Occupy Portland should make a statement against public drug use at the camp, and simultaneously against the zero-tolerance policies of the Federal and State Governments, whatever they may be.

Our government is broken. Before we hand it off to the next generation, we need to fix it. Economic justice, and true democratic freedom and equality for everyone, is more important than drinking beer or smoking pot. It seems silly to have to say so. The fact that I even need to elaborate on this point is proof of how dire our situation is. The world is so amiss that many people would rather forget it, and escape into a daze.

Of course there are arguments for the benefits of drinking and smoking pot. I believe wholeheartedly that marijuana should be legal, because the elderly mother of a close friend of mine refused to smoke pot, as a good Christian, because it was “illegal.” She went blind from glaucoma, and then she died. She could have extended the quality of her life, with a naturally occurring weed that is easy to find everywhere, upon her own doctor’s advice. However, pharmaceutical companies want it illegal because they can’t patent it, the way they patent every other drug you take, and she couldn’t break the law in good faith. Big Pharma has enough money that the government works for them. That’s what we’re protesting at #OccupyPortland, is the corrupt government which gives us laws like marijuana prohibition. And who doesn’t love a beer now-and-then, when it’s just you and the gang?

Not in front of children. Not on city streets. To those who question my attempt to set a standard of conduct at OP, I say “if you wouldn’t do it three blocks from here in public out in front of the Mall, don’t do it in the camp. don’t use my presence to try and hide your crime. there are kids present. you could get this whole thing shut down.” The most powerful argument against both drinking and smoking marijuana in the camp: both are so common in Portland at large that they can’t possibly be revolutionary. The law is how it is. People are not all comfortable being around illegality. Hell, smoking cigarettes makes some of the people at #OccupyPortland upset, and I’m not in that fight because I think the air is already toxic, but people have what I see as a totally legitimate grievance with marijuana use in the camp, or even drinking: either one makes us look like we’re partying, not revolutionizing. Either one could be the reason for an arrest at any minute. Unplanned arrests are the amateur mistakes of any movement.

Movement discipline comes when the revolutionary spark fills the people in a movement and they decide they need to start cleaning up their image. They choose a particular look. They choose a particular set of talking points. They choose a specific target. They march in lockstep, for some reason. This can be a scary moment. There will be resistance to the idea that certain behaviors are labeled “counter-revolutionary.” But we want to have maximum effect. Accusing one another of being counter-revolutionary is counter-revolutionary. Rather, just let everyone have a say, let everyone know that the open use of drugs or consumption of alcohol in public spaces is poor conduct, and that others may boo, and attempt to get others to boo, to shame the person into going somewhere else, where the behavior is appropriate. That is as much as we can do within our camp without becoming what we hate. No “zero-tolerance policy” has ever been effective: just look at America’s War on Drugs.

Too Long ; Didn’t Read was Too Long; and you Didn’t Read it?: Don’t do anything stupid and #occupyportland could be the start of an American Revolution.

TL;DR: Getting arrested is a tactic and should not be used without a coordinated reason. Getting arrested without a greater purpose makes the movement look worse in the media, as the two arrested people who were tagging a police car did. You could be arrested for anything illegal you are doing, if the police decided to arrest you. If you are breaking the law within the camp, you are not working in the best interests of #occupyportland. We have better things to discuss, like institution building, outreach and organizing.

Official #occupyportland bumper sticker proposal: ‘Put An Angry Bird On It.”

–

I heard that the #OccupyPortland protests could use some advice about being arrested, just in case it happens. The only reason I am telling this story is because I want you to learn from my mistakes. As you read through this piece it will become less about me and more about #occupyportland. If you’re bored, skip ahead.

The New York Police Department arrested me on February 15, 2003 in New York City during the worldwide protest against the War in Iraq. Estimates reached 36 million worldwide participants in this day of outrage. Looking back, we were right. It is eight years later, we invaded Iraq (shocker!) and in retrospect the anti-war demonstrators were right, it was a bad decision on our government’s part. I got arrested on purpose. I stepped into the street because I knew I was right, even then. My arrest was a simultaneous sit-in with two close friends (my affinity group), we went to jail together and got out separately.

