Occupy Wall Street comes to Portland, Oregon

On Day 19 of Occupy Wall Street, a crazy idea first proposed in July by the activist magazine AdBusters, the odd little protest that started in New York City’s financial district on Sept 17 (see the CNN Money overview of the phenomenon) went national.

Yesterday -- Thursday, Oct. 6 -- after little coverage in the national broadcast media but plenty of buzz on social media networks, Occupy Wall Street spread to Philadelphia, Boston, San Francisco, Chicago, Denver, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and other U.S. cities.

That especially included Portland, Oregon, where someone’s always protesting something, often within ten blocks of my downtown apartment. I hadn’t heard or read much about Occupy Wall Street, but I did find it curious that what seemed to be an ongoing populist event in Lower Manhattan, resulting in arrests and some violence by police against protestors, had not made much of a splash in the news on my local TV stations.

When Facebook friends passed along word of a march in Portland on Oct. 6, I decided to check it out. Here's the initial gathering with the Burnside Bridge across the Willamette River in the background. My wife Carole took this and the next photo.

Shortly after noon I got to Waterfront Park, listened to some of the speeches and comments as the crowd grew, and decided to volunteer as a “police liaison,” knowing that I was older than the average protestor and less likely either to get hassled by the police or to lose my cool.

I was handed pens, paper, water for washing eyes, and about 15 minutes of instruction on how to be a police liaison – mostly just a buffer between Occupy Portland marchers and law enforcement officers. If the police needed to speak to someone, we would step up. If arrests occurred, we were to record the names of the arrestees and the badge numbers of the officers. If we had cameras or iPhones, we were to record the arrests. (That's me in the red fleece and brown hat getting briefed, at right.)

None of that proved necessary. I ranged along the parade route from its head to its tail, and it was immediately obvious that although the organizers of Occupy Portland had not secured permits or let local law enforcement know in advance where they intended to march, the police were doing their best to monitor the parade route, minimize disruption to traffic, and avoid confrontations.

Marchers paused to let light-rail trains through the center of town. They smiled and waved at the puzzled pedestrians on the sidewalks and folks staring from office building windows. From the reports I’ve seen from around the country, Portland’s estimated 5,000 or more may have been the second largest in the nation after New York City. (Photo of us on SW Broadway at left is a representative image of the march, taken by a Facebook friend, Byron Beck.)

Washington, DC’s march got good coverage but only totaled 500 protestors. We heard that police had been particularly cooperative with the DC protestors because the cops themselves have been working for four years without a contract. Seattle and LA garnered arrests, but more because of where they chose to invade (actual bank lobbies in California, certain parks up north) rather than their size or general behavior.

What’s amusing is that for all our size and noise, Oregon didn’t even make the map of a dozen states reported on MSNBC to be hosting Occupy Wall Street spinoffs!

When we passed the intersection of SW Fifth and Jefferson, near City Hall, Mayor Sam Adams (who is also in effect the Police Commissioner on the City Council) came out to shake hands and do high-fives with passing protestors. He had also given authorization for Occupy Portland  marchers to camp overnight in two city park blocks between the city government’s Portland Building and various federal and county buildings, including the local jail.

They will have to move in the morning, because a permitted Portland Marathon has prior claim on the space. Where Occupy Portland will go is unknown.

But there were no arrests, no reports of vandalism, and little unpleasantness that I could see. Sure, there were lots of marginal-looking kids, some of them masked or with neckerchiefs obscuring their faces, and when we stopped in downtown Pioneer Square, marijuana legalization activists were sweetening the air with smoking bundles of hemp; but I also saw military veterans, middle-agers and grey-hairs, stage and film actor colleagues, and a lot of other fed-up middle class folks on Portland streets from Ankeny and Burnside to Broadway and Jefferson yesterday.

Gratifying as this was, there were plenty of signs of the gulf that remains between us and much of the rest of the country. I overheard bystanders wondering out loud what it was all about. A burly gent at SW Broadway and Main who looked fairly working-class was shouting at the passing marchers to explain what they were protesting, and what they wanted. I took a quick dip into the typically noxious comment columns of the local newspaper’s Web site and, sure enough, found a little of the usual claptrap about “dirty, smelly hippies” and “socialists.”

The remaining questions for us are: Will this peaceful and nonviolent precedent continue locally? And can this relatively spontaneous national expression of disgust with corporate greed, unending war and obscene war profiteering, and unresponsive government lead to anything substantial and lasting for the good of the American people?