scenes from the occupation
The inevitable free weekly alternative piece about Occupy Portland — from the Willamette Week — the Portland Mercury went with a silly parody piece poking fun at the suburbs. Much of the Occupation — which I guess sits at the core of Trustafarians and Gutter Punks — may well hate it — as they complain that the media focuses on every minor incident, but this is likely a true portrait of the thing. Meanwhile, the Oregonian moves on from minor incidents to more major incidents of the problems this sort of quasi-experiment in sorta-utopian government set up is experiencing.
Frankly, if I were “Occupy”, I would wind this encampment up, and plot my next thing. Sure, keep those small marches to points of financial interest going and your Friday Patriotic rally with Storm Large and whatever… just think of something different, because I think the encampment has achieved all the dent it will achieve, and everything beyond this is just counterproductive.
And the cats… studded … and not.
“What’s the point of this? The “1 percent” at Wall Street are just laughing at it. They’ll be deposed of, the cities will pluck them out for sanitation violations or something, and that’ll be the end of it.”
“You’re from Arizona?”
“Yeah. Insane. There’s this photograph of the Occupy Tempe, and it’s small, as you imagine… and like, they’ve been put under barbed wire with storm-troopers guarding them. Intimidation tactics. What are they so afraid of here?”
And I saw a small group of, like, 5 people march to a bank.  One sign of note: “The Banksters Fear [—]Bucks.” I don’t remember what preceded “bucks”, but I am certain this wasn’t the Ron Paul fan contingency of the movement hawking Liberty Dollars.
“I hope this just continues to spread out… out… into West Linn, into Eastern Oregon… just one encampment after another… til it all gets Road Warriory against The Man”.
And the beat goes on… Turn to KBOO and indymedia for the latest, I guess.