(photo by Lauriel Arwen) The march continued in the footsteps of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “Poor People’s Campaign,” in drawing attention to poor working conditions, low wages, the lack of affordable housing, and the criminalization and exploitation of house-less people through Portland’s odious “sit / lie” ordinance, along with other laws which seek to funnel ever-more money into imprisoning ever-more-marginalized citizens, such as the “show me your papers” law, Arizona’s SB 1070 and Missouri’s Illegal Aliens and Immigration Status Verification law. Speakers began addressing the crowd at 12:10, amassed at the intersection of 6th and Davis.

Chandi, Community Organizer with Sisters of the Road, informed marchers that this was the 19th year Sisters of the Road has organized a march for MLK Day, and after a two-year hiatus the organization felt this year was particularly crucial in the long-term fight for social and economic justice. “We’re back after two years to connect issues that Occupy brought up with our folks in the house-less community, people who are used to getting kicked out of parks all the time,” referencing the November 14th eviction of Occupy Portland from their established camps at Lownsdale Park and Chapman Square.

“We are here to celebrate our struggle,” Chandi proclaimed. “No one is illegal!” And the crowd went wild for the first of many times during the march. Chandi continued, “We want racial and economic justice now. This is at the core of the work that Sisters of the Road has been doing for 32 years. You should not be criminalized just because our society, which is in every way rich, fails to take care of its people.” Applause. “If you’re a person of color in Portland, which is still a hard thing to be,” (laughter and cheers), “if you love someone and want to marry them, if you are an Occupier… YOU ARE NOT ILLEGAL!” Thunderous applause.

(photo by Lauriel Arwen) Leo Rhodes, a Street Roots vendor and board member and US Army veteran, spoke next. “We need to have this kind of energy year-round,” he said in reference to the raucous gathering of young and old, children and pets, drummers, chanters and other ordinary and extraordinary citizens. “When you go to bed, set an alarm for 20 minutes, and get a backpack full of clothes and move somewhere within a two-block radius and sleep for another 20 minutes. Then you’ll know what it’s like to be homeless.” The crowd applauded, though appalled at the sit-lie ordinance whose mention they missed under the cheers. “Martin Luther King had a dream. Homeless people have the Right to Dream, Too.”

Speaking on behalf of the Poor People’s Campaign, and unions, Gabriel Triplett of the ILWU first asked, “Good day to be out in the streets, eh?” The crowd agreed. “Martin Luther King spread the message of the Gospels, a message so radical that killing him was not enough. They had to change his message.” Triplett went on to detail all the historical information commonly omitted from public education, as it related to MLK’s vision. “Our kids will learn about racial justice, but they will not learn about economic justice.” Triplett then described what Dr. King termed “The Triplets of Evil,” racism, economic exploitation and militarism. “Only 7% of America’s workers are in unions, at a time with greater economic inequality than we’ve ever seen, endless wars, racist laws [such as SB 1070], legal slavery in our dungeons and prisons… We must strive to build a better world, that kingdom that Christ spoke of.” Tripletts ended by remarking that the context of Dr. King’s famous “I’ve Been To The Mountaintop” speech parallels the experience of dock workers in Longview, WA, who expect scab labor to fill a ship with grain very soon. An action will take place to prevent the strike from breaking. “Ask not what will happen to you if you go [to the action,] ask what will happen to those workers if you don’t go.”

Next, Executive Director of Portland VOZ Romeo Sosa let off a chant of “Si se puede,” the motto of the United Farm Workers coined by migrant workers’ rights activist Caesar Chavez. Sosa spoke briefly, ending with “If Martin Luther King were here, he would be marching with us!” The crowd roared once more.

(photo by Lauriel Arwen) The march commenced, marching down Davis to 4th, then up 4th toward Burnside, stopping in front of the Right to Dream, Too camp for a special announcement from R2D2 activist and resident Claudia “Mama Chewy” Long. Long spoke of actions all Portlanders can take to defend the space from the threat of eviction, such as calling City Commisioner Dan Saltzman and Mayor Sam Adams to request they take emergency measures to keep the camp in place. “We want housekeys, not handcuffs,” Long said, a motto from the WRAP organization. She quoted Mohammed Ali, Martin Luther King, the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and finally Malcolm X. Her message was simple, “We need our own property, even if it’s just a tent in a rest area like R2D2.”

A banner then dropped from the parking structure at SW 4th and Ash, visible to the march, which read “Stand with Greater Determination” in three languages. The crowd cheered.

(photo by Lauriel Arwen) The march proceeded up Burnside to Broadway, then South on Broadway to Salmon, and East on Salmon to 4th, the North-western corner of the former Occupy camp. “Whose Camp? Our Camp!” the crowd called and responded. A speaker produced a bullhorn to briefly mention the indignities of Wells Fargo in funding racist laws like SB1070, and their profiting from the GEO Group and CCA, the two largest private prison companies in America. “While our schools are closing down, prisons are opening. Now with the NDAA, we’re all going to be in these prisons for as long as they can make money off our backs.” Speaking of a thin piece of fabric Wells Fargo used to hide their activities during a recent direct action, the speaker informed the crowd, “It’s our job to burn that veil down… We have not yet exhausted the nonviolent direct action we can take. We have not yet exhausted the civil disobedience we can commit.” She then spoke of the February 29th “Shut Down The Corporations” action, which intends to target corporations individually for such wrongdoings as those of Wells Fargo.