The experience of getting arrested went like this: My friends and I were on a block where (apparently) a riot had broken out, after the march. I only say this because very rapidly, riot police were present. You under-estimate the capacity of the Police to deploy vast resources to tamp out protest. They appeared in an instant, blocked off the sidewalk at both ends and then told us to disperse.

If police tell you to disperse, they mean “…or we are going to arrest you.” The threat is implied in the fact that an officer is giving you an order. Demonstration over. Speech: free… enough. The law allows you to leave, unless the police make this impossible through erecting barriers around the area they’re telling you to exit. Police have employed this tactic many times, forcing marches and demonstrations to end by driving them into large cages. The recent mass arrests on the Brooklyn Bridge fit this description.

The police were about to perform a mass-arrest. Saying “disperse” is just a polite way for them to cover their own asses. You’re practically already under arrest if you see riot cops and hear “disperse.”

Getting arrested is not as bad as you have heard. But you will hate it if it happens to you, and you don’t want it to happen to you if it’s possible to avoid it. On the positive side I will say this: when I was in jail, I was a raucous boy. They separated a male friend and I from our female friend. He and I did chants, I did tai chi in my cell, I climbed the bars and hollered like a monkey. I sang “This Little Light Of Mine” probably a million times, until I totally lost my voice and made the guards laugh when I spoke because I sounded like a teenager. I ate a shitty cheese sandwich because the vegetarian option was a baloney and cheese sandwich with the baloney removed. A guy in one holding cell let me have the end of his cigarette. I was transferred between ten cells, buses, holdings cells and rooms and waited for a long, long time, often standing. A young kid, maybe 14, in another holding cell was probably about to receive a felony, and he was crying. It took forever to eventually see a judge, receive my sentence for disorderly conduct, and walk out the front door of the courthouse. At one point, I needed to get my lawyer’s phone number off my arm, and I stepped over my hands while wearing riot cuffs (they were loose, but I made it look to the police like I was a super-hero or something). End of the delusional fairy-tale story where jail is fun and awesome.

All that happened because I’m a crazy person, but jail is hell. I don’t want to talk about being in jail anymore. Nobody should ever aspire toward going to jail. When I saw the sky for the first time after the scant 26 hours I spent in lock-up, I cried because I realized what being “free” means. I ate at Subway in Chinatown right after my release and it was the best fucking sandwich I’d eaten in my life. Judge me all you want for it.

If the walls the Portland Marathon is building for us are not actually the walls of a cage, and the Police and Mayor of Portland really will stand with the 99%, then we can actually do something significant for ourselves, our city, state and country. The point to a nationwide #occupytogether movement is there are not enough police resources in America to arrest the 99%. The 99% truly does (based solely on income) include most police, and maybe even Portland’s Mayor. Not Bloomberg, obviously. But Adams, maybe. Someone should look up Sam Adams’ tax returns. Bloomberg is the 1% for certain. Adams so far is doing what the 99% in #occupyportland need done for this occupation to be successful. He has allied himself in so many ways with our movement.

We are right, #occupyportland, about economic injustice and corruption. #occupywallstreet is the kind of movement that needs to remain on the ground in occupation until we make a permanent change in the way our government operates. Sustaining this movement is important enough that avoiding arrests and maintaining a good public image are critical to our success. #occupyportland have successfully occupied a public park for two days, City Hall and the Police Department are behind us totally, or claiming to be, and the Portland Marathon is going to build us walls.

The police could arrest you while you are reading this. Make no mistake, the Police have the power to detain and arrest you if you are participating in #occupyportland’s encampment. The Mayor miraculously granted you immunity from a long-standing camping ban, but that doesn’t mean he can’t miraculously un-grant you that power. Especially if you are stupid enough to be smoking pot or drinking alcohol in public. There is nothing revolutionary about getting fucked up in public, especially in Portland, where it happens all the time. Many of the people expressing anti-police sentiment are doing so out of paranoia, and the problem could resolve itself if we proposed reasserting the value of security through legality, which was stated in other words as a value in the days before the protests at other general assembly meetings and which we should clearly communicate to people as they join our movement. Within the camp, security is more important than inebriation. Preventing police involvement and UNPLANNED ARRESTS is critical. People are bringing their children and their parents and their favorite cops to the #occupyportland camp. If this movement remains peaceful and law-abiding it seems increasingly unlikely that mass arrests will occur.

Assuming the police and the marathon are telling the truth.

