[Events are taking place faster than I can keep up with them on my blog, so I’ve decided to provide links at the end of each commentary, where you can find information on news about Occupy Portland and upcoming events. Page down for those….]
I don’t want to leave the impression here that I think everything happening at the Occupy Portland camp is sweetness and light, or that I'm trying to sell that notion to anyone else.
There are many other topics I’d like to address about the protest, eventually -- such as the camp’s relations with the city government and Portland Police; the misleading spin (unintended or otherwise) contained in local TV news reports I have seen; the bigger mission and potential outcomes of the protest -- but at this point I felt I should talk about some of the problems I’ve witnessed or heard about.
As they say, democracy is messy.
Every night at 7 p.m., a General Assembly (GA) meeting takes places at Terry Schrunk Plaza, a small brick arena across Madison Street to the south of the encampment, which is federal land. My schedule hasn’t allowed me to make it to a GA meeting, but OP volunteers try to take notes and post them as soon as possible on the Occupy Portland website.
I understand that much of the discussion at General Assembly meetings has revolved around the same safety and security concerns that the greater public outside the camp has expressed: that Occupy Portland seems to include homeless persons, mentally ill folks, recreational drug consuming and dealing individuals, and possibly criminals. (The couple show here are NOT examples of these subgroups, but more typical citizens chatting on a bench in Chapman Square.)
None of the above are legitimate OP protesters, but their activities disrupt the peace and security of the community, and reflect badly on it when witnessed by passersby, photographed by other citizens, and reported on local TV news. Some outsiders fail to make any distinction between these dregs and the legitimate protesters.
It’s not hard to find evidence of a little chaos and conflict if you spend time on site. I personally witnessed several examples, myself:
- There was a non-stop motormouth who roamed up and down the walks talking gibberish. As he passed me, I noted comments about “cats in space suits on the moon”; “Obama has no power, he’s made of chocolate; what happens when you lick chocolate?”; “dude, don’t look at your necktie, that’s disgusting!”; and the questions “what if all PCs were Macs, what if Steve Jobs never existed?”
- A young man who apparently had set up the live video feed to the Web, disgusted that some of the equipment was now damaged or missing and the live feed gone offline, told volunteers at the Info tent “I’m pulling out my $1200 investment.”
- I heard loud yelling and cursing at the corner of SW 4th and Main, so I got up to investigate. As near as I could follow from observing and asking questions of the two involved, the man who was yelling had retrieved a torn-up cardboard sign from the trash and accused the kid who had thrown it there of suppressing free speech; while the kid said he had originally made a sign to say “Everything’s fine,” and someone else had written an extensive response over that in black marker to explain how everything is not fine and he chose to dispose of his defaced message. Seemed like a fairly cut-and-dried instance of bullying on the part of the shouter, who also said he had pursued the matter at the behest of someone else entirely at the coffee tent. But later I saw the kid carrying more outrageous, incomprehensible or taunting signs and screaming about someone else being “into hurting people” as that party tore up his latest sign.
I talked to Eric, one of the security volunteers, which is basically someone who patrols the camp for trouble but expressly doesn’t try to do much beyond witnessing heated situations as they develop, doing what he can to try to talk them down, but calling the police if things get out of hand. He said: “A lot of people are starting to realize a lot of things that are making them angry, and you have to expect that some of them will take it out on whoever’s handy.”
Occupy Portland is an expressly nonviolent community which has to apply nonviolent solutions as far as it can. In any situation where that becomes impossible, and anyone’s safety is threatened, OP calls in the police. As Ethan told me, the same basic rules and laws pretty much apply within the camp as around it.
One of the first people I talked with at the Info tent on Friday morning was a Native American elder who identified himself as Zachary Running Bull. He was traveling from Occupy Oakland to a memorial service in Montana for Elouise Cobell, a Blackfeet elder who died Oct. 16. [See the landmark Native American reparations case, Cobell v. Salazar, in which she served as lead plaintiff.] Zach said he had been serving as a security volunteer at Occupy Oakland, and had knocked out and removed a man armed with a knife.
