At the time of this writing, it’s been almost a year (Oct. 6, 2011) since Occupy Portland first made itself known in a huge, peaceful protest. By police estimates, about 10,000 people marched through downtown, calling for social justice. (That’s about 1 in 60 residents of Portland; pretty good turnout for a Thursday afternoon.) Later that day, hundreds set up an encampment in two public squares across from City Hall. Time to reflect on what it was like, the night the tents came crashing down, five weeks later.
Back when I was naive about the ways of America, that is, last November, I believed that Portland police officers were (with some horrible exceptions of trigger-happy men with racial bias) basically kind to citizens exercising their First Amendment rights. I believed that the Portland mayor served to make the city a safer and more livable place. I swallowed these myths for a long time, because there’d been nothing in my own experience to stomp on these beliefs so hard that they exploded like tear gas canisters.
Last November, the myths exploded for me when the City gave Occupy Portland a deadline to leave its downtown public park. When the Occupiers peacefully declined the order, the City beat up the Occupiers.
Almost since the movement’s beginnings in September, my husband and I had occasionally visited Occupy Portland to deliver food and blankets, or to play guitar and sing in the Sacred Space, a large plot of land in the park carved out for prayer. My husband and I had appeared together on local TV and radio to support the Occupy movement. We sided with the 999/1000 who are tired of the usual: homelessness, joblessness, hunger. I was pretty sure that some good change was going to come, with so many dispossessed people petitioning their government together, calling for its government to care about its citizens’ basic, some might say inalienable, rights: a home with food and freedom, a way to live without despair.
Something shook me right after that night in November. My husband and I had decided to go downtown to stand with the crowd. We walked around and took photos. It was easy to take photos that night. New, powerful spotlights had been set up on high poles, so that the whole place looked like a stage where a scene was about to take place. Suspicion, anger and fear boiled just below the surface. For me, those emotions seemed to come from the part of the police, who stood in small clumps, observing, not from those who were being ordered to leave. The Occupiers were holding quick refresher workshops on nonviolent opposition. They seemed upbeat and positively loving. Yes, despite what rumors the media spread, the overarching feeling in that park was one of awe-inspiring love.
The deadline passed at midnight without incident, and it seemed the police had gone to bed. Indeed, my husband and I were by that time back home, asleep, two miles away. A few hours after the deadline passed, the mayor gave a park dispersal order to Portland police. Some of these officers had for the past month been part of a combined effort to keep the park peaceful. Some, including mounted police, had gotten to know the Occupiers by name, some letting them pet their horses. But now the police came back in force, hundreds of them in new riot gear, in the middle of the night, overturning tents and trying to dismantle the peace.
Soon after, I saw on YouTube videos what had happened overnight. It wasn’t pretty, it certainly wasn’t quiet, but it was beautiful. I heard the Occupiers shouting at the police to side with them, to drop their guns and work for peace. I saw the police advance against the Occupiers, who stood in place, moving like an amoeba, shifting slightly but staying connected. At one point, a few mounted police charged their horses into the crowd. A charging police horse at point-blank range, you’d think, would create fear and crowd panic.
Nobody in the amoeba-ranks seemed to move more than a few inches. The horses slipped through the small cracks in the crowd. They entered a few feet, then stopped and shifted around. Not sure what to do, surrounded so closely on all sides by quietly standing humans, the horses seemed deeply uncomfortable about stepping on people. They seemed to say to their riders, “What are you doing! You want me to hurt these people who have been petting my nose for the past month? No. I don’t think so.”
The Portland police famously backed away from a serious confrontation that night. For a few hours it seemed that peace really had won out. But see for yourself on YouTube what happened in the next 24 hours in Occupy Portland. Be sure to watch all the way up through the dragging and beating of the young man in charge of sign language interpretation, the one who had told the police the night before that he loved each of them, the one who was hospitalized and in a wheelchair from his injuries.
I don’t know who ordered the police to stop being nice to the Occupiers and to suddenly hurt them intentionally. I don’t think most of the police wanted to, really. It seems many of the Portland police didn’t have the stomach to beat up young people they had come to know by name, so they were given reinforcements from elsewhere. I don’t say it was entirely the mayor’s fault, either. The order was given from much higher up. You can tell, because Occupy-bashing happened all over the country for the next month, quick-quick, one after the other, as if some head honcho had hurled a bowling ball filled with tear gas and batons, and the cities’ Occupiers went down like pins. It’s American-myth-exploding to watch the story unfold.
