street roots
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Taking space to dream
The American spirit is alive and well on the streets of Portland
BY AMANDA ECKERSON
CONTRIBUTING WRITÊR
n the corner of Third and Main Street,
a village is being constructed. The
organizers arid allies of Occupy
Portland have begun laying down hay to cover
mud, hanging tarps to keep out the rain, and
developing internal infrastructure to support
their movement. Seven blocks away,
members of the Right 2 Dream Too (R2D2),
have taken over the lease of an empty lot by
the Chinatown gate, and begun constructing
a rest area for houseless members of their
community. There are very real differences
between these two instances, which have
recently occurred in Portland: one is an
occupation of public land, the other has a
lease On private land. The occupation has
been given tentative permission by the city,
while R2D2’s occupancy is being disputed as
illegal.
People are virtually abandoning then-
homes to join the Occupy Portland
movement, while members of R2D2 are
reacting to the fact they have no place to
sleep. Despite these demerits, there is a
deeper strand of solidarity that exists -
between these two movements. Both groups
are responding to the larger inequality of our
social system, the lack of access to political
power, and the rights of all of us to dream.
0
The Spaces: Public and Private
Sylvia darts in and out of the newly
constructed communications tent in
Chapman Square as the rain begins to pour.
As an organizing member of the U.S. Social
Forum held in Detroit in 2010, she has been
participating in the occupation since thefirst
general assembly hdd on. the waterfront.
“This is way more spontaneous,” she says
—while attempting to run power to the tent arid
set up a public computer station. “At the
Social Forum, people had beéri organizing for
moriths, and knew each other. Most people
here are representing themselves, while the
Social Forum was more organizations and
communities.”
Considering these circumstances, the
development of Occupy Portland in the past
week has been extraordinary. In very tangible
ways, a community is being builti the space
now boasts a library, a kids camp, a medic
. tent, an independent media coalition, an
engineering squad building bicycle-powered
generators, and more — all run by people who
recognized a need and stepped up to fill it.
Robert Needham is one of those people.
Motivated by his desire to help a man whose
sleeping bag was drenched, he realized there
were probably more people with that same
need. He biked around the city yesterday
asking laundromats and hotels to donate the
use of a washer and dryer. “This morning I
got in touch with an employee of a
Laundromat up the road. Her boss wasn’t
really into it, but he gave her permission. As
of tonight, we have access to a 50-pound
washer and dryer,” he explains with a quiet
sense of accomplishment. “When I found the
.
■
PHOTOS BY NAT NEEDHAM
Above, the Occupy Portland site’s information booth. Below left, the general assembly of Occupy
Portland, which is governed by democracy. Below right, the R2D2 camp in it’s first days.
man whose sleeping bag had gotten wet to
tell him, a businessman in a suit was taking
people two at a time back to his apartment to
shower. The man had just got back, and it
was the first shower he’d had in a month.”
The story is just one of the occupation’s
daily occurrences where the spirit of
collective responsibility and individual
initiative is palpable. “The occupation is an
opportunity to practice creating a new free
society, based on^Contribufibn ând
participation,” explains Radz, a carpenter’s -
apprentice who quit his job recently to
become involved full-time. “I told my boss I
was involved in a revolution, and I was
needed here. He told me to ‘carry the torch,
little brother.’”
A few blocks away, the steady sound of
hammers resound against the empty walls of
the lot on 4th and Burnside. Unlike the
spontaneous combustion oh Wall Street and
the national reactions that resulted in Occripy
Portland, R2D2 has been organizing for the
construction of their rest area for over three
months. At an organizing meeting a few
weeks ago, all the possibilities of response
were hashed out: “What about security^ I
don’t want to get hit with negligence,” Leo
Rhodes explains, a Right 2 Survive member
who formerly organized one of the first tent
cities in Seattle. “I’ve dealt with them before
— I’m trying to be a butthead like they are,”
he explains while playing devil’s advocate for
the city. Discussions are hashed out and a
code of conduct is decided upon and posted
at the entrance.