The march then proceeded to the steps of the Justice Center at SW 3rd and Main. A speaker asked, “Are you cold?” and the crowd replied in near-unison “NO!” with a few scant “yeah”s mostly lost in the mix. At that moment, snow began to fall from the sky.

(photo by Lauriel Arwen)The next speaker was Paul Bowman from the Western Regional Advocacy Project. “First of all, congratulations from Los Angeles, Sacramento, Berkeley, and Oakland.” Bowman mentioned recent actions held in those cities, including a consensus supporting the Portland march. “They are all in solidarity with you. … The movement starts when we say ‘no more bullshit.’” The crowd, getting colder, produced a sustained cheer. “Don’t be mistaken,” Bowman continued, “America is building housing for poor people. It’s building jail cells.” Bowman continued upon that theme, connecting new laws criminalizing poverty and ethnicity, and the increase in correctional spending. “We don’t ask for charity, or for sympathy. We demand our human rights. So we’re gonna organize, we’re gonna build a movement, and God damnit, we’re gonna win.” The crowd issued a grand round of applause before continuing the march.

(photo by Lauriel Arwen) The last walking-leg of the rally led to City Hall, SW 4th and Main, where Occupy Portland Food Team waited with hot baked bean dip, spinach quiche, chicken noodle soup and a rice-and-vegetable medley. Hungry and cold marchers gobbled up the goods. Ibrahim Mubarak, founder of Right to Dream, Too, closed off the ceremony with a reliably-inspiring message that filled the crowd with joy. “A lot of people are keeping the dream that Martin Luther King envisioned. We don’t want to forget about the people who fell through loopholes, people who slipped through the cracks. It’s a simple idea: when you have enough, you share.” Mubarak stated as he closed the ceremony that the name of such a system is irrelevant, be it “communism” or “democratic Socialism,” as the point is “human dignity.” Ibrahim led chants of “Up with the workers, down with capitalism” to a raucous and energized crowd of approximately 300. Portland Police ordered marchers to clear the street, and the march dispersed shortly after 2:00pm.

Sister of the Road and Right to Dream, Too have requested that marchers from Monday’s event who wish to continue in the fight for economic justice would return to City Hall at 8:30am on February 1st for a public action to defend the R2D2 camp from eviction. The organizations also encourage citizens to contact City Commissioner Dan Saltzman’s office to tell him how you feel about R2D2. His number is 503 823 4151.

More photos from the march are available at Lauriel-Arwen’s photostream.

Martin Luther King was a visionary. In a very short span of time, with limited resources and working against impossible odds, he made a dream possible. Thanks to his efforts, the United States of America is a more free and just and equal place. Notice I wrote “more.” Because America is not yet perfect. Just as in “a more perfect union,” our job is never done.

When Dr. King spoke about racial justice the public lauded him as a hero, his words were moving and poetic and true. In 1963 he gave one of the most famous speeches in the history of the USA to a diverse and morally-righteous crowd gathered in Washington, D.C.

He shook the halls of Congress, the march was epic but King rocked our Capitol. The Civil Rights Act is an imperfect law, still devastating in its focus on the forced integration of the US, devastating to old ways of doing things that were just unfair.

When Martin Luther King spoke about racial injustice in 1963, the public lauded him as a hero, and laws changed in 1964. When he spoke about reparations in 1965 they mocked him and the police beat marchers ruthlessly. When he started his “Poor People’s Movement” in 1968, in his last speech, the American public sat back and watched as he rocked the foundations of economic injustice once more, just as he had rocked D.C. in 1963.

…that’s all this whole thing is about. We aren’t engaged in any negative protest and in any negative arguments with anybody. We are saying that we are determined to be men. We are determined to be people. We are saying — We are saying that we are God’s children. And that we are God’s children, we don’t have to live like we are forced to live.

Now, what does all of this mean in this great period of history? It means that we’ve got to stay together. We’ve got to stay together and maintain unity. You know, whenever Pharaoh wanted to prolong the period of slavery in Egypt, he had a favorite, favorite formula for doing it. What was that? He kept the slaves fighting among themselves. But whenever the slaves get together, something happens in Pharaoh’s court, and he cannot hold the slaves in slavery. When the slaves get together, that’s the beginning of getting out of slavery. Now let us maintain unity.
…
We aren’t going to let any mace stop us. We are masters in our nonviolent movement in disarming police forces; they don’t know what to do. I’ve seen them so often. I remember in Birmingham, Alabama, when we were in that majestic struggle there, we would move out of the 16th Street Baptist Church day after day; by the hundreds we would move out. And Bull Connor would tell them to send the dogs forth, and they did come; but we just went before the dogs singing, “Ain’t gonna let nobody turn me around.”
…
Now the other thing we’ll have to do is this: Always anchor our external direct action with the power of economic withdrawal. Now, we are poor people. Individually, we are poor when you compare us with white society in America. We are poor. Never stop and forget that collectively — that means all of us together — collectively we are richer than all the nations in the world, with the exception of nine. Did you ever think about that? After you leave the United States, Soviet Russia, Great Britain, West Germany, France, and I could name the others, the American Negro collectively is richer than most nations of the world. We have an annual income of more than thirty billion dollars a year, which is more than all of the exports of the United States, and more than the national budget of Canada. Did you know that? That’s power right there, if we know how to pool it.

