How the George Floyd/BLM Protests Are Like the Boston Tea Party . . . and Are Not

As in years past, I’ve seen familiar complaints about how vandalism and destruction of property during the protests here in Portland and elsewhere across the nation “lose me” and “violate the message.”

Another familiar trope has been for leftists to refer to the historic precedent of the Boston Tea Party, to which members of the right reply that that event “focused its damage on the actual items [or business or people] at fault.”

Curious about the truth of the matter — there’s almost always more to the story than can be captured in a sentence, or is relayed in high-school history classes and textbooks, which is what most of us know — I decided to look into the matter. I learned a lot . . . and neither of the narratives above is accurate.

This is what I found:

The (disguised) protesters who dumped 342 chests of tea of tea into Boston Harbor from the Dartmouth, the Beaver, and the Eleanor at Griffin Wharf on the night of Dec. 16, 1773 were expressing their displeasure with an act of Parliament, which did not own either the ship, the tea, or the wharf.

Most of the roughly 100 participants were under the age of 40, and sixteen were teenagers — imagine that. Thanks to their disguise as Native Americans, only one was arrested and imprisoned later.

Best Portland Walking Tour Stories of 2019, Part 4

Further memorable tales from my Portland Walking Tours of 2019.

AUGUST 20

The owner and founder was at the concierge desk when I walked in to lead this morning’s tour. He gave me a head’s up that “one of our resellers” (that is, a travel company based elsewhere that sells tickets to our tours as part of its packages) would be a guest.

They may be checking up on us, he said. I cracked that I would have to cut all the political content and dirty jokes.

Turned out the guest was a resident of one of the major capital cities of Europe, and an agent of a firm that has offices in Zurich and Berlin. He was a cool customer; stayed behind his shades most of the time, and only cracked a gentle grin in response to some of my best witticisms.

Fortunately, the couple from Vancouver BC who were also on the tour were quite lively and laughed easily, so I think I did our operation proud.

[If you’re wondering about the photo here, it was taken by Fritz Liedtke during the annual Portland Walking Tours business meeting and holiday party at our Old Town office in December 2016 for a later online promotion that never happened.]

Remembering My Faraway Friend, Jeff Weiss

Last Friday, I needed to get in touch with Jeff Weiss, the fellow who launched this blog nearly eight years ago. When I went to his Facebook page, I was shocked to see the caption “Remembering Jeffrey Weiss” . . .

Paging down, I read memorials, farewells, and tearful messages from friends and family of my ’net colleague. Further down, I found links to news stories about his death in a car collision near his home west of Atlantic City, New Jersey on June 17. Jeff’s car was stopped when another vehicle rear-ended it in Egg Harbor Township as he was heading home to Mays Landing, and Jeff was pronounced dead at the scene.

I had never met him in person, but we had worked together online for most of the past eight years, and occasionally talked by phone as well as chatted on live and recorded podcasts. I always assumed I would meet Jeff someday, but now I know I never will.

In the fall of 2009 I was going through huge changes: I’d been laid off in early July from the full-time job I’d held nearly five years, and was trying to secure unemployment benefits and temp jobs here in Portland while looking for another full-time position. But I was also launching a side career as a commercial actor and model at the fairly advanced age of 50.

Back Again

Wow, where does the time go?

If I were to guess the last time I posted to this blog, I would have said two months ago . But it's been three.

That's going to change. I'll make this one short and sweet -- with the promise that there will be plenty to come. Soon.

2012 was a difficult but interesting year, not only for the nation and the world but for me. 2013 no doubt offers more of the same, though I'm not inclined to play the predictions game.

As I stated here a year ago, I also don't make New Year's resolutions, because they strike me as an exercise in setting oneself up to fail. Too often, we resolve to fix or stop doing something, and one simple misstep becomes an automatic black mark . . . and an inducement to give up.

I prefer to be more general and vague; I set some goals for the year. Not so much specific, tangible goals, because again, too many things are out of our control and it's easy for bad luck to look like personal failure. Rather, I resolve at the back of my head to do more of this or that . . . to push my life and activities in a direction that brings me closer to the kind of person I want to be.

That includes writing. With regard to this blog, I can predict a substantial increase in activity. I've certainly not lacked ideas for topics to write about.

As you might guess, in recent weeks I've had a number of debates with various folks on Facebook about gun control, a subject on which I've had occasion to write before. Recent news headlines and online firefights have provided fodder for multiple future commentaries. There are new developments in news events I wrote about a year or two ago, such as the supposed 2010 Pioneer Square "terrorist bomber," Mohamed Mohamud.