Used to getting shafted by society and by
city laws like the sit-lie ordinance and the
camping ban, Right 2 Survive took multiple
steps to ensure that they were not doing
anything illegal. They formed a non-profit,
got liability insurance, signed a lease with the
lot owners, and drew up schematics to show
how the rest space would function. When
they opened their doors on Oct 11, the
national day of action for homelessness, city
planners came questioning their right to be
there. “We stand in solidarity with Occupy
Portland,” says Trillium Shannon, a member
of Right 2 Survive. “But the inequality
apparent in the city’s operation with regard
to the occupiers, who are mostly housed, arid
ourselvescshows the discrimination ¿against
houseless people that we are trying to
creatively address.”
In a yery real sense, those are different
situations. Both situations, however, are
creative responses to the structural social
inequality and broken system of political
redress that define this city and nation. They
are also both examples of individual freedom
and initiative taking action to shape their own
destiny, which is one of the most fundamental
elements of the American Spirit. In practice#
they are differeht lines of attack against a
common enemy.
Working Together
The simple act of occupying Portland has
put the occupiers in a position of solidarity
with the houseless people of Portland. In
many senses, actions speak louder than
words. “Most of us here have jobs, and
families. I realize how much privilege we have
here because we’r® working to make the
world a better place, and they are working for
survival,” explains Imre Hyes, a member of
the communications team for Occupy
Portland. “But we are making a sacrifice to
make space here so everyone can come to
talk — and we’re doing it in a geographical
way so that you can’t ignore us.” At this
point, a physical area to congregate is what
tile group of Occupy Portland can offer to the
larger community that wants to change the
way society is working.
“What is revolutionary about this space is
that it’s putting people in the same place to
deal with each other. To talk with each other,
eat with each other, have conflict with each
other, problem solve with each other,” Mark
Dilly, a union organizer and the Occupation’s
Wiki guy explains.
“The Internet enabled all of this to happen,
blit no one’s on the Internet here.” Indeed,
the reality of Occupy Portland is that it is
coming into consciousness in a physical
location.
“It’s a social organism,” says Tim Rice, a
community organizer who delivers papers for
the Oregonian for a living. “The city is
making a huge mistake in letting it grow and
beïïevè in itself because this challenges all
elements of capitalist society, which is why
they usually suppress actions like these.”
What the group is conscious of so far,
however, is that they are in a position of
privilege with regard to the city, and they are
all workirig to figure out how to use that in
solidarity with the 99 percent
Many people within the Occupy Portland
movement support the Right 2 Dream Too
rest area. “I feel R2D2 has a responsibility to
teach us,” Erik Olsen explains. As a member
of Right 2 Survive and the Occupy Portland
safety tearii, he is primarily concerned with
anti-oppression education and trainings about
privilege in order to strengthen how the
safety team operates. Right 2 Survive
provides a concrete example of breaking
down the barriers that many people have in
their minds about houseless people. “Their
work'is otir work aS well,” he says.
Fôr now, the Occupy Portland movement is
finding its feet, and the R2D2 rest area is just
beginning. Occupy’s General Assembly
meetings have been primarily concerned with
the occupation of Main Street, and the
concerns raised about the access of
emergency vehicles and TriMet buses. They
are also concerned with adhering to a
process of consensus, which is important in
building group cohesion and trust. While this
process requires patience, it is also planting
the seeds here in Portland for real people
power. “There is no us — this is Portland’s
camp,” explains Silvia. As the occupation
continues to manifest in the city of Portland,
it is in need of experience and guidance. As
Dilly says, “The occupy movement needs
experts, but they need to be experts on topic,
not experts on top.” Ideally, this will enable
the dreams of its occupiers to continue
coming to life, and it will be done in fine with
the other concrete demonstrations of people
power in Portland, like R2D2’s rest area. By
working in solidarity, and maintaining the
occupation as a space for Portland’s collective
dream of a better future, it will be possible to
ensure that all people, including the
houseless, are able to rest peacefully at night
and have their dreams, too.