We are nowhere near a “direct action” stage in the process. Arrests are not yet planned.

I was an Anarchist when I decided to step into the street. The Iraq war still happened. I didn’t think ahead, I made a brash decision to step into the street, and I don’t regret it. But it was stupid. I do think ahead now. I’m a reformer, of one stripe or another depending upon my day. What is important is that we talk about policy, not politics and not polarized thinking. Not “us versus them” but “all of us, for all of us, by all of us.” The 1% should simply be ignored while we reorder society and government for the 99% around them, without their say.

In a protest, getting arrested can be a tactic. It should be reserved for something meaningful.

So don’t do anything stupid, okay?

There is a tiny nation of Government by the People growing in many cities. It may one day turn into a People’s Movement, united as US Citizens (can we please stop saying “Americans” like we own the whole hemisphere?) as a fourth branch of the United States Government. That’s incredibly wishful thinking. We are nowhere near that stage in the process. Consider it something to look forward to.

Right now, the movement on the ground in all these cities is nascent. It is new. It is raw. Energies are high. Portland heard a shout-out from a friend in New York, via cell-phone bull-horn daisy-chain. It was simultaneously inspiring to hear our sister-city protesting on Wall Street, and infuriating to sit through another city’s on-the-ground report during a meeting about #occupyportland’s general assembly consensuses. Anarchists and Socialists and Democrats and Republicans are all getting in HEATED DISCUSSIONS ABOUT A NEW PROCESS. What does this prove? That the anarchists are turning into reformers. The socialists are learning how to hate the system, and teaching the anarchists to make clear demands of a process they don’t entirely trust. The Republicans and Democrats are both shocked (shocked!) that they agree on being the 99%. We all want to work with each other to build.

The anarchists in the group should decide if they are against the current government, or if they are against all organization. Institutions can only be built upon trust, understanding, and respect for the space and needs of all other people. That is why general assembly is frustrating but necessary. It prevents the collective from making a brash decision, even at the expense of forcing a slow grind that frustrates the revolutionary in each of us. If anarchists can become reformers, they allow the general assembly to reach consensus, and learn to trust the process and the rest of the crowd. We are in the struggle for economic and social justice for the 99%, and against government corruption by the 1%, together. If any anarchist is not willing to become a part of an organization of the type that #occupyportland is establishing, or that #occupywallstreet has established and maintained for a damn month, then that anarchist should stop using the resources and time of #occupywallstreet and #occupyportland general assembly. Something tells me that the anarchists might believe in economic and social justice, and in these movements see the capacity to get them done, to perhaps change the government. For an anarchist, getting some kind of control over the corrupt, unjust government would probably feel good.

In closing, here are a few ideas I think people should bring up during General Assembly (I can’t attend Saturday. I will keep coming back, cheering and occupying, and eventually speaking up if I am worried the movement has lost its way) :

Proposal #1) That in order to aid the general assembly voting process, #occupyportland begins an official registration and head-count. We need our own number of how many people are in attendance / with us, not a media estimate, and we need to know who we are working with in general assembly. Everyone should get a number, so we can keep track of everyone involved. After a day of registration, we require registration in order to vote. People should be able to register at the information booth during the booth’s open hours. If instead of saying “MIC CHECK” you just announce your number and name, and it is repeated, the crowd could instantly identify you if they had access to an electronic copy of the official document. This would facilitate trust and networking. Google Docs? OccupyPortland.Org?

2) The members of the crowd who are in opposite political parties should buddy up. Out yourself as who you usually vote for, or who you are pulling for right now if you’re a registered independent, or out yourself as a non-voter. Buddy up and work on some demands that the two of you can propose to BOTH local and national political parties (Republicans and Democrats) AT ONCE. Make a pledge that you expect your elected representative (no matter the party) to do _fill-in-the-blank_. It will bring you together, and it will start the ball rolling on creating a better government, by getting people together to think critically about elected representation.

3) Official bumper sticker for #occupyportland: “Put An Angry Bird On It.”

That’s enough for now. Go revolutionize.

I follow politics the way most guys like me follow sports. When I was a little kid I liked pro-wrestling. In politics and sports, I love the drama, the action, the suspense, and most of all I’m fascinated with the fact that we pay millions of dollars to seemingly normal people, because of their superhuman ability to rape commoners.

