’re forced to take in huge sums of money from corporate interests to fund their campaigns, and in turn they’re indebted to said supporters. They couldn’t vote against the grain even if they wanted to, not if they’d like to stay in politics, that is. It’s gotten so much worse in recent years due to the limitless amounts of cash that can be funnelled thru PAC’s, not to mention the corrosive influence of lobbyists.
Until these problems are fixed our goverment will remain incapable of goverening “for the people”.
Cheap, public Internet would be great, but since the vast majority of Americans still get their info from TV and newspapers, bringing back the Fairness Doctrine (and applying it to Internet hard-news sources) would do more to return our country to a place where political debate is encouraged than anything. But alas, it was killed by an FCC regulator who called the television just another appliance, like a toaster with pictures. He came from, and went back to work in the telecom industry, the same industry he was supposed to be regulating!
Which leads me to my last point, that most of our nations regulatory bodies are staffed by people who have vested interests in the same businesses they are supposed to be regulating. Businesses regulated by the FCC, FDA, EPA, Dept. Of Commerce, etc., are governed by rules set out by their former and future directors & employees! How else could corporations like Monsanto get away with things like “terminator seeds”?
All I’m saying is there are bigger fish to fry, Mercury…
Israel is NOT a democracy. Who ever thinks this clearly doesn’t know shit.
For anyone who actually cares, here’s some info to that us 99%’ers can rally behind:
http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html
Will I be expected to post my birth certificate and tax returns, now? 😛
(Yes—I’m 26 and employed.)
“Israel is NOT a democracy. Who ever thinks this clearly doesn’t know shit.”
Well DamosA, you don’t know shit. But that is nothing new to everyone who has read your posts. If you want to be technical, it’s a parliamentary democracy.