It goes without saying that a boon of living in a river/port city is that you and your friends can dangle from a bridge in a spectacular attempt to trap an oil ship in town (get a bridge/river, Seattle!). Nice, then, to see some of our fellow citizens exercising those inalienable rights for once.

A baker’s dozen of Greenpeace-affiliated activists dangled themselves from the St. Johns Bridge via climbing ropes early this morning, as a flotilla of “kayaktivists” spent the night off the shores of Cathedral Park. It’s coalesced as one of the more impressively baroque shows of protest agains the Shell Oil fleet that’s been spending time in the Pacific Northwest before heading to the arctic to plunder oil.

This time around, protesters have their sites set on the Fennica, an ice breaking vessel that Shell’s waiting on before it can really dig in up there. The ship has been in Portland since Saturday, for repairs at Vigor Industrial on Swan Island.

Mary Nicol, a senior arctic campaigner at Greenpeace, tells Shelby that the climbers took steps so that police can’t merely pull them up. They’ve attached their ropes to the underside of the St. Johns Bridge, with enough food, they say, to last for days.

ODOT Spokesman Don Hamilton tells OPB there are no structural concerns with climbers dangling there.

The Fennica hasn’t attempted to leave yet, and it’s unclear whether the protesters will be able to halt its progress. This is fun. Shelby’s on the scene (tweets after the jump).

I'm a news reporter for the Mercury. I've spent a lot of the last decade in journalism — covering tragedy and chicanery in the hills of southwest Missouri, politics in Washington, D.C., and other matters...

6 replies on “Protest Fun: Greenpeace Activists are Dangling from the St. Johns Bridge to Imprison That Shell Oil Ship”

  2. If there’s anyplace I’d want to be, its dangling off a bridge in 90-100 degree weather on a platform with a bucket of my own poop.

  3. So the ship got in Saturday for repairs. Seems like it might be here for awhile. They wouldn’t bring it down from the arctic circle for a quick spruce up right?

  5. Wow, Protests sure are Fun!
    You can seem to be Morally Responsible and meet new friends!
    Just don’t let any small hypocrisies bother you.
    There is Fun to be had!

  6. Love the idiots pointing out that we use oil to produce stuff… YEAH… if we weren’t BURNING it we wouldn’t need to start getting it from the arctic… there’s more than enough in Texas if we would just wise up and stop using it as fuel!

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