There's also recent news about how the government suppressed the Occupy movement last year, terming it a "terrorist threat" while at the same time admitting that Occupy was a peaceful movement. I participated in a small way in Occupy Portland, and wrote a lot on this blog about what I observed. The latest news outpaces what my paranoid imagination can devise about how "they're out to get us."

2012 was also a good year for pleasure reading. I read a total of 160 books and more than 50,000 pages, so I imagine there might be a thing or two to say about that, the way I wrote about reading Proust more than a year ago. And there's always plenty to say about the latest electronic gadgets, Americans' lemming-like race to own and be owned by them, and their effects of our voracious demand on the lives (and deaths) of people on the other side of the globe.

Stay tuned.

Semi-Happy Birthday, Occupy Wall Street

One year ago today, Occupy Wall Street made its move. Activists hoping to make a statement about corporate greed and multinational economic control took a stand at Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan, and a nationwide movement was born.

What a year it has been! On the plus side, phrases like “the 1 percent” and “the 99 percent” have entered common parlance, even among candidates for President of the United States. In the wake of Occupy, smaller pro-union protests and citizen reclamation of homes left empty by bank foreclosures have followed.

Legislative attempts to regulate banks and other financial institutions have tried to carry through at the state and federal level what protesters urged last fall. A substantial push is on to pass legislation to overturn the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission.

But for too many Americans sitting in their suburban and Midwestern homes and clicking through the local news with their remotes, the Occupy movement has become a joke … last year’s reality TV hit … a dead cult.

And that’s a pity. Semi-happy birthday, Occupy Wall Street.

This afternoon I joined a Portland, Oregon march and rally in observance of the one-year anniversary of the birth of Occupy Wall Street. We gathered at the east end of the Burnside Bridge and walked with signs and banners to the grounds outside the permanent Occupy Portland office at St. Francis of Assisi Catholic Church in Southeast Portland.

It probably wasn’t even a mile. There were barely a hundred of us. But what was interesting to me (along with the reactions of passing motorists) was the overkill of news coverage versus the almost negligible police presence.

A Quick Shift in Gear

On March 18 and 24, I posted the first two parts of what I expected would be a series of columns on my latest adventure as an actor, which involved a brief appearance on a current television show. If you managed to read them, good for you.

However, I was advised to take the pieces offline because the network reportedly takes a dim view of any public discussion of a particular episode before it airs, and whether or not my carefully phrased posts were likely to offend the powers-that-be, it was thought best to remove them. So I've done that. I fully intend to re-post them, and more, after the particular show gets broadcast, but until then we'll just have to wait.


The initial section of the first one acknowledged the fact that "American Currents" had lain somewhat neglected since early February, and noted some of the previous activity on this site as follows.

Periodically, since this site became largely mine by default in the spring of 2010, I’ve taken readers on a series of junkets. There was the experiment in collecting recycled bottles and cans for cash redemption (five essays between May 15, 2010 and September 2, 2010), my adventures as an actor in 48-Hour Film Festival projects (which ran August 14, 2010; August 16, 2010; August 20, 2010; August 24, 2010; and September 16, 2010; and never got completed), and a quick three-fer in October 2010 about the use of obscenity in protesting military actions. I also wrote two columns about reading Proust.

Jack London, Socialism, and Occupy Portland

Jack London’s birthday is coming up in a few weeks. This January 12, 2012, would be the 136th anniversary of his birth in San Francisco, back in 1876 (the U.S. centennial, one may note).

There’s a basement bar here in Portland called the Jack London, downstairs from a venerable lounge on 4th Avenue known as the Rialto. (For many, many years -- until less than a decade ago, I believe -- the latter had a huge misspelled sign out front that identified it to passing drivers on 4th as the “Railto”; now that it has been corrected, I wish I had taken a photo of that.)

The Jack London Bar is not venerable; it opened only last June, although it took its name from an ancient, unlamented fleabag hotel at that location called the Jack London.

The bar has garnered decent Internet reviews for a mid-sized dance floor, laser lights, “makeout-friendly dark corners and couches,” and other nightclub amenities. But the management also has been collaborating with the Oregon Historical Society to host lectures on local history, culture, and celebrities.

Which is how I discovered the place: I dropped in on Nov. 8 to listen to a talk about Tom Burns, a Portland eccentric who owned a bookshop on West Burnside between 3rd and 4th avenues, and used to make speeches on street corners which got him repeatedly hauled in by the police for attacking city government and advocating socialism.