We don’t have to argue with anybody. We don’t have to curse and go around acting bad with our words. We don’t need any bricks and bottles. We don’t need any Molotov cocktails. We just need to go around to these stores, and to these massive industries in our country, and say, “God sent us by here, to say to you that you’re not treating his children right. And we’ve come by here to ask you to make the first item on your agenda fair treatment, where God’s children are concerned. Now, if you are not prepared to do that, we do have an agenda that we must follow. And our agenda calls for withdrawing economic support from you.”
…
But not only that, we’ve got to strengthen black institutions. I call upon you to take your money out of the banks downtown and deposit your money in Tri-State Bank. We want a “bank-in” movement in Memphis. Go by the savings and loan association. I’m not asking you something that we don’t do ourselves at SCLC. Judge Hooks and others will tell you that we have an account here in the savings and loan association from the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. We are telling you to follow what we are doing. Put your money there. You have six or seven black insurance companies here in the city of Memphis. Take out your insurance there. We want to have an “insurance-in.”

Now these are some practical things that we can do. We begin the process of building a greater economic base. And at the same time, we are putting pressure where it really hurts. I ask you to follow through here.
…
The question is not, “If I stop to help this man in need, what will happen to me?” The question is, “If I do not stop to help the sanitation workers, what will happen to them?” That’s the question.
…
Well, I don’t know what will happen now. We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn’t matter with me now, because I’ve been to the mountaintop.

And I don’t mind.

Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land!
…
I’m not worried about anything.

I’m not fearing any man!

The entire speech is epic, Dr. King encourages targeting specific brands for injustices. It is a dangerous way to talk, a way that upsets the established order and causes great stress to the heads of large companies. The escaped convict who killed Dr. King, James Earl Ray, attempted to withdraw his guilty plea after initially being sentenced to 99 years in prison for assassinating the most effective civilian in recent American history. Ray died, in a cell, with hepatitis C. The man who delivered the televised announcement, Bobby Kennedy, stated toward the end of a short and solemn speech, “The vast majority of white people and the vast majority of black people in this country want to live together, want to improve the quality of our life, and want justice for all human beings who abide in our land.” He was hoping to quell the violent riots that might take place without the soothing of an official on the TV. “Let us dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world.”

This is the legacy Dr. King left behind, and why we march on his holiday. The Poor People’s Movement continues, as does the struggle for Civil Rights. We are marching for a better tomorrow in honor of a great man.

To put this struggle in a modern context, the opposition to civil rights in well-meaning circles of Evangelical Christians, White Supremacists and homophobes continues. As long as people struggle against integration, against unity, the movements to eradicate injustice will remain stifled. A large and long-lasting movement for justice, with economic impact, is the only rational choice if you want change.

Presidential primary candidate Ron Paul has repeatedly said he would have voted against the Civil Rights Act because his libertarianism dictates the law unfairly forced private businesses to open their doors to people they didn’t want to serve (black people). President Barack Obama could augment the CRA with the passage of the imperfect Employment Non-Discrimination Act. ENDA would extend similar protections to people in the transgender community, but remains stalled in a partisan-gridlocked House and Senate. The current libertarian penchant for personal preference has ancient roots in the current make-up of the predominantly-Southern, predominantly-male, predominantly-white, predominantly-straight Republican Party of 2011. Many of them are old-time Democrats, from back when the Southern “Dixiecrats” were the equivalent of the Blue Dogs, a loyal vote on a few issues that mattered, but not many. There are racists in the GOP who hate the forced racial integration of the US. Not all Republicans are bigots, but a great number of bigots are openly, proudly Republican this election season, and I can only wager a guess as to what, or who, has them all riled up. ENDA is a threat to straight people who are adamantly anti-gay. Most of those activists are not going to vote for Barack Obama, no matter how hard he tries.

We must not forget our roots, as movements. The current struggle for equal rights for transgender and gay people, including marriage rights and serving openly in the military, continues a long tradition of civil rights struggle. It is a nonviolent movement for the end of segregation and injustice.

The Occupy Movement, properly focused, is a civil rights movement for the end of segregation and injustice. Specifically, 99% of all Americans are segregated from the 1% of influence-peddlers and politicians, and voting has become meaningless in the face of a wave of corporate-funded propaganda when voting in a democracy is most-high, voting itself being a natural right. Super PACs in South Carolina are spending twice as much as Candidates to air ads anonymously attacking the opposition. The next Presidential election is going to see more money than ever before spent anonymously on advertising designed to mislead and lionize. The propaganda campaign is still underway, but at least now there are people in the streets speaking out about it.

A press conference will begin at 5:30pm with a statement from the Occupy Portland PR Team on its new community space, followed by a question and answer session for the media.

The press will receive a guided tour of the new space and is invited to attend the consequent Open House at 6pm, with presentations on the evolution of Occupy, a panel discussion, workshops and entertainment.

The event coincides with the unveiling of the new OccupyPortland.org website and various 2012 actions & initiatives.

Program
5:30-6pm Press conference & tour
6-6:30 Mingling, food and committee tabling
6:30-7:15 Presentation on the evolution of Occupy, Videos and Occupier
discussion panel
7:15-8 workshops on non-violent resistance tactics & strategies, online activism, tiny-tent making, education, kids activities & more.
8-9 Entertainment

Public Event Invite:

Occupy Portland Open House

Come celebrate our new community space!

When: Friday, Jan 13 from 6-9pm
Where: St. Francis at 1131 Southeast Oak Street Portland, OR 97214
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/306012759438103/

Featuring a panel on Occupy, music, food, workshops, committee booths,
a raffle, door prizes…and fun!

