That’s the problem though, the Pearl doesn’t scream 1% loud enough. A march through the Pearl is a good idea, but as we saw with the Mayor’s press conference the fact that it was a residential area, and not as economically monolithic as say Lake Oswego, allowed him to easily make a distinction between the occupation of Jamison Square and the other two parks. Bank of America or Wells Fargo also scream 1% and don’t allow for any ambiguity as far as who the good guys are. I’m happy we are active. I just think that the average person, that is not part of the Occupation already, needs easily understood explanations of why we are on their side, and who it is we are protesting against. Another tactic we could still do is separate into multiple groups of marchers and hold educational Occupy demonstrations in multiple park locations at once. Perhaps break into the smaller groups in the middle of the march. It would freak everyone out from the sheer mystery of why we were splitting up. That’s just a couple ideas off the top of my head that don’t make us look unfocused and are more targeted. But we can agree to disagree on it.

As someone has been active in Occupy Portland from the meeting at Powells, I thought this was a poorly thought out target for a demonstration. I know that 1% own the penthouses of the Pearl, but much of that area is also middle class people with mortgages. Care should be taken to make our actions easily understood and hard to portray in a negative light, which the evening/early morning protest and arrests failed to do on both counts. We wasted political capital and community goodwill. Even what could have been a beautiful act of civil disobedience was messed up by people that wanted a confrontation with the one police force in country that has been very cool to us. Rather than standing back and shooting video of the silent arrestees they screamed at the cops and were acting in a way that would have gotten a different and violent response in other cities. Then when Mayor Adams, who is cool enough to show up, shows up they form a mob to chase him away rather than trying to make a media moment of it. We are already fighting the stigma that the concentration of problem homeless, that can’t get into the Missions or even The Right to Dream Too homeless encampment, because they won’t take active users. We are powerless to kick them out of an illegal camp in a public park, and until recently the cops have had a hands-off policy with the camp and have been slow to act on any but the most violent people. The answers to the problems aren’t easy, and until we can take care of internal tough problems, challenging the Mayor and the cops over a park we had no intention of trying to hold was ill advised.

Lots of people on infrastructure and straw was delivered today which is giving the mud a run for it’s money. The mood seems very good. I stayed til Sunday night and my body finally gave out on me. Caffeine, nicotine, adrenaline, and pain meds only take you so far. I went down for part of the GA tonight. People here are used to getting rained on and the city allowing us to use tents is a huge plus. The food is good and hot and lots of donated goodies, I had hot apple pie delivered to my tent at 2:30 AM the first night. The medic team is well organized. There is a library, kid’s recreation, and Info booth. The consensus process is taking time to become natural to people unused to the format, but they seem to be training new facilitators which keeps new faces running the GA. I don’t know but from the pictures I’ve seen of other more publicized occupations, the Occupy PDX camp seems like it’s bigger than most if not all at least by the number of tents and campers. An amazing cross section of people too, all ages are well represented and hell it’s Portland so it has a definite hippie-vibe, but Portland is proud of being “Weird.” Lot’s of political opinions from Ron Paulites to Socialists and Anarchists. One of the reasons why consensus isn’t easy.

Occupy Portland currently holds two adjacent parks and has a massive number of tents in both. We’re still working on getting the knack of consensus in the GA but it’s looking better and better every day.

I’ll put a redundant second, third,fourth….whatever the hell number we’re at. He can come down and I’ll save a chunk of pavement for him. I’ll start believing them all when they shut up and listen to the regular people, the Nobel economists, and just about anybody without billions of dollars in offshore bank accounts. The canaries have been dropping all over this mine of ours, and if the ptb don’t pay attention pretty soon they’re going to get drug down into the darkness with us. We are the peaceful people trying to be reasonable about this, but their are some wannabe Mad Max types that are itching for them to keep up with this “oligarchy is good” government.

The saw they used is sometimes called a demo-saw. It is a chainsaw engine and frame with a circular blade. The blades come in different types depending on what you want to cut. Depending on what kind of chain that she used, cutting it with bolt cutters may have been impossible. It sounds like they cut through her bike frame rather than the chain, the same way that car thieves cut through a steering wheel rather than The Club. It’s faster, but it wouldn’t have taken all that much longer to just cut through the chain.

Live Stream guys are up and moving. Said they only had a little rain overnight.

The upside down revolution. That’s cool.

You and the rest of the Live Bloggers would make a great panel on a Sunday talk show. Of course as it stands now I doubt it, but in a just world maybe. And how about turning the tables and have one sorta conservative doofus for every five of you.

SabzBrach Joanne Michele
Sanitation reported that some Wall St employees thanked us for cleaning, said #LibertyPlaza is cleaner than before.

Cool, I’ll pack some to give to the LS guys in Portland.

It was on the TV, I’ve been keeping it on with no sound, while I watch the LS. MSNBC had nothing I’ve seen yet, but they did have Rahm on for like 15 minutes. I don’t know for sure what he was talking about, it looked like a glowing interview on what a great job he is doing screwing the Teachers’ Union. My TV wouldn’t have survived my wrath if I had to not only watch but listen to that POS. I just can’t help but put him and Karl Rove in the same hot fiery part of my brain.

Americans For Prosperity is running internet ads for something happening on 10/4(sorry for the vagueness, but my computer, my mouse, or me just refuses to click on it.) If this belt tightening event is a protest it will give the media a chance to compare and contrast. Anyone taking bets which event will be called a smashing success?

CNN just had a piece that was really quite fair. The protesters they talked to were intelligent and well spoken. Even the market reporter wasn’t to much of an ass about them. Who’d a thunk you could see such a thing.

Sorry just woke up, thought it was a general question. Not exactly at my most lucid.

I’m an LS Junkie!!!

We will in the wild weird land of wet.

You bet your bipper!!!