Update 4:20pm: The protest is done for the day! From Wells Fargo, the group marched to the Waterfront and then an organizer told everyone over the megaphone that it was time to wrap things up and head home. That’s a surprise—we’re used to having Occupy protests go on and on, until all the tents are destroyed. Anti-ALEC protests also took to the streets in New York City, Albany, Tuscon, Salt Lake City and apparently about 70 other cities.
Over and out, except for this photo of clowns pretending to be mounted patrol cops:
Update 3:48pm: There was a brief standoff between protester and riot police at SW 5th and Columbia, but the crowd seems to have now moved on.
Update 3:20pm: More hijinks! We just got word that three animal rights activists have chained themselves together with a motorcycle lock in the office of Paul Cosgrove, a corporate lawyer who serves as the state corporate co-chair of ALEC. Cosgrove’s office is on the 34th floor of the Wells Fargo tower, where the protest has just arrived.
- JH
… and according to the Portland Police twitter feed, as of 3:30, the three locked-together protesters are now in custody.
Update 3pm: Hijinks! As the protest gathered around the building for Oregon’s top healthcare contractor, Regence, a middle-aged man wearing a suit and red tie walked out of the building and declared he was Joseph Hill, the PR Director of Regence. The crowd booed, but the suit-wearing man announced that the healthcare group was resigning from ALEC because they’re sick of funding anti-democratic activities. Cue round of applause and media swarm!
However, this is likely a prank (and a pretty good one). EDIT: Yep! Hoax! Pretty hilarious. Though Regence is not a member of ALEC, their parent company, Blue Cross Blue Shield, is involved in the organization.
Reporter Alex Z also has this dispatch from the McDonalds the protest swarmed a bit ago:
“Look up!” Shouts a woman on the megaphone, as a huge anti-ALEC poster drops from the parking garage above the fast food joint on SW 6th Avenue. The march slows to a halt and swarms around McDonald’s facade. Food Not Bombs sets up shop out front, handing out “healthy alternatives” to the “carcinogen-filled, evil” wares inside. After the food is devoured, the protesters want more. The doors to the resturant are held open, ushering in a group of thirty or so ralliers. One prepared particiapnt serenades the small audience of Mickey D’s staff and patrons with an anti-ALEC and McDonald’s ballad, full of fuck you’s. Beautiful.
Update 2:30pm— B Media Collective just tweeted that the protest is now occupying the Oregonian “to tell more truth.” People are chanting, “Thank God for the Internet!”
Update 2:18pm— The protest march looped through downtown, chanting and hollering outside the offices of Verizon and Bank of America and heading around Lownsdale and Chapman Squares, the former home of the Occupy camp. There appear to have been two arrests so far. Mayor Adam’s Public Safety Director Clay Neal says the arrests were for property damage outside Verizon (maybe caused by standing on top of a van?). Meanwhile, the livestream of the protest is up and running.
Original post:
Occupy Portland’s big anti-corporation F29 protest was already rolling as on 9am this morning: The Bike Swarm occupied a gas station on the corner of NE 20th and Burnside, telling car commuters the “real price” of gas.
As noted in last week’s issue, this is a nationwide Occupy protest that began here in Portland and has spread to other cities leading up to the big day. It’s taking aim at a corporate interest group known as ALEC.
At 11:30 today, the protest began with a rally on the waterfront, with bands performing and a group of raging grannies singing protest tunes.
The real action began at 1pm, when about 300 people began marching up SW Ash, their chants mixing with the frigid, pouring rain. In anticipation of the wintry mix, protest organizers printed dozens of bright yellow Occupy umbrellas.
Police are following the march, though there have not yet been any confrontations. The protest is now heading through downtown toward the Verizon building. Updates as we have them! Follow live on Twitter @theriaultpdx and @alex_zee.
A protester was handing out these nifty foldy-comics along the route explaining the event. It’s a pretty neat use of comics, I think:
Until you open the comic all the way and this is in the middle. Steve Humphrey compared the handout to a Dr. Bronner’s bottle, saying, “It’s like you’re daring me to try to read it.”
Jumping on a van in front of Verizon, how peaceful. NOT!
SHEEEPLEEE
those umbrellas are freakin’ me out, man
I don’t even use an umbrella, but where can I get one of those freaky things?
WHY IS THIS HAPPENING?
Yay another wasteful demonstration that won’t make a difference except make the average working person lose money because they can’t get to work due to the delay in public transportation
Thanks for the photos and the reporting. I was at the protest today, and it was great. The weather was TERRIBLE in the beginning, but it got a bit better over the course of the march, and we had a turn-out of 500-1000. The “confrontations” really weren’t a big deal – they just meant that most of the demonstrators stopped walking for 10 minutes and had a chance to rest, cause it was a long march. But otherwise, we took the streets, closed down some corporate branches, made our point, and looked fabulous while doing so.
“Closed down some corporate branches”???
I see a lack of boarded-up corporate windows in those photos.
Do banks normally board up their windows when they shut down for the afternoon? Ha, I didn’t say we closed them permanently – just for the duration of the protest. We shook up business as usual. That’s how you begin to change things in society. Now, I’m also all for shutting them down permanently or re-opening them under worker control – but hey, we’ve still got a little ways to go before then.
For the record, it totally is a dare to read it all! You’ll learn something!
(Also, it’s a cluster f*ck of rookie typography. My bad.)
Congrats to Occuppy and Portland Police on a successful protest. Nothing was really accomplished, but at this point, anything that doesn’t turn into some kind of standoff is a victory.
Occuppy might want to rethink the tactic of harassing photo and broadcast journalists, as was the case yesterday, but other than that, kudos.
@Kollontai…you idiots accomplished two things:jack and shit. And jack left town pal. “looked fabulous while doing so”? Thank you for proving my previously stated view that you are mostly jackasses with a terrible need for attention. Well, for a few hours you fed that addiction. If you were serious about making any kind of real change there are ways to go about affecting that. But you wouldn’t be interested, because you would not be on camera with other morons, or getting asslicking press coverage by an “alternative” publication. Or presenting your ill contrived skits. The good news is, this will blow over before you make any kind of change, other than changing peoples commuting routes for the day. By the way, at the last Occupy infestation I saw several people with Starbucks cups….was this intended irony or further proof that many of you are really that oblivious and stupid? Just wondering.