I’ve only recently gotten into finance and economics, but now I’m glad I did because it turns out most of the raping the politicians do is already pre-approved by the bankers. Bankers have more money than politicians, more than unions, more than God (except maybe the Catholic Church). Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the head of IMF who resigned after sexually assaulting a hotel maid, is but one example of a rapacious banker committing an actual sexual assault. Bankers are executives, they purchase sex and everything else they want as soon as they want it to get the job done. Bankers are used to making unilateral decisions to fuck everyone besides themselves.

How can you tell if a banker is nervous? He’s talking to someone else. They’re like teenagers who have committed themselves not to masturbate. They sit around, writing contracts, stewing to themselves how TOTALLY AWESOME they are for making that million-dollar bonus this week for this ONE contract. They never get fulfilled. “Who cares if I can’t talk to girls? Who cares if I beat and rape my secretary like she was my abused wife? Who cares if I spend more money on cocaine and jewelery for hookers than most people pay for rent in Manhattan?”

Bankers can’t be satisfied because they realize how fleeting and stupid the money they have is. It flies in in huge increments, and flies out just as quickly on lavish expenses. Studying economics is a nice way to become jaded on poverty.

The financial industry is a way of laundering an assault, an attack on personal sovereignty. Rather than actually assaulting one person all the way, you assault everyone on Earth in tiny fractions, assault entire nations. You steal a few pennies from everyone, and it’s the largest theft in history.

“Bankers are the mad conductors of the social institution of rape.”

It’s the perfect place for rapists to work, the financial sector, because they can stow away all their disgusting physical impulses by writing adjustable rate balloon mortgages with liar’s loans that screw people for longer and leave them homeless afterward. Now THAT’S a power trip, an even better way to dominate by force of will, and non-consensually. If you were a rapist, wouldn’t it be awesome to work in an industry that funds rape armies in Africa and violates the sovereignty of poor countries through financial terrorism, inevitably leading to a higher incidence of rape in times of chaos? Bankers are the mad conductors of the social institution of rape.

What’s that, Greece? You’re broke? Well here, Greece, have a loan. Oh, before you cash that check, I need you to change your laws. Yeah. I need you to change your laws, Greece, so me and my banker buddies can make a mint off of developing your nation, after the wreckage we create is cleared.

It’s worse than rape. It’s pre-meditated conspiracy to rape and pillage. But rather than make it illegal, we’ve been blaming the victim. “Oh he wanted to own a house even though he only makes $20,000 a year.” Wait, so where’s he supposed to live? “He’s supposed to rent for a higher price than a mortgage.” Wait so where’s he work, making $20,000 a year? “He works at the paper factory, making the only kind of paper that us rich lawyer-banker types will use to sign contracts. And he gets paid shit for it! I’m a genius!”

“Poor countries want Western developers to be able to freely trade with them.”

Here we are, cranking out unicorn-stock papyrus sheets that will someday be worth $20,000 PER PAGE, thousands of pages per day, just to supply the rapacious international banking cartel. They have no allegiance to any nation, and their actions and misdeeds affect every one of us on a greater scale than we can possibly imagine. Dominique Strauss-Kahn is a potent example of how money forces itself on the help.

There are too few dollars in circulation. Lots of money exists, but the rich hoard money the same way they hoard gold. The rich have so much money hiding that printing a trillion dollars barely moves inflation, it’s not much in compared to the total. The dollar declines of late have been helping the US compete internationally, and we should continue to devalue our currency, beggar-our-neighbors, make our wealthy people less wealthy, and give money to the people whose debt finances the prolonged depression. Until consumers (me and you, the largest force in our economy) have money, and get back to black, the value of the dollar is pointless, the rich have too many and they’re essentially worthless to us both. The rich make money off of economic activity. There’s a lot less economic activity nowadays because money isn’t moving. It all funneled upward and stayed.

If the dollar is declining while we’re all in debt (except the fabulously-wealthy), then we’re declining in debt, and the rich are declining in wealth. I advocate dropping buckets and barrels full of dollars out of helicopters over poor neighborhoods. Since we can’t just steal money from the people hoarding it, and politicians won’t tax them because rich people own politicians, the Fed needs to print and distribute a lot of money to the poor.

A bailout for Main Street. Remember bailouts? Well they’re back. In Main Street form.