This experience was not unknown to the future author of The Call of the Wild and “To Build a Fire.” After a colorful youth that included long hours working in a cannery at age 13, making an illegal living as an oyster pirate a couple years later and then turning around and serving the law as an employee of the California Fish Patrol, serving on a ship to Japan at 17, getting busted for vagrancy in Buffalo and doing a month in a penitentiary after crossing the U.S. as a tramp, and bulling his way into UC Berkeley at 20, Jack London also made socialist speeches in public (in City Hill Park, Oakland) and got arrested for it.

Raking Leaves and Revolution

I ran into an acquaintance Thursday afternoon, the day my picture appeared in the local paper raking leaves at the Occupy Portland camp site Wednesday morning.

It had been 31 days since the police evicted the campers, and 31 days that the squares had been fenced off so that no one -- neither the Occupiers nor the general public -- could take a step into those downtown blocks.

The City Parks and Recreation Department had originally planned to let volunteers onto the site to rake leaves on Nov. 23, only 10 days after “eviction,” but recent rains had made the job much less feasible and appetizing, so the job was postponed.

Good thing it was; Portland had pretty much no rain the first two weeks of December, so by this last Wednesday the ground and dead foliage were pretty dry and manageable. Poetically, a light rain finally fell Wednesday evening, hours after we finished.

Getting Occupy on the Program

The ex-Marine had served four tours of duty in Iraq. I went up to him after the meeting and asked him, “Looking back on your military service, do you feel that you were defending liberty and freedom?”

“Absolutely not,” he replied. “That’s what radicalized me.” He now works with and speaks for a veteran-run, anarchist collective known as Rose City Resistance. There is a growing, committed anarchist movement of military vets, he continued. Sort of like recovering Catholics, I suggested; he grinned and nodded. When I told him I had recently seen an Internet graphic on Facebook that consists of a photo of soldiers in the field carrying a wounded comrade on a stretcher with the legend, “We were too busy defending your freedom to Occupy anything,” he almost growled.

I met this man Sunday afternoon in a meeting at the Ace Hotel, SW 10th and Stark, organized by The Bus Project and The Portland Mercury. The former is a volunteer-driven nonprofit that works to get young people involved in political activism, the latter an alternative free weekly newspaper. (The founder of The Bus Project, Jefferson Smith, currently a state representative for House District 47, is also running for mayor of Portland.) They had brought in legislative activists, community organizers, representatives from Mayor Sam Adams’s and U.S. Senator Merkley’s offices, and the vet and a self-described “1 percenter” to exchange ideas with Occupy Portland vets and sympathizers about future directions for the movement.

I’m not going to write about what we heard and talked about there . . . not because it was particularly pithy or deserves top-secret protection; like most Occupy and post-Occupy events, such as the MoveOn.org gathering at Senator Wyden’s office I wrote about in my last blog commentary, it was more about getting to know people, seeing a few familiar faces, and learning a couple useful things for future activity.

Occupy Forever!

It’s weird to feel nostalgia about something that happened only a few weeks ago.

I’m not talking about looking back on a great meal, or recalling a terrific vacation, or even contemplating the memory of a distant teenage kiss.

I’m talking about a big event, something far bigger than you or me and everyone we know; so big it made the nightly news and splashed all over the Internet and our social media networks for weeks on end. And we were a part of it. But now it’s gone and it’s like . . . history.

But it was only a few weeks ago.

That feels weird.

Thursday evening I went to a photo exhibition at a local gallery -- really, little more than a live-in, street-level loft. Quite appropriate for the contents, actually, which were 140 photos of the people, places, and events of Occupy Portland.

The photographer, Mark Kronquist, says he shot 12,000 images over the course of Occupy Portland’s downtown sojourn between October 6 and November 15. He also collected some signs and other mementoes from the camp, and hopes to turn it all over to the Oregon Historical Society (OHS).

Occupy Portland, part 10 - Was the Message Lost? And Who's the 99%?

Though things have grown quieter on the Occupy Portland front, the misleading news coverage goes on.

I checked the 11 o’clock editions of the local news Tuesday night, and though stormy winter weather had become the top story, more than one station reported that “Occupy Portland had cost the city $1.29 million in police overtime.” This of course is misleading, because the city committed those resources without ascertaining whether it really needed to. As this past weekend’s protests showed and I discussed in my last commentary, it may not have.