Breakout session include tiny-tent making, non-violent resistance
tactics & strategies, online activism, kids activities and more! This
is a family friendly event.

Bring a can of food or a pie!

The march began in Pioneer Courthouse Square, a large and visible city park where the Christmas Tree was just undergoing an unceremonious take-down. Private contract-workers chopped off low branches just as the crowd amassed. Estimates of the total crowd by the end of the march size ranged from 275 to 800 people. Portland Police were in light numbers, in t-shirts, and on bicycles for the city-block sized rally, in an apparent show of solidarity with the march. An officer would not give me his name (because I didn’t ask for it).

Mayoral Candidate Cameron Whitten was on hand for the occasion, making his rounds and joining the people to call for saving the US Postal Service. He stood proudly with an axe-shaped-sign that read “Jobs Not Cuts,” and pretended to cut my head off for the cameras. “We’re here to recall everybody,” he said of the next election. “Screw this government. Quote me on that.” Whitten said USPS was important and then railed against the private companies profiting while millions of Americans suffer. “The trillions going to the banks and investment houses is BS.”

Jim Cook, President of the National Association of Letter Carriers 82 helped explain the day’s plans to the waiting crowd. Speakers at the rally began lining up to help rouse protesters and make the occasion loud and memorable. Speaker Omar Gonzales said 41,000 jobs were created in the month of December in the US Postal Service. “We are the last, last stand-up Middle Class workers who have to say NO!” The crowd repeated back, “NO!” “We’re not gonna let it happen,” Omar continued. “The fight starts today, in Portland.” The crowd roared.

Other announcers spoke out about the currently-pending pieces of legislation H.R. 2309 and S. 1789. Congressman Darrell Issa’s HR 2309 would end Saturday delivery, cut 200,000 jobs, close thousands of post offices and fail to address the 2006 measure which causes the financial problems in the first place. S 1789 cuts Saturday service by tying it to profitability without fixing the accounting error which sucks most of the USPS revenues into pension over-payments uncommon in any industry.

Speakers were present from AFT 3571, US Association of Neighborhoods, and Jobs With Justice. Jessica Campbell from the Rural Organizing Project told the crowd about Deadwood, Oregon, where of the town’s 180 people, 164 were present at a rally to save their post office. “Congress bankrupted the Postal Service,” Campbell announced. “Rural Oregon will not pay.”

Amy Hertzfeld from Working America spoke about the reach of the organization, the community affiliate of the AFL-CIO. “We are in 10 states and have over 3 million members. … No other group puts boots on the ground and understands neighborhoods as well as letter carriers. Hertzfeld decried what she called “radical downsizing” of the Postal Service workforce.

David Jarvis, President of the mail-handlers’ union locally said that the plans under discussion in congress could cost 3700 rural post offices and 200 mail processing operations. Scott Murahashi if the American Rural Letter Carriers Association simply said “Darrel Issa,” and the entire crowd booed. Murahasi continued “…is a very rich man, who wants to get richer by eliminating jobs.” The crowd hissed again. “All of Oregon’s congressmen but one support us,” he said of the rally. Letter carrier Eric Matras, who was holding his son, yelled out “Where’s Waldo?,” a reference to Oregon Congressman Greg Walden who is absent on this issue. Jarvis finished by remarking that USPS delivers half of the world’s mail. “How do you tell your neighbors, ‘yeah, we’ll deliver it a lot slower’?”

Paul Prince, second-generation letter carrier, said a recent Oxford study of the Planet Earth rated the US Postal Service number one in the world. “Who would wanna screw with it?” Prince asked rhetorically, calling Darrell Issa “The richest man in Congress, who has been convicted multiple times for car theft,” and said Issa’s agenda was “all for corporate greed. … You know that voice when you hear a car alarm that says ‘Step Away From the Vehicle?’ That’s Darrell Issa. He called Postmaster Partick Donahoe (whose name also elicited boos and hisses) “Issa’s puppet” and said that not one penny in tax dollars goes to the USPS. “My bank trusts [USPS] enough to put my bank account numbers in [the mail]. Would they do that with a third-rate carrier?” Prince concluded “So to Mister Issa we have to say: ‘Step Away form the Postal Service.’“

Leader of the Oregon AFL-CIO Tom Chamberlain spoke about a current delay in closures to allow congress time to fix the problem. He declared, “This is the Army that’s going to change the country. There wouldn’t be a five-month moratorium [announced December 13th] without us.”

The rally then moved to the streets from Pioneer Courthouse Square. The parade route twisted down Morrison Street to 4th Avenue, down 4th to Burnside, up Burnside to Broadway, and down the North-east-bound half of Broadway to the Post Office on Hoyt. March Organizers wore bright-orange vests to distinguish themselves, surround the crowd, and guide the march on its path. They obtained a permit, and a police escort, which led to an orderly and police-repression free procession.

photo by Lauriel Arwin

The group marching were diverse and lively. They were young and old, disabled citizens, students, teachers, wheelchair-bound citizens, people of color, homosexuals, and many other diverse types of people, all of whom were unified in their support of the Post Office. The crowd seemed like it was just the right saize to be orderly without being sparse or boring. Chants rang through the streets, bells rang, drums were always clanging and banging along with the chants, and the footsteps. “Congress stalling, that’s appalling,” “Five Day No Way,” “Postal Service Yes, Privatizing No,” and “Hey hey, ho ho, union busters’ got to go,” were all enthusiastically repeated a few times each. The size and length of the march made each chant refreshing and new, and nearly all the participats in the march shouted along together, which at a larger march is impossible.