Bill Clinton declared “the era of Big Government is over.” George W. Bush’s “ownership society” was meant to put the private sector (and in Bush’s logic, the individual) back in charge of as much of everyday life as possible. In public life, government (that eternal enemy) was to “get out of the way.”

In the America that resulted, the middle class was tricked into impoverishment.

The result of anti-regulatory thinking was a ten-year free-for-all among lenders in America. We’ve been suburbanized and sold low-mileage cars. Paul Krugman recently tackled the effect of rising gas prices on these people. We are growing in population, yet we are expanding outward from our cities into private, secluded enclaves. A majority of poor people live in suburbs now, when ten years ago it was easy to associate suburbs with an upper-middle-class lifestyle. The wealthy had country mansions, and the poor lived in urban ghettoes. This is no longer the case.

Thanks to the gentrification of the cities, where rents have raised disproportionately to that of suburbs and exurbs, all of the advantages of close-together city living are afforded to the wealthy at a premium. Mass-transit and amenities within walking-distance benefit the wealthy more often than the poor. The less a person makes, the more likely and further they are to commute. The money is in the cities, and the poverty has been pushed to the edges. We have rejoined the serf-lord society of the Middle Ages.

One example of how the poor were enticed into submission was in the popularization of the sports utility vehicle. Perhaps we can point to rap stars’ excesses, or the rise of the Soccer Mom, for causation, but the impracticality of these monstrosities was lost on us in 1999, at least those of us foolish enough to “invest” in one. Krugman writes:

Admittedly, the next few years will be rough for families who bought big vehicles when gas was cheap, and now find themselves the owners of white elephants with little trade-in value. But raising fuel efficiency is something we can and will do.

Sound financial planning in American families will have us demanding and buying low-emission hybrids this decade, if we can afford them.

Another form of popularized poverty was the housing bubble, and infamous subprime mortgage crisis brought on by the use of Credit Default Swaps. America has too many houses, and even worse, many of these houses are far too expensive to ever sell. Those homes which did sell are mortgaged to people who can’t afford them. The bank that owns the title to the house is going to lose money until someone decides to pay, probably not the current tenant. The unreasonable desire for all people to own not just a home, but a nice home with a pool and a big yard has caused this long-term suburbanization of home-buyers from the 2000s. These homes are nice, yes, but not worth nearly what the terms of the mortgage state and not affordable to the borrower. The borrower, it turns out, wasn’t borrowing the money for the house, they were borrowing the house and paying egregiously for the privilege. Now that they’re broke, the bank would like its’ suburban ranch home back. These former suburbanites stand coated in the oil of foreclosure, unlikely to buy again any time soon, demoralized, sometimes broken, and having lost the (probable) largest investment of their lifetime.

Those spend-crazy 90s and early 2000s are finally catching up with us, and roughly 35 million people lacked personal health insurance during this time. Other personal debts from credit cards and medical bills are causing a lag in demand: consumers are just now realizing they need to wise up and save some money, and use it to pay down debts and life-saving treatments from the last ten or so years. That’s money every month that isn’t going into new cars, new homes, or other durable goods or luxuries. That’s the reason unemployment stays high. We’re only about 90% sure we can afford to eat at restaurants and buy fancy electronics, so only 90% of us have jobs.

Thanks to the stimulus and the determination of businesses to keep their doors open during the recession, the next Great Depression was likely prevented. Most indexes point upward, prospects are likely that the Americans are spending again, if only a bit. We hopefully won’t ever return to the go-go 90′s or the don’t-know 00′s (how likely are you to read your mortgage carefully nowadays? or to buy a Hummer?) But there are some cultural norms that we need to seriously question: the desirability of living in far-out, secluded areas, the practicality of spending a good deal of money on transportation to and from one’s source of income, and the necessity for a half-ton of hauling capacity for a family of three which does no hauling. It seems that the Americans spent 10 to 15 years tricked into thinking they could have their cake, and eat it too, could spend money and not worry it would come back to haunt them. The ghost of 1999 is alive and well, Y2K didn’t happen but we sure acted like we wished it had. We’re coming out of the recession, so we ought to at least consider coming out of the cloud of lies about “an ownership society” and “big government,” “getting out of the way” as well.

(In my search for the lead image I also found this which I feel deserves a look)