But for me, this part with the police horses in Portland was the most painful and beautiful to watch: the horses gliding a few feet into the sea of Occupiers, the mounted officers kicking the horses’ sides, urging the horses to charge further, the horses making their own stand with the people, telling the authorities, “No. I’m not going to fight.”
This is the first I’ve heard of Occupy anything in months. I was hopeful when the movement started that it would pick up steam and counter the Tea Party movement in culture and politics. However, the Occupiers decided early on, unlike the Tea Partiers, that theirs would be a non-political movement, and would be based on camping out at public parks and spaces in various cities and towns around the world. When the “higher-ups” you mention made the decision to dismantle those camps, and to declare a mainstream media blackout on all news concerning the movement, it seems to have died. The Occupiers made speeches about how the movement would continue, and ramp up, but at least from the humble town of Astoria on the Pacific coast, I don’t see or hear anything about Occupy. Sure, the chapters are still there, but as a movement, it’s moribund. The political discussion has shifted to right where the right wants it. Pundits are giving Romney a chance at winning. Gerrymandering has made the House of Representatives almost assuredly Republican again, and it’s possible the Senate will switch majorities. Locally, as small businesses struggle and die, Walmart is coming, and the political scene is dominated by the parties, not the people.
Last spring and fall were heady times in the Middle East and here, and elsewhere around the globe, as people demanded a more equal share of wealth and rights, and some got it. Most didn’t.
We fiddle while the world burns. Where are the Occupiers now? Where are the rest of us?
Thanks for writing this, Margaret, to remind us of the hopefulness of last fall. I think perhaps part of the way we can recapture that hopefulness, which was also around 4 years ago after the Obama and Democratic Congressional wins, is to write about it, reflect on it, and stir the people back to it. What I fear is a repeat of the events of 32 years ago, when the country was in a similar mood, and many of the advances made in the quiet 70s were tossed out unceremoniously by the new administration, and by others around the world. With the new fossil fuel revolution upon us, and a leadership and electorate devoid of any stomach for the changes necessary to keep the planet going, we need those voices like yours, and ours, to sing out loud and clear, and wake people up.
Occupy That!!
Bless you for writing this, Margaret. Hopefully the anniversary of Occupy will revive some living breathing counter to corporate tyranny. Horses have much to teach us about civility.
Here’s another excellent blogpost on the anniversary.
http://my.firedoglake.com/wendydavis/2012/08/19/occupy-american-autumn-parallel-movements-and-alternatives-to-the-oligarchs-machine/
As a liberal voter I am very thankful we have not heard anything about the Occupy Movement in a long time. What started out as a good and powerful statement quickly became an embarrassing circus act. I’m still embarrassed by it. Just two days ago I was in a discussion on Facebook and a conservative woman used the Occupy movement to paint a not-so-pretty picture of Liberals and Democrats. Embarrassing.
I don’t understand. I don’t understand how taking over a park and erecting tents everywhere and not leaving for over a month is supposed to educate the public. Or change the public’s heart about an issue. Or hold politicians accountable. Or change anything at all about society except to harden the hearts of those who watch.
What I saw when I watched what Occupy became (starting in New York and ending in Portland):
-I saw litter. A trashed park where people could no longer go to take refuge from a rough day. Grass trampled and turned to mud. Tarps everywhere. I also watched the removal of the protestors in Portland and then kept watching as the city had to go in and clean up all the trash. Although, it did warm my heart to hear of some of the protestors returning to help clean up the mess that was left behind. I also saw protestors in New York trying to squat on private property and becoming angry when the property owners, a church, said no.
-I saw a bunch of people that I could not connect with due to the fact that I HAVE to work to pay my bills. What came up in discussions more often than not (discussions with my liberal friends) is that the protestors must be much closer to the 1% than us. Who can afford to not work and sit in a park for over a month? Who is paying the bills?
When people were fighting for civil rights they either refused to ride city buses that had racist rules they were trying to combat or they sat at lunch counters. They chose specific days to march and hold rallies. When they weren’t marching or participating in civil disobedience they were working, taking care of family at home, being full participants in society. They did not camp out at the lunch counter. They were targeted in what they did and organized. They made sure to communicate a message and not just come across as a big mob. The same can be said about the suffragettes and about workers’ rights movements. The same canNOT be said for what the Occupy movement became. Which is why I am embarrassed.
I did not see the love, I saw a big ol’ mess and it saddened me because the message of the movement is one worth hearing.