Red and Black flags waved in the sunlight, and Rumorz Cafe offerered free coffee to anyone marching by. “This march is fueled on coffee,” Rumorz’ barista Eli said as I grabbed a cup.

The march then gathered on the sidewalk in front of the Hoyt and Broadway post office, and after some rousing last chants of “for six day delivery, we shall not be moved,” the final speakers brought their cases. “2309 NO, 1789 NO” chants erupted from the crowd. Oregon’s Congressional delegation was thanked for supporting the passage of postal reform bills that allow continuation of service. The Legislative Director of the American Postal Workers Union, Patty Dewey, thanks unionists, activists and all the other participants in the march for working against Issa’s bill. Someone in the crowd yelled “Issa’s a liar,” and Dewey responded, “Issa is a liar. This is not a bailout,” referring to H.R. 3591 and S. 1853, bills which would address the accounting problems and mandates which have placed the USPS budget in a stranglehold since Congress enacted them in 2006.

The final speaker at the event was Isham Harris, a local activist who has been carrying letters for 35 years. “Scripture says if a man doesn’t work, he doesn’t eat. And all we want is to work, so we can eat.” Harris called the march “an enthusiastic and providential victory. Providence gave us great weather, and the timing was perfect.”

Jimi Cook, surveying the march his union organized, later said

“The Occupy Movement awakened America to the fact that each one of us has power. The Postal Service represents people power, power that goes back to the Revolution. We communicated our power door-to-door and neighborhood to neighborhood and we got a revolution.”

His parting thoughts were, “when the power goes out, remember the Postal Service.”

Because the upper classes wanted to divide the lower classes, they decided to perpetuate the idea that America was a nation of majority White people, and to lump the English, Irish, German, Swedish, Gaelic and many other ethnographic groups into the same census category, thereby creating a majority block which identifies with a construct of society rather than a common national history. While mingling, marriage, courtship and sex between White and non-White peoples became anathema, co-mingling of these diverse nationalities within the White subculture was only shunned internally (as by the nationalistic impulses of Irish versus Scottish people, or English versus German). The nationality category “White,” upon conception, birthed institutional racism in America. Its effects are still felt today.

White Americans do not acknowledge the national origin of their European and Caucasian ancestors. This is in marked contrast to the Americans of African, Latin or Native descent, who are at most times painfully aware of their historical origins, indeed shamed for them. It is unbecoming of any American one may describe as “White,” who is not actively racist, to describe their nationality so obtusely. It showcases an ignorance of family history, and a tacit acceptance of the benefits of Whiteness that society confers upon them. This is passive racism, a refusal to cast off the privilege of Whiteness.

this mis-identification makes just as little sense as a poor person identifying as a Capitalist. The ambitions do not match the possibilities.

Whiteness, upon its construction, divided the poor against themselves, and has prevented the poor from becoming unified in their refusal to perpetuate the capitalist system’s inequities. Capitalism is unsustainable; infinite growth is impossible and will inevitably approach maximums of resource allocation and population sustainability. The poor, however, cling to Capitalism, for the same reason that White people cling to the concept of Whiteness. The poor wish to have a chance to compete in a “free market” which does not exist, just as White people idealistically cling to a non-existent White nationality. If Whiteness did not unify a large block of the poor against other non-White poor people, they might begin to see their common shoddy situation as inherently tied to Capitalism. Instead, nationality is the most common scapegoat for poverty, with minorities labelled as the true perpetrators of inequality. Never in human history has a level playing field for economic competition existed. White people wish to be equally respected members of society, while conferring a title upon themselves rooted in oppression and dominance of other, true nationalities.

The transition from pre-modern feudalism to modern Capitalism did not happen overnight. Formerly-wealthy barons and kings did not suddenly find themselves equalized with peasant farmers by the imposition of Capitalist ideals. The feudal system underwent alteration and amendment but is still at its core an unfair system built upon ill-gotten gains. In feudal society the wealthy obtained wealth through war, economic and military domination, subjugation of minority and female populations, and slavery. The systems of war and oppression still exist, their conductors have simply shifted tactics to comply with a standard of “fairness” which is in no way fair. The poorest 400 families in Western feudal society were the ancestors of the poorest 4 million Westerners in modern Capitalism. There is some class mobility to speak of, but this is not usual, a “man bites dog” scenario, an aberration from the typical circumstance. Wealth begets wealth, and poverty begets poverty. Modern poverty is a direct descendant of ancient poverty, slavery and conquest.

This is why Native, Black and Latin Americans are not on an economic par with White Americans. By perpetuating the myth of Whiteness, the Capitalist upper class (directly descended from feudal upper classes) has maintained its dominance. The market has never been free, nor society fair, for the long-silent majority of poor people of all nations, from pre-modernity to present. A scant minority of Western patriarchs, plutocrats and warlords still maintains rule, passed down from long-established lineages of elites.