Among other things, the story in Tuesday’s Oregonian notes that the Police Bureau spent $4,000 in overtime in early September before police ever encountered any protesters -- “to prepare” to handle them, whatever that means. Lt. Robert King, a police spokesman, commented Tuesday that “Last weekend, we were able to pull back and they were able to march on the sidewalk and follow rules and laws….”

Actually, the police weren’t “able” to stop using so much manpower; they simply chose to give it a try, and found that it worked: “The bureau didn’t incur any overtime costs Saturday or Sunday.” It might have worked all along -- if the police bureau had been intelligent enough to attempt it sooner -- and saved much of the money the news stations said that “Occupy cost the city.”

Occupy Portland, part 9 - Latest News, and a Look at the Criticism

A little more than 24 hours ago, Portland Police Chief Mike Reese admitted that his assertion to the press Thursday, that a rape victim had been neglected because of the demands of policing Occupy Portland, was not exactly accurate.

Moreover, he acknowledged in the same Portland Police Bureau news release what I asserted in my last commentary: that all the police resources employed over the past five weeks (and all the overtime money that Occupy critics have been bleating about) -- especially over the last seven days -- might not have been necessary after all.

“Today, we tried something new,” the chief declared in yesterday’s statement. “Our Incident Commander … met with protesters before a march and asked if they wanted a police escort. When they told him no, he asked that they self-police their event and obey the law; police would only respond if there were complaints. The march participants agreed, and the event proceeded without any problems, or a police presence.”

The implicit message here, whether the chief will admit it on the record or not, is that the police were clearly a part of the problem -- possibly even the primary cause of disorder -- over the past week or more. If they’re not out in force to order, demand, and provoke, then Occupy protesters are less likely to pose a problem to anyone else.

Simple, yes? Why did this not occur to anyone before? (Actually, it did . . . to the progressive Mayor and police of Lansing, Michigan, though admittedly they’ve had to deal with a much smaller group of demonstrators -- but the collaborative approach between protesters and authorities is the essential point here.)

Occupy Portland, part 8 - Aftermath . . . and Prelude

It is almost exactly a week since zero hour for the Occupy Portland camp -- the Sunday morning, 12:01 a.m. “eviction” deadline set by Mayor Sam Adams.

The camp didn’t really get “swept” until the following afternoon, in a masterful display of tactical strategy and mostly smooth execution by Portland Police, with a lot of assistance from outside law enforcement agencies. Part of me felt, and continues to feel, that the camp had run its course, and it was just as well that it ended when and as it did.

Things have gotten uglier, unfortunately … though not half as bad as the local media and police have tried to make them appear. Marches and small localized protests have continued daily. Thursday, November 17, was the two-month anniversary of the launch of Occupy Wall Street, and Portland avidly joined in the demonstrations that occurred all across the country to commemorate and celebrate it.

Occupy Portland, part 7 - I've Got a Bad Feeling About This

Tonight, I am in mourning. Perhaps that should be pre-mourning, because the death hasn’t happened yet, but I’m afraid it’s coming fast.

Two days ago, in my last commentary on this blog, I promised to give readers a tour of the Occupy Portland camp, but circumstances have overtaken me. It looks very much like push has come to shove in Stumptown, because Thursday morning the Mayor and Police Chief of Portland gave the protesters an eviction notice: they have been told to clear the parks they have occupied for the past five weeks by midnight Saturday, about 48 hours from now.

Mayor Sam Adams, who sympathizes with the political-economic goals of the Occupy movement, has decided that the protesters have lost too much support across the city for him to continue to allow them to camp on the site without a permit.

The real message is that Occupy Portland has lost the war for the hearts and minds of the rest of the city; at least, the mayor and many others in city government believe this to be the case, based on complaints from neighboring businesses, highly publicized if relatively isolated criminal incidents and arrests on or near the site, and the constant carping of ignorant critics on the websites of the newspaper and the various local news stations.

Occupy Portland, part 6 - An Interim Report, November 8, 2011

Conditions at the Occupy Portland site have settled into an ongoing if uneasy truce. An offshoot of the movement -- largely not in accord with the main body of protesters, as best as I understand it -- has been trying to create a permanent tent camp on federal land one block south of the main encampment.

The federal park is known as Terry Schrunk Plaza. It contains a grassy area that slopes gently down to a small brick amphitheater where I have watched friends perform Shakespeare in years past. Pictured below is the brick amphitheater space, where a band was setting up last Saturday afternoon to entertain the protesters. Schrunk Plaza is a public space that requires no permit or fees for temporary use, but overnight stays are prohibited.

