TWENTY-SEVEN HOMELESS people slept on the sidewalk outside
city hall on Monday night, April 28, and remained there into the day on
Tuesday, in protest of a series of recent bridge sweeps by the Portland
Police Bureau.
The group, which says it plans to stay outside city hall until the
politicians inside find them somewhere to live, started camping outside
city hall last Friday, April 25. By Monday, numbers had grown from
nine, to 16, to almost 30, and the protesters said they plan to stay
for the foreseeable future.
Here’s the rub: Because they’re engaged in a First
Amendment-protected protest, the homeless people are exempt from the
city’s new sit-lie law, and the police are therefore powerless to move
them on during the day.
At first, people were sleeping underneath city hall’s portico, but
they were asked to move along on Monday night by Wackenhut security
guards and the police.
Then the homeless crowd said they were formally protesting the
city’s use of bridge sweeps to move homeless people along
[“Watchdogging,” In the Shadows, News, April 17], so the cops agreed
that the protesters could sleep on the sidewalk out front and that they
wouldn’t bother them
all night.
“City hall is the safest place right now for homeless people to be,”
said Arthur Rios Sr., who is speaking on behalf of the protesters and
is formerly homeless himself—he met several of the protesters at
Sisters of the Road Café.
“Because if you’re under the Burnside Bridge or the Hawthorne Bridge
or the Steel Bridge, you’ll be harassed by Portland Patrol, Inc., Clean
and Safe, and the police. We feel like if we don’t let the community
know why we’re out here, are we getting the message out?” he
continues.
“This isn’t camping,” Rios continues. “This is a protest.”
To prove it, two cardboard signs stood next to the protesters,
reading “Protest Rules.” Among the rules were “no foul words,” to treat
each other with “gentle personalism,” and for the protesters to clean
up after each other.
Former Commissioner Erik Sten staffer Jamaal Folsom—who’s been
working under the mayor’s office since Sten’s departure—went out
to meet with the protesters on Tuesday morning, April 29. “We went out
and talked to them and we’re trying to figure out what we can do to
help,” he says. “They did ask for quality and decent affordable
housing.”
“We’re happy to see them doing this, and in a nonviolent manner,”
says Patrick Nolen, community organizer at homeless nonprofit Sisters
of the Road.