The refusal to acknowledge the historically-influenced reality of modern Capitalism is just as insidious as the refusal to acknowledge the historically-influenced reality of modern Whiteness. Any analysis of the current state of the market and society which does not draw these conclusions first is inherently biased against addressing the most-obvious flaws in the utopian thinking of social egalitarians and Capitalists. There is not a free market, nor a free and equal society, because the current market originated in undeniably unequal and unjust conditions, and the current society is an altered yet historically-unequal one. Modern, supposedly-free-and-equal markets and society arose from colonization, slavery and continued racial animus. Ignoring these facts will not make these problems go away. As a matter of historical record, refusal to start our analysis of our modern market and social problems from this historically-informed perspective is precisely why the society remains not equal, and the market not free.

A similar line of critical thinking exists which states unequivocally that the perpetuation of patriarchy is borne through a refusal to analyze historical male dominance, and which views the historical oppression of queers similarly as a requisite acknowledgement for analyzing and addressing the problems of homophobia, transphobia and queer-bashing. Women are to blame for over-population and homosexuals spread disease. Facts and history be damned. Oppression does not simply exist independent of modern society, but is rather a part of the fiber weaving the fabric of modern society. A world free of historically-derived oppression would not simply rework the current framework for economic and societal activity to utopian ends. It would replace the existing, Western, dystopian framework outright, as it is rotten to its core, a fact obvious with even the slightest scrutiny of Western history.

Capitalism, Whiteness, Patriarchy and Heteronormativity share a common thread, in that we can accept that we have them without critically analyzing their origins, and thus keep them intact and attempt to patch up issues borne of them. Alternatively, we can analyze the origins of these constructs first, and choose whether or not we want to keep them and the issues they create. There is no middle ground in the fight against this historic injustice.

Save Saturday Delivery & Door-to-Door Mail Delivery
Save Community Post Offices
March & Rally, Downtown Portland
Sunday, Jan. 8th, 2 – 3:30pm

Rally at Pioneer Courthouse Square
March to Portland Main Post Office (NW Hoyt @ Broadway)
*** FAMILY FRIENDLY, BRING CHILDREN ***

Congress is getting ready to vote on HR 2309 & S 1789
These bills would
1. End door-to-door and curbside delivery for 90% of postal patrons
2. End Saturday delivery
3. Close thousands of community post offices
4. Close half the mail processing plants
5. Force senior carriers into retirement
6. Eliminate hundreds of thousands of jobs
7. End overnite delivery of first class mail

TIME TO STAND UP AND SHOW UP!

more info: National Association of Letter Carriers 82, 503-493-5903
www.saveamericaspostalservice.org

Already under fiscal strain, the USPS recently announced it would no longer offer next-day first-class delivery of mail in the US. The change is likely to affect the bottom line of many American businesses, to the tune of $100,000,000 according to one study.

In addition, the Postmaster General announced that USPS will close 252 of the nation’s 487 mail processing centers, the facilities which sort and distribute mail to post offices. The delays in delivery service are expected to shift first-class mail from a one-to-three day delivery window to a two-to-three day window. The effects will be most prominent in lower population rural and suburban areas, whose mail processing centers bring in less revenue and were thus targeted for closure.

The Postal Service certainly does have a problem with its funding, though not simply from lack of business. USPS handled more than $67,000,000,000 worth of revenues in 2010. But this mail is not enough to meet a legally-required pension funding provision. USPS must fund its pensions 75 years in advance. This means that pensions for employees who aren’t even hired yet have to be fully funded by 2016, under Title VIII of the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act of 2006, signed into law by President George W. Bush. Public employee unions have long been a target of the anti-government right, for their supposedly-budget-busting pensions, so these “reforms” ensured that the egregious over-payments required under the new law would appear, to the casual observer, to be another sign of union excess. Attacking and bankrupting the USPS ensures more revenue for FedEx and UPS, among other private competitors of the government-managed USPS.

According to a report (PDF) from APWU,

apparent differences in the proportion of operating expenses attributable to labor costs in large part disappear when each organization’s operating expenses are adjusted to account for the larger international and domestic transportation services and related equipment that characterize the operations of UPS and Fedex as compared to the U.S. Postal Service
Private Mail.

That is to say that FedEx and UPS do not provide a smarter business model, as is often insisted to be the case in media outlets with an anti-government, anti-worker bias.

Take this example from Glenn Beck’s “The Blaze”:

Currently, labor costs represent 80 percent of the agency’s expenses (as opposed to UPS’ 53 percent and Fedex’s 32 percent) and costs continue to rise and grow with the help of such incredibly, unthinkably harmful provisions as the “no-layoff” clause in union contracts.

Moreover, it has been discovered recently that the USPS has overpaid an estimated $60 billion into its employee pension plans.

You read that correctly. $60 billion. Extremely generous benefits, employees that cannot be fired, and $60 billion overpaid in pensions. That would explain the 80 percent labor costs.

To read this, you’d almost come to believe that Glenn Beck’s media outlet was more concerned with making the union look bad, than the due diligence of determining that labor costs, as a percentage of operating expenses adjusted for the different types of transportation used within the three business models, shows a much different picture.

“In 2005, FedEx was among 53 entities that contributed the maximum of $250,000 to sponsor the second inauguration of President George W. Bush.” (wiki)
UPS spent $2,817,640 lobbying in 2005, their top issue being Postal reform.

This budget “crisis,” like so many in Washington, was intentional. Just as our nation’s full-faith-and-credit was used as a bargaining chip to extract concessions and budget cuts, this model of pension funding is the primary reason why the USPS has been losing money since 2006, as it slashes and burns in an attempt at meeting its legal obligations. The march in Portland on Sunday isn’t just about keeping post office employees working, or mail-sorting centers open. It’s about demanding that government work for people, and not against the interest of workers on behalf of private companies. As the USPS goes under, poor people lose service or are forced into more-expensive and less-convenient private options. And that’s what this fight, Occupy, has been about since the beginning: the undue influence of corporate money on our government.