Although Occupy Portland holds its General Assembly meeting, which can last two to four hours, in Schrunk Plaza every night at 7 p.m., the main body of the protesters understands and abides by the regulations to clear the area overnight. A splinter group has chained itself to one another and the site for the past three evenings; so far, the feds are holding back.

Occupy Portland, part 5 - What Am I Doing Here?

When I got home from my first morning of volunteering at the Occupy Portland site, back on Friday, Oct. 21, I posted the following status update on my Facebook wall:

“Occupy Portland has become my church.”

It was an amorphous, gut-level notion that somehow accurately described my feelings coming out of (or maybe that should be “starting into”) the experience. The next day, a friend I hadn’t seen in many months asked me what I meant by it. I didn’t have a ready answer for her. I’ve thought about it ever since.

You should know that my real church history has been uneven and spotty to effectively nonexistent. When I was a kid, my folks took me to Sunday School at First Unitarian in Eugene. They themselves were probably agnostics at that point, but they liked the social conscience and activism of that congregation, especially its pastor, the Rev. Carl Nelson, who preached early and hard against the Vietnam War.

Occupy Portland, part 4 - You Know . . . Maybe They Really ARE Fighting Dirty

Take a look at the photographs in this column. Doesn’t it look like something significant happened here in Portland yesterday (Friday, October 28)?

A huge sound stage was set up in Pioneer Square, often referred to as “Portland’s Living Room.” A band made up of the youthful classical/jazz/Latin/swing band Pink Martini (they make their homes in Portland and they’re big in Europe), guest vocalist Storm Large, and some musicians from the Oregon Symphony formed the core of the event.

They performed three of their songs and led the crowd in singing almost a dozen classic pop, musical, and folk songs. Twelve different speakers, including two rabbis, three Protestant ministers, an Imam, two U.S. Congressmen, the state AFL-CIO president, and several activists and organizers addressed the crowd, to much cheering and applause. Starbucks handed out free coffee and chocolate at three different stands around the square.

Occupy Portland, part 3 - Democracy is Messy

[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.)

Occupy Portland, part 2 - This Is Bigger Than You Think

On my first day volunteering for Occupy Portland, I verified a suspicion -- or maybe in the beginning it was just a hope -- that what we see in the camps, especially if we only watch the television news, is the tip of a possibly massive iceberg.

There are indeed a lot of regular folks who support this motley crowd, both in spirit and in deed.

And unlike an iceberg, the substance you see above the waterline is not the same as the material below. Although I saw plenty of middle-class visitors and suit-coated businesspeople who just strolled through the camp -- looking around or heading to and from work -- not a few of them meant business. I know, because they stopped to talk to me and hand me things while I was at the information desk (that's me on duty, at right).

A large middle-aged man in outdoor clothing advised me: “Yesterday the city of Portland got their property tax bills; you’ll get a lot of support from the middle if you go after the right targets.” A more sharply dressed man said he had done very well in real estate, appreciation, etc., and “I don’t pay very much taxes -- that’s why I donate so much. We’re fighting evil here.”

Carl Anderson, a military serviceman 30 years ago who since has worked “half my life” in the Wells Fargo Building, a white tower that overlooks the occupation site from the southwest, said his coffee breaks in the Occupy Portland site have gotten longer and longer. “You guys gotta stay here until the next presidential election, at least,” he remarked. He also mentioned that he has only 12 years left before he retires, and I thought to myself: I could never work at any job for that long.

Occupy Portland, part 1 - First Impressions

I knew that if I volunteered at the Information desk I’d be learning a lot more than I’d be helping anyone. But that was part of the point: I figured this would be the fastest way to get a handle on what’s been happening on Chapman and Lownsdale Squares, downtown Portland, over the past two weeks.

You probably won't be able to read it in the above photo, but posted at the entrance to Lownsdale Square, and elsewhere around the parks, are the camp's extensive "Collective Agreement on Guidelines for Community Safety and Well-Being." They dub the Occupy site weapon-free and nonviolent; prohibit any recreational alcohol or drug use; sequester cigarette smoking to the corner of SW 4th and Main; and call for respectful treatment among everyone, among other things. The panel on the right lists the steps to take in response to any threats to safety and well-being on the site. 

I had participated in the initial protest march on Oct. 6 that involved at least 4,000 people and might have drawn in as much as 6,000 or 10,000 -- various numbers have gotten batted around in the media -- but I hadn’t had a chance to get a good look at the site where the long-haul protesters had chosen to camp ever since.