More than one outside sympathizer I've talked with at the Info tent and elsewhere in the city has told me that such disruptive antics reflect badly on the Occupy Portland camp and make respectable middle-class Portlanders who might otherwise support the cause less willing to come on board.
But consider just what the protesters have attempted here. They’ve pulled together a large group of several hundred total strangers, most of whom have little or no past experience in participatory self-government, never mind parliamentary procedure. The thrust of their protest hinged on economic and social justice. No doubt that includes people who have lost their jobs or, just out of school, haven’t been able to find a decent one.
But consider just what the protesters have attempted here. They’ve pulled together a large group of several hundred total strangers, most of whom have little or no past experience in participatory self-government, never mind parliamentary procedure. The thrust of their protest hinged on economic and social justice. No doubt that includes people who have lost their jobs or, just out of school, haven’t been able to find a decent one.
As a Facebook friend in Miami, novelist Adam-Troy Castro, posted earlier today, “Yelling ‘Get a job!’ at Occupy protesters is a lot like yelling ‘Repent, Sinners!’ at people kneeling in church.”
However, in choosing to serve free food and pass out donated blankets, tarps, tents, socks, and other commodities pretty much to anyone who asks for them, Occupy Portland protesters have inevitably attracted other disenfranchised elements of our society -- the even more downtrodden folks for whom we as a city, state, and country have failed adequately to care.
If mentally ill Portlanders were not shouting their drivel in between meals at the OP encampment, they would be getting into trouble elsewhere, isolated and even less safe. During the weeks of Occupy Portland's protest, the Portland Police have behaved with superb poise and consideration, but not so long ago, a few of them seemed all too willing to collaborate in the unfortunate process known as “suicide by cop.”
The committed protesters of Occupy Portland have neither the expertise to handle homeless, mentally ill, or career criminal squatters, the strength or ability to expel them, nor (in the case of the first two) the willingness to treat them as badly as almost everyone else has.
I will probably address these issues in greater detail when I write about the local TV news coverage I’ve seen about Occupy Portland, but for now I’ll simply note that:
- Most arrests connected with Occupy Portland have been the result of the conscious and willing decision by the protesters to be arrested, as in the case of the eight charged with disorderly conduct during the reopening of Main Street on Oct. 12, when the vast majority of protesters agreed to clear the thoroughfare peacefully.
- Arrests for disturbances within the camp have usually resulted from Occupy Portland security volunteers bringing the attention of the police to the disruptive party.
- An incident of alleged “flashing” was also called to the attention of police, according to an Info tent veteran, and the authorities chose not to take action.
- A news story about an “81 percent spike in crime” in the area was followed by an admission by a police spokesperson that a total of 11 arrests for vandalism and 16 for disorderly conduct in more than two weeks is still relatively tiny. And of course, I have seen no definitive connection made between these crimes and the protesters.
- So far, there has been a single drug arrest at Occupy Portland … of a man carrying a jar of marijuana that the police approached because they thought he was drinking beer in public. (Two others were arrested after police officers recognized them as having warrants out for parole violation connected with drug convictions in the past.) I personally have seen drug deals happening as a routine matter on both the South Park Blocks closer to my apartment and in Old Town/Chinatown for many, many years, but the local news hasn't made those comparisons in its coverage of Occupy Portland.
Many years ago I covered a traditional New England annual town meeting as a newspaper reporter. Some of it was a bit farcical, though everyone involved had likely been through the process before and stayed in fairly good humor. Some of it was downright boring. I doubt the average American elsewhere in the country would have had the patience for it, if he stepped into it as a newcomer.
More of us outsiders -- myself included -- need to visit a GA meeting at Occupy Portland and witness just how hard self-government from scratch really is, and how well or ill (but with unquestionable courage) the protesters are executing it right now.
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Thank you so much for keeping up on this, David. Joe and I came into town Monday night with some donations, and had to walk through the camp to get to the Information tent. The folks there were exceptionally kind and helpful, and one even walked back to the car with us to help carry what we'd brought. It's clearly not a "perfect" community -- but nothing built by humans is, and as you so rightly point out, they are trying to build a democratic community from absolutely nothing. Overall I'd say they're doing a damn fine job of it. We'll be looking forward to more of your reports!
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