The current apocalypse du jour involves the Mayan Calendar ending on December 21st, 2012. As Todd Armstrong puts it in his comedy routine, if the Mayans could predict the future, why couldn’t they see the Spanish coming?

Meanwhile, revolutions occur with regularity. A couple of hundred years is typically the life-span of a government, in particular one with a fiat currency. One Founding Father even famously declared that revolutions every so often were necessary… even while building a very strict framework for a government he would then defend with his life.

Fear of the end-times is paralyzing. It keeps people from advocating for changes. When you believe in imminent doom, every step you take makes you think “Am I going to cause it? Will my next foot-fall be on the button that launches WWIII?” So you do nothing. You stay home and worry. You zone out on the internet. You watch other people trying to make changes, and blame them for starting the inevitable decline of humankind. You see drastic switches and you tense up and reject the new, instead of casting away the old.

Revolution is a driving force in humanity. Sometimes we call it ingenuity, or self-examination (which invariably leads to personal revolution), or love (and the new humanity it creates through procreation), but humanity is defined by its stunning advances, its revolutions in thoughts and deeds. The American and French Revolutions weren’t just about starting a country, they were about showing the world that a country could be started if the people in a particular place decided to. We have advances in technology so lightning quick that you can’t own an up-to-date computer for more than a few days at a time. We conduct business meetings from our cars, now, so we don’t waste time in traffic. It makes us feel good to be up-to-date, but striving to stay up-to-date is a reminder that things haven’t always been this way, that we had to lose plenty of work-hours sitting in traffic before someone invented the teleconferencing and mobile networks necessary to solve the problem, that old-school computers were inadequate for modern communication, that a feudal state is incompatible with modern conceptions of rights. Every day in our pampered lives is a testament to the power and reality of constant human revolution.

Certainty in the present drags down the inevitable march of history from the past to the future. Despite our human lust for advancement we stop ourselves for fear of getting what we wish for, and because we just wish we could be comfortable and secure in what we have at the moment. The greatest operating principle in the conspiracy to prevent progress and revolution is to make people feel certain about the rightness and predictability of the now, with revelations of a certain end. Popular myths about the end of the world only serve to make people fearful of progress, more willing to work actively against large-scale change, as these apocalyptic myths are always tied to the idea that the present is fully explained in some way or another, in some ancient text, or a calendar artifact from a dead civilization.

Our collective certitude in the present manifests in a belief that every recent phenomenon is just a sign that prophecies of apocalypse have already come true. The more of us are convinced the world will end in fire, the more likely someone will be able to douse the planet in gasoline and light a match, unchecked, while we read our little books convinced the future has already been written. The idea of inevitability stops us from controlling our collective destiny. We’d do better to write it ourselves. The end-times have never happened, and revolutions against standing governments have, and will again.

I don’t just mean Republicans. Hey GOP: you’ve already lost 2012, hard. You were against the idea of a poor people’s movement before one even started, but there are far too many of us who are now far too invested not to notice what’s going on in US politics. All your talk of “bootstraps” was hyperbole, because you thought you’d screwed the poor so hard we’d never even try to improve our lot in life. We’re already past trying and on to winning. You, GOP, are three dimensions of history. You’re the past, present, and future of failure. Herbert Hoover was your first try. Reagan was your second. George W. Bush was your third. You can put as many puppet-people on a debate stage as you want, and have them say anything the skilled, rhetorical ventriloquists like Frank Luntz can think of. You can run Ron Paul and insist your party has integrity left. You had your third strike. Baseball is an American pastime. Get off the plate and go sit down and let the DH do his job. Maybe think about changing your swing.

But who else is responsible for the eviction of the occupied parks nationwide?

I’m talking about the secret right-wingers in government. The Mayors and city council-members who publicly advocate for the poor while secretly advocating for themselves, their own re-elections and private investments and friends’ businesses. I’m talking to you, fake Police chiefs who claim you’re so inspired by our movement, while you’re macing and zip-tying us: you got us kicked out of the park where we were pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps. The right wing has called us lazy for thirty years. We finally get to work, and the powerful spring into action to stop us, and call us criminals, and pretend myopically that they just care about “safety” and “public health” while they take away they only safe place plenty of poor people had to sleep, and the only free medical care many could find.

But it wasn’t ultimately even the politicians who are responsible for the loss of our parks, wherever they may be. It is the secretly selfish jerk who talks so much about the poor, says he or she cares so deeply about the planet, yet the most he or she can do is evacuate the presence of poor people and seek the refuge of the mindless, energy-wasting entertainment industry. The debauchery of our modern bread-and-circuses like Jersey Shore and NASCAR and UFC and whatever dog-and-pony, scripted “reality” show is on tonight. Facebook instead of face-time for those faced with misery.

Most culpable for our eviction and oppression is you spineless “advocates” for the poor: you called us helpless. You gave up on us. You marched with us on the first day, you visited regularly the first few weeks, you gave up drinking to help fight the revolution, you changed your schedule to accommodate radical new methods of governance and attempts at overthrow of systems of oppression. But time marched on. It got colder outside. The bootstraps were too much for you. You saw so many young kids getting loaded without the slightest care for revolution, and you saw so many impoverished, mentally destroyed people refuse free mental health help, that you decided to take your ball and go home. You broke down and went back to drinking heavily. It was all too much for you to take.

