Occupying Portland Solidarity

At 11 am last Thursday, I walked from the light rail stop in downtown Portland, city of my birth, to Tom McCall Waterfront Park.  I went to join "Occupy Portland".

At the Park hundreds of people gathered with signs, or just stood. We listened to the organizers in the center of the crowd do a form of public speaking they call "mike check". No megaphones were allowed, so the group, mirroring the same procedure done in New York, spoke a short phrase loudly, which the people nearby repeated as a group. This phrase then echoed out to the farther reaches of the crowd. This allowed that anyone taking the floor would speak with succinct brevity. It also encouraged careful listening on the part of the crowd. It was a nice touch.

I stood at the edge of the gathering, which quickly became the middle within a few minutes. The woman next to me was my first connection to a human story:

Carol: Mid 50's, holding a homemade sign with a picture of an impoverished mother and her children in a dust bowl setting. The caption read: "The New Middle Class". Carol does container planting for a living, is from Beaverton. She and her husband have one adult child who is gay. When asked by a reporter why she was there she answered: "For the next generation."

Julie: 62, from Vancouver. She was raised by parents active in the ACLU. She told the story of having worked in an insurance company in 1969. She attended a feminist meeting during her lunch hour, returning to work exactly on time, only using her allowed hour. When she returned to work she was summarily fired. We spoke of how this is a situation which would never occur today, and no one would take it lying down if it did, yet our rights are slowly eroding, slow enough that the next generation may not even imagine how recently it was that freedom of thought has been legally protected.
Heather had open heart surgery last year, and her insurance did not cover it. Right now she owes the hospital 250, 000.00 and she feels lucky that they have not taken her home.

Aaron- mid 50's. He has a vegan raw food business. He makes wheat-free crackers with sauer kraut, and his sales are booming. He knows all the food activists around, and they are on the edges of this crowd, like "Food Not Bombs" who offers us hummus, carrots and apples as we start to march.

A young woman, maybe 20, standing behind me. She says "I've never seen anything like this in my life. I didn't think there was anything to do, even though things are so bad." She choked up. I hugged her.

Shelly has a husband and 3 young children. She lives in the suburbs and has the normal life of a stay at home mom. She had to make lots of arrangements to come today, not the least of which was that her husband did not understand why it was so important for her to attend this unpermitted 'occupation', in solidarity with the Occupy Wall street movement going on for 3 weeks now in New York. She felt so strongly about the corruption in our country that she risked the negative opinion of her husband of 16 years. She was glowing with a warmth I could feel as she stood near me in the packed crowd. I know we could be great friends.

A march, especially done alone, offers these little snippets of humanity. We felt so powerful standing together, and by the time we walked through the city I think our numbers were at least five thousand.
To know this can happen, in any city of our country, should give solace to anyone who truly believes in a Democracy. Lastly, I want to say that there was no anger that lashed out, the tone was love, and strength. This does not mean there was not sadness and deep frustration with the resolve not to take this corruption lying down any longer, not to remain the slaves of the super rich. The young people danced in the street, and when I left, the core occupation was headed out to camp at a park, no one seemed to know where.
The cold rain began to fall within the hour, and I worried for the activists, who all were so well spoken and dedicated. I worry for them, just as I worry for my country, which is shafting the common people in greater and greater numbers. History tells us that when the wealth becomes concentrated in the hands of a few, and the balance is gone, the delicate scaffolding of a society rocks and shakes, and many things happen that are not predictable.

I feel honored to have spent that afternoon walking with Carol, Aaron, Julie and Shelly. They all represent hard working, play-by-the-rules Americans who want a better world.