Dear OccupyPortland,
While I stand with you and am proud of the tenacity and grace you portrayed in communicating with Mayor Adams and especially for camping in the PNW rain for five weeks,
I am very disappointed in the way you chose to leave our city parks you called home during your tenure.
The massive amounts of trash you left behind is deplorable and disgusting. Shame on you.
You know it’s the 99% that’s out there cleaning up after you, right? That it’s the 99% you’re preventing from using the parks now that they are closed to the public, and that it’s the 99% that has to now defend your slovenly behavior.
Pack it in, pack it out.
You should march your butts back down there and offer to help clean it up.
Occupy Portland: City Resolution to End Corporate Personhood
Background:The following statement is from the Solutions Committee, supporting the General Assembly resolution stating that Occupy Portland wishes to help end corporate personhood. If you are familiar with the proposal, you can skip the background information and click here to sign this petition, now.
On January 21, 2010, with its ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the Supreme Court ruled that corporations are people, entitled by the U.S. Constitution to spend unregulated and undisclosed sums of money on election campaigns. The Citizens United decision has led to unprecedented campaign spending on the part of multi-billion dollar corporations, drowning out the voices of We the People. When corporations have constitutional rights, peoples’ rights become meaningless. How can one human being’s power to speak compare to a massive corporation’s ability to speak?
Mayor Sam Adams has issued a proposed resolution of the Portland City Council supporting an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that makes clear that corporations are not people and money is not speech.
- make clear that corporations are not entitled to ANY constitutional rights (currently the resolution says corporations are not entitled to the SAME rights as people)
- remove reference to the proposed amendments currently sponsored by Oregon’s Congressional representatives as these amendments deal only with the issue of money as speech and not the issue of corporate personhood (i.e. these proposals need to be strengthened)
Click here to sign this petition and send a strong message to Portland City officials and Congress that we need a U.S. constitutional amendment that makes clear that only peopleare entitled to the rights of the U.S. constitution and money is not speech! An email will be sent with your message to Mayor Adams and the City Commissioners.
You can access the proposed city resolution here:
http://www.portlandonline.com/shared/cfm/image.cfm?id=377616
Video: Portland Police Action during Occupy Portland May Day Protests
by Adam Rothstein (I know Adam, so if anyone has any questions, pass them along)
It’s been a long day out at the various May Day events, and we are still processing all of our video and photos from the day. However, two videos have surfaced that are such egregious examples of the Police violence that was unleashed against protesters today, that we wished to publish these videos without delay.
The first shows a woman being thrown to the curb, and her head being slammed into a bicycle. It was taken during the General Strike march, between 12 and 2 PM on May 1. After the police see the camera man filming, they charged him with police horses, to which he reacts, understandably upset at almost being trampled.
The second piece of footage shows police attacking people standing on the sidewalk, throwing them to the group, and then assaulting a young woman, including pulling her hair very forcibly. Then, they drag another person across the Light Rail tracks. Again, in this situation, the camera man was attacked while in the process of documenting the arrests.
It is very troubling that this sort of violence is used to attempt to enforce traffic infractions. Furthermore, the threatening gestures made towards the media, on a day when several members of the media were beaten by police and arrested, is very concerning.
We thank our media people who braved this violence, so that the people can see what their police force is paid to do to the citizens of Portland. The first video is by OPMC’s Mike BH, and the second is by a person whose name I unfortunately forget, but who stopped by the media van, concerned that this video would be seized by the police if he were to be arrested.
