I’m in Portland on business, and Occupy Portland is about 3 blocks from my hotel. I wandered over there late this afternoon to see what was going on. I surveyed Portland’s tent city, which covers two small block-sized parks. The two parks are separated by Main Street, which Occupy Portland has blocked off. This of course is a bone of contention with local commuters, emergency personnel, and the police department.
While wandering around, I was attracted to a group of 15 or 20 people seated on the ground, holding a discussion. I eavesdropped for a while and then joined the group, which turned out to be the Radical (Anti-Capitalist) Caucus of Occupy Portland. The main topic of discussion was their “list of grievances”, the highlight of which was that that police, by maintaining security at the campground overnight, were disturbing the sleep of the occupants, supposedly as an act of intentional sleep deprivation. A second topic was the desire to show solidarity with the local homeless population, who were apparently being denied the same camping rights as the Occupy Portland crowd. One naif suggested that they ought to invite the drunk and drugged out homeless people to participate in the Radical Caucus meetings — as if there wasn’t already enough mental illness in the group.
Once they had agreed on their grievances, they moved on to decide on a collection of workshops they were going to present to the greater Occupy Portland community to bring everyone up to speed on the major issues of concern to the anti-capitalist caucus. These issues included the historical mistreatment of the native population, the critical value of labor unions, the fear of police among the queer and transgendered population, etc., etc. I couldn’t help think of that skit from Monty Python’s Life of Brian. When one woman recommended using “they” instead of “he or she” in order not to offend some segment of the LGBTQXYZ population, I almost cracked up.
Once this meeting ended, I stayed around for a few minutes of the General Assembly, but couldn’t take it anymore. Two hours later, as I check into the live stream of the meeting, they’re still going through that weird back-and-forth chant trying to decide whether they’re going to give Main Street back to the community.
WE ARE 99%
WEL ARE 99%
WEL FARE 99%
WELFARE 99%
They want to be on WELFARE 99% of the time!
Pretty soon, they're going to have the entire alphabet up there. "We don't want to offend any member of the alphabet, so we've gone to a strictly numeric policy..."