Occupy Portland—still soldiering along from its office in St. Francis in Southeast, and also from the city hall camping vigil, every single day—is tired of everyone thinking the movement’s dried up and gone as it enters its second year.

And, so, a bunch of occupiers have decided to take a page from their friends in big business: launching a transformative new campaign to refresh a sagging brand. There’s an Indiegogo page right here where you can donate money. Occupiers are looking to raise just shy of $2,000 to plaster ads all over the ceilings of Trimet buses and trains for four weeks sometime this fall/winter.

Let’s face it: Occupy Portland (and the greater national movement for that matter) is facing a Public Relations crisis. There is simply too many people unengaged with us and too little word being spread about us as we embark our 2nd year. And it certainly doesn’t help that the corporate media falsely labels us as dead. But with an office space, phone, and 24/7 small-scale “occupation” and vigil at City Hall, it’s clear that we have a real, sustaining future for our Portland area citizens. But how could they know?

That is why we are launching a new advertisement campaign to raise awareness ourselves and provide opportunity where there has not been before. Our goal is to raise $1,885 (with taxes and fees by Indiegogo, that gives us $1,750) to establish 25 “Michalangelo” [sic] ceiling ads inside TriMet buses and MAX lines to last us about 4 weeks.

We believe that riders of public transportation is the perfect target audience to spread the message of Occupy. With the working class, disengaged youth, student, eco-minded and elderly populations all diverging on the same vehicles, we see true untapped potential (or at least sympathy) when we make our presence known to them.

The pitch notes it’s not the movement’s first ad campaign. Last fall, some occupiers tapped friendly professional contacts and produced a slick YouTube ad. Best part about this buy: If you give $65 or more, organizers will even put your name on one.

Denis C. Theriault is the Portland Mercury's News Editor. He writes stories about City Hall and the Portland Police Bureau, focusing on issues like homelessness, police oversight, insider politics, and...

6 replies on “Occupy Portland Ad Blitz: Turning Buses, Trains into Movement’s Sistine Chapel”

  1. I hope the proof read the ads…

    Diverge actually means “to separate” but the context suggests they meant converge. #OccupyEnglsih

  3. They should reoccupy Wall Street (the actual Wall Street, in New York). Pick a time next year when the weather will be nicer than the first time, and spend months trying to recruit a nationwide convergence on Wall Street, too big for the authorities to stop even if they wanted to.

    The regional occupy movements are useless. Maybe success on Wall Street would give more purpose and direction to regional efforts.

  4. OWS and Occupy Portland are equally dead. I don’t think there is a “nationwide convergence” “to big for the authorities to stop”, and if you don’t believe me, just look up the Bonus Expeditionary Force, which was the Veteran’s Occupy Movement. You can always send in the Army, but even NYC Police have the capability to detain 10,000 people, so the Army wouldn’t be needed.

    I wrote a paper a while back and circulated it among Occupy’s around the country looking at similarities between the BEF and Occupy. They dealt with nearly identical challenges, but the BEF had the upper hand of a clear objective. That, to me, was the sole thing OWS and Occupy everywhere missed.

    Can someone answer this for me: What is the top priority of Occupy Wall Street and Occupy Portland? And, if you do have an answer to that question, do you really think that 2 other people in Occupy think that’s the same goal?

    But it’s too late for Occupy as a brand: 60% of this country hates it. The next movement needs to be accessible to Libertarians and Socialists equally, which is not impossible. For example: focus on ending the Federal Reserve and starting State run-banks. Focus on ending the wars overseas or the Drug War. Focus on criminal justice reform. Focus on TV news and media reform (or storm and occupy 30 Rock). There’s lots of opportunities (though, I personally don’t recommend *anyone* get involved with any of these mass movements, and to instead just become self-sufficient and self-wealthy: you achieve freedom only through autonomy).

  5. It costs less than $2k to run ads on busses for four weeks? No wonder Trimet is in such bad shape financially. I would imagine that the ads alone would cost that much, not counting the cost of using the bus space.

    BTW, I like that someone took the time to add [sic] after “Michalangelo” but not for the other mistakes, of which there are many.

  6. Wow. I actually like the Occupy Movement, and would like to see it as a force to educate the masses about economic inequality — but that’s never going to happen if there’s not a single person in the office who knows how to string a sentence together. Why would you give money to a campaign (with presumably TEXT in the ads) that can’t even spell the name of the person they’re looking to emulate? You can’t do a basic google search before pushing the launch button? You don’t know when to use a plural verb form? There’s not a single coherent sentence on their IndieGoGo site. It’s a total mess. More than one word is clearly used by an individual who never heard of a dictionary. They should be embarrassed. A fourth grader could have done better than this.

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