The Economy and the Occupation
Occupy Portland had their first arrests early this morning when the police reopened SW Main Street. To help those of you who aren't familiar with Portland to visualize this, the area we are occupying is a rectangle between SW 3rd and SW 4th streets, a few blocks south and east of Pioneer Courthouse Square, which is considered Portland's living room. The rectangle consists of the two city blocks we are occupying, bounded by SW Salmon Street on the north and SW Madison on the south end. SW Main Street runs between the two squares. The northern square (between Salmon and Main) is called Lownsdale Square. The southern square (between Main and Madison) is called Chapman Square.
Since the protests began last Thursday, Main Street between the two parks has been closed to traffic. There is an island in the middle of Main with an elk statue that for the past week has become a meeting site for the General Assembly and various committee groups (it was common to see signs advertising one meeting or another, for example, "at 7 PM at the Elk"). While it may look like a relatively minor street, it is actually an important connection between one side of downtown and the other. Several public transit routes go down Main Street. With Main closed between the two parks, it creates delays for commuters, buses, and emergency vehicles that have to take a several block detour.
Monday, we received a request from the Portland Police Bureau that Main Street be reopened. There was some division among protesters as far as whether or not to voluntarily reopen the street. But the vast majority of the General Assembly was in favor of reopening the street for the simple reason that it makes no sense to the movement to piss off the 99 percent that we're there to fight for by causing delays for people trying to get to work. Transit workers were getting annoyed and emergency vehicles had to take lengthy detours. It could even improve our visibility to have that middle street open to traffic. Many people were also making the case that safety concerns with the street being open were exaggerated: the street has traffic lights, clear pavement markings, and safe crosswalks. While we do have families with children staying in the camp, I would assume that parents would be responsible enough to educate their children about not going around the street unsupervised, After all, the rest of the camp is surrounded by streets.
The good news about all this is that things actually went very smoothly. The police maintained communications with Occupy Portland throughout the reopening of the street. While eight people were arrested for refusing to stop blocking the street, by all accounts, everything was done civilly. The police understood and acknowledged that the vast majority of the protesters wanted to be cooperative with reopening the street. The police have said that they have no attention of interfering with our occupation of the two public park blocks. And as far as the mood among the protesters? The general feeling is that people are glad that the street issue is over so that the movement can get back to its core mission: showing solidarity with Occupy Wall Street, and fighting against economic and social injustice.
A roundup of some articles about the protests, plus some general economic news. There's a lot of good stuff today in the New York Times in particular.
The GOP's act of economic vandalism. They filibustered and killed President Obama's jobs bill, which many economists estimated would have added a point or two to economic growth and added one or two million new jobs. The Republicans offer no solutions of their own, however.
How to Stop the Drop in Home Values
Herman Cain's fuzzy math. His ridiculous 999 tax scheme would starve the government of revenue and shift the tax burden even more to the middle class and the poor. Even if you did consider this a good idea, the original figures he came up with for a plan that he claims would be "revenue neutral" is 9.1%, which doesn't make as catchy of a campaign slogan. But since he was supposedly a math major, you would think he'd understand that the 0.1% makes a real difference when you're talking about figures in the trillions of dollars.
The media is having to pay a lot more attention to the Occupy Wall Street protests as they continue to grow.
Occupy Wall Street is actually on Liberty Street, but the fallout is very real on the actual Wall Street.
Problems with the peanut harvest in the south mean that the price of yet another food staple is about to skyrocket. Peanut butter may be going up by as much as 30 to 40 percent, along with any other product that contains peanuts. The Oregon Food Bank is already nearly out of peanut butter, a good source of protein and other nutrients for poor people who are barely getting by. Keep in mind that this huge increase will not even be factored into the inflation statistics put out by the big corporations and banks who own this country, any more than the tripling of the price of a gallon of gas was reflected in those statistics. The reason? Food and gas are not even factored into the government's official inflation estimates, even though most ordinary working Americans spend a huge chunk of their income on food and gas. So once again we're confronted with the three types of falsehoods: lies, damn lies, and statistics. And as usual, the middle class and the poor get screwed.
A people, awakened, will always be united. The people, united, can never be defeated.
Since the protests began last Thursday, Main Street between the two parks has been closed to traffic. There is an island in the middle of Main with an elk statue that for the past week has become a meeting site for the General Assembly and various committee groups (it was common to see signs advertising one meeting or another, for example, "at 7 PM at the Elk"). While it may look like a relatively minor street, it is actually an important connection between one side of downtown and the other. Several public transit routes go down Main Street. With Main closed between the two parks, it creates delays for commuters, buses, and emergency vehicles that have to take a several block detour.
Monday, we received a request from the Portland Police Bureau that Main Street be reopened. There was some division among protesters as far as whether or not to voluntarily reopen the street. But the vast majority of the General Assembly was in favor of reopening the street for the simple reason that it makes no sense to the movement to piss off the 99 percent that we're there to fight for by causing delays for people trying to get to work. Transit workers were getting annoyed and emergency vehicles had to take lengthy detours. It could even improve our visibility to have that middle street open to traffic. Many people were also making the case that safety concerns with the street being open were exaggerated: the street has traffic lights, clear pavement markings, and safe crosswalks. While we do have families with children staying in the camp, I would assume that parents would be responsible enough to educate their children about not going around the street unsupervised, After all, the rest of the camp is surrounded by streets.
The good news about all this is that things actually went very smoothly. The police maintained communications with Occupy Portland throughout the reopening of the street. While eight people were arrested for refusing to stop blocking the street, by all accounts, everything was done civilly. The police understood and acknowledged that the vast majority of the protesters wanted to be cooperative with reopening the street. The police have said that they have no attention of interfering with our occupation of the two public park blocks. And as far as the mood among the protesters? The general feeling is that people are glad that the street issue is over so that the movement can get back to its core mission: showing solidarity with Occupy Wall Street, and fighting against economic and social injustice.
A roundup of some articles about the protests, plus some general economic news. There's a lot of good stuff today in the New York Times in particular.
The GOP's act of economic vandalism. They filibustered and killed President Obama's jobs bill, which many economists estimated would have added a point or two to economic growth and added one or two million new jobs. The Republicans offer no solutions of their own, however.
How to Stop the Drop in Home Values
Herman Cain's fuzzy math. His ridiculous 999 tax scheme would starve the government of revenue and shift the tax burden even more to the middle class and the poor. Even if you did consider this a good idea, the original figures he came up with for a plan that he claims would be "revenue neutral" is 9.1%, which doesn't make as catchy of a campaign slogan. But since he was supposedly a math major, you would think he'd understand that the 0.1% makes a real difference when you're talking about figures in the trillions of dollars.
The media is having to pay a lot more attention to the Occupy Wall Street protests as they continue to grow.
Occupy Wall Street is actually on Liberty Street, but the fallout is very real on the actual Wall Street.
Problems with the peanut harvest in the south mean that the price of yet another food staple is about to skyrocket. Peanut butter may be going up by as much as 30 to 40 percent, along with any other product that contains peanuts. The Oregon Food Bank is already nearly out of peanut butter, a good source of protein and other nutrients for poor people who are barely getting by. Keep in mind that this huge increase will not even be factored into the inflation statistics put out by the big corporations and banks who own this country, any more than the tripling of the price of a gallon of gas was reflected in those statistics. The reason? Food and gas are not even factored into the government's official inflation estimates, even though most ordinary working Americans spend a huge chunk of their income on food and gas. So once again we're confronted with the three types of falsehoods: lies, damn lies, and statistics. And as usual, the middle class and the poor get screwed.
A people, awakened, will always be united. The people, united, can never be defeated.