And you’re the same people who call Obama ineffective. He’s been fighting against unspeakable horrors in health care and finance and unemployment for three years, and you didn’t even make it three months. It’s back to facebook to argue over which Jersey Shore millionaire is most like you. Hint: you will never in a thousand years be as famous as any one of them, because you cared about #occupywallstreet, you tweeted about it once, you facebooked about it three times, you wrote one-too-many blogs that your friends found annoying, you asked one-too-many-times for your friends not to shit all over poor people (and they all blocked you for it, the rich person’s snub). You’re in the record books, on a server at your internet service provider, as being untrustworthy, so you will never make it on camera. You are blacklisted. In the future you don’t have to disappear people in reality, because reality doesn’t exist in the media. It’s all poofy hair and getting drunk constantly. Everything is fine, America, go back to sleep.

This is where the dying rubber tree meets the road less-traveled. The planet is doing terrible things. The Japanese earthquake (with begat a tsunami, which begat Fukushima Daiichi) shook the Earth so violently that the weather will never bee the same again. The number of parts-per-million of carbon in the Earth’s atmosphere is 380-ish, and scientists can say definitively that more than 350ppm CO2 is hazardous and killing us all in ten distinct, terrifying ways. We will burn alive.

What’s that? The UN got together and agreed to continue getting together to discuss getting together to discuss a semi-permanent commitment to possibly cutting carbon emissions? How quaint. Someone get Superman on the phone, we’re going to need… What’s that? Oh, okay. (hang up) Uh-oh. We can not reverse time. It marches on.

Species go extinct, people starve, people are so poor that they have to sleep outside, they do drugs because they’re addicted and because poverty is a point when desperate people will always try something new, as though it might help or at least numb the pain of sleeping uncomfortably, people are drunk because they’re afraid of reality, they’re mentally ill from neglect and never being allowed to sleep outside because that’s a crime in America, a crime that many of us are guilty of. And every one of these things can be prevented. We know exactly how to stop global warming, exactly how to feed the poor, exactly where we could sleep without getting hassled, exactly how to help people get off drugs and alcohol and into treatment and jobs. We know what to do.

We are tired of waiting for our leaders to do it, because they’ve been promising, just promising “we will get to it,” and the planet is burning down while we wait for it to become “politically feasible.” All the institutions have failed. Every person is responsible. And so we tried to pick ourselves up by our bootstraps, we made a camp of poor people taking care of poor people, like the Republicans have demanded for forty years, and then the politicians who claim to support the poor but who secretly support the rich machinated to make sure we lost our park.

Everyone who was at the parks all day every day, even we are responsible for not being arrested repeatedly, day after day after day, for our right to assemble and to take care of ourselves. Of course Obama will sign a bill eliminating the right to a trial. Where will us lazy jerks go to protest it? The courthouse? Will you seriously walk into the Ministry of Love demanding reparations? You won’t even camp at an outdoor revolution party downtown that Jon Stewart famously described as looking an awful lot like Burningman. You think the protesters looked silly when they danced. You think it was too dirty, that the protesters should have dressed nicer, that the drug use was out of hand and the drinking was just unacceptable. You’d prefer the drinking take place in the bars, taxed and supporting the war machine, where drinking belongs. Indoors, where nobody has any demands except another round and quarters for the jukebox.

You prefer your Burningman in the desert, far from the centers of power, while you’re on drugs, fending for yourself Mad-Max style, and then watching a visage of a human being burn to the ground. In the sun, half-naked, while you watch your water levels and try not to think about the work you’ll have missed when you get back to civilization. You prefer to pay for the privilege of joining an autonomous community, and you don’t want to think about politics while you’re doing it. Nice going. Your fantasies about a desert full of drug addicts will come true until you can put as much energy into fixing what’s fucked up as you do into getting fucked up.

We have established a safe place for the homeless to sleep. It isn’t a home but it beats Burnside. The city, state and country had done nothing.

We provide free medical care for people without it. The city, state and country had done nothing.

We provide a democratic nightly forum to discuss the direction of society, as one had been absent. The city, state and country had done nothing.

We rally once a week for one of the many causes we all support. From ending the war to Jobs With Justice, we have shown ferocious solidarity with many causes. The city, state and country have done nothing to meet our demands.

We recognize the intentional failure of our government. Profit is more important than people in the eyes of the 1%. They are responsible for funding our elections, and have told our politicians not to act. How else do we explain the dire need on the ground of so many hungry, homeless, sick people, and a city, state and country which do nothing?

The corruption of our government is the defining issue of this era. No politicial issue is worth discussion. The power-brokers have already made up their minds on a few key economic issues, concerns of 99% of the populace be damned. What we have is not democracy. And it won’t be until we are finished.

Portland Police arrested a drug dealer tonight. The #OccupyPortland movement, in solidarity with #OccupyWallStreet, continues. The arrest is no pretense to end the occupation. It is a cause to celebrate: the movement has one less distraction from the work of economic and social justice.

Hopefully in the future, #OccupyPortland will discover and expel drug dealers before Portland Police are bothered. The incident is unfortunate, but has no effect on the resolve of the 99% to be heard in the halls of government and nation-wide. See earlier posts for my take on the “Good Neighbor Policy.” Drugs and alcohol are not revolutionary. #OccupyPortland is.