The final rumor to sweep through the ruins of Occupy Portland inflamed the holdouts in the 420 Hotel.
“They killed a puppy!” screamed a young man with a scraggly goatee and a black Army jacket. “They killed a blind puppy!”
The rumor went like
this: The police, busy clearing the camp that morning, Nov. 13, had
tossed a tent with the puppy still inside into a green dumpster.
No
one knew who owned the puppy. No one saw it happen. It probably wasn’t
even true. But the rumor panicked and infuriated the people in and
around the fortified tent.
During the
Occupation, its official name was the Relaxation Tent, but people
nicknamed it the 420 Hotel, after the slang phrase for marijuana. In a
camp where residents created new identities, the young people in the 420
Hotel were the camp’s roughnecks, its extremists. Most wore handmade
clothing or hooded sweatshirts. They were the ones who brought their own
gas masks.
Since 3 am Sunday,
they had been reinforcing the tent with pallets and thick hardwood
tables. They draped an Oregon state flag outside and painted “Repo This”
on one wall. It was a challenge to the police who would soon come to
get them. It looked like a clubhouse.
The people in the 420
Hotel saw their battlements as a declaration of their right not only to
stay in the park, but to exist as they chose. They saw the Occupy
Portland leaders as capitulators for talking to the police, agreeing to
terms of surrender and fleeing with their kitchen supplies and precious
library before hell broke loose.
In the short and difficult history of Occupy Portland, the 420 Hotel came to represent the movement’s incoherent defiance.
IMAGE: vivianjohnson.com
The Occupy movement
set out to bring attention to poverty, homelessness, big banks, Wall
Street and other social ills that pitted the rich against the rest of
us.
It
began Oct. 6 when an estimated 10,000 people marched through the city,
and a small group took up residence in Chapman and Lownsdale squares. In
its final hours, 38 days later, Occupy Portland saw about 4,000 people
stage a rally in the early morning of Nov. 13 to prevent police from
clearing away the hundreds of tents in the camp.
In between, however,
the Occupy Portland leadership became mired in process and debate while
the camp became a haven for the homeless, drug addicts and violent
street kids. The leaders never found their public voice, nor a direction
in which to take their cause.
By the morning of
Sunday, Nov. 13, the leaders of this economic protest had left. So had
most of the homeless. The defenders of the 420 Hotel took the movement
in the only direction they could see: against the police, who had
suddenly appeared in black-armored riot gear along the edges of the
park.
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The funniest thing I heard at the occupation. As the Occupiers were cooking breakfast and the parks were swarming with riot cops. One cop says to two others near by, "I smell bacon." ;]
I object to your characterization of the Occupy Portland encampment as a freak show, and to observers like me as a bunch of drunks who just stumbled out of a bar. I think the demonstration was well run, violence was averted, and that both police and demonstrators showed remarkable restraint.
I have sent more detailed comments in the form of an E-mail, since you seem unwilling to publish them on this site.
Unfortunately for the original folks who were trying to send a message:
It was a freak show. Rationalize all you want, it was a Freak show.
Your message was lost when you surrounded yourself with the freaks. Too bad, good issues were drowned out.
Joe Sixpack (if that's your real name).
The freak show, carefully orchestrated by the MSM, you speak of, are the human beings who were there before the occupation and remain now. They're our brothers and sisters suffering from mental health issues and houselessness ignored by the powers that be and people like you the hide behind pseudonyms because facing reality may bring great shame and grief.
Become compassionate like so many of those fellow occupiers.
"Injustice anywhere is injustice everywhere."
MLK
OCCUPY!
Your mis-guided passion doesn't allow you to understand any thought but yours. Homelessness needs to be addressed, as do the issues of the occupy movement.
But this was a Freakshow. Got out of control. Deaths, drugs, illegas activities everywhere, lack of focus...There is a better way than anarchy.
"Judge people on their conduct, not a pre-concieved notion" MLK
The injustice you speak of was to the Taxpayers of Portland.
This article is completely EDITORIALIZED, BIASED, and a SHAM of journalism.
This article is factually inaccurate on multiple counts. This article is NOT about the 420 hotel. That was a nearby tent with a different purpose. What you are writing about in fact is the Relaxation Tent, known as Relax. The puppy who was rumoured to have been in the tent was named Chubbs and his owner had been pepper sprayed and was dealing with this and thus was not in his tent.
Please remove this article as it is untrue, biased, and generally an example of poor journalism.