Skip to main content
UPDATE, 1:03 pm: Less than two hours after WW reported the event, the Occupy Portland calendar corrected the date of the "Occupy Mount Tabor" camping protest to Friday, July 12.
Event organizer Jesse Sponberg says Occupy Portland's calendar erroneously listed the event today. He has created a Facebook page for the July 12 occupation.
ORIGINAL POST, 11:30 am: Opponents of the Portland city's government's plan to disconnect the open-air reservoirs on Mount Tabor have an ally: Occupiers.
Activists affiliated with Occupy Portland have announced a camping protest around the Tabor reservoir today, rallying against the city's decision to concede to federal demands that it cover or drain its drinking water reservoirs.
The event is listed on the Occupy Portland calendar (which doesn't necessarily mean it was created or endorsed by what remains of the Occupy Portland leadership). The announcement reads:
The camping protest was scheduled to begin at midnight. Observant Tabor neighborhood readers might look out their windows and count the tents for us.
Occupy-affiliated activists have recently aligned themselves with citizens fighting the city on water issues, including fluoride.
Meanwhile, the city has pooled money to woo neighbors into finding new uses for the reservoirs.
Mayor Charlie Hales set aside $15,000 in his recent city budget to seek public ideas for how to re-purpose the Mount Tabor pools. That money was earmarked in the mayor's budget for "reservoir outreach"—which Hales' spokesman Dana Haynes says means holding coffee klatches with groups including Friends of the Reservoirs, the activists that have bitterly fought for the tanks on Mount Tabor.
"Everybody absolutely loves those parks," Haynes says. "What are they going to be? That's going to need the passion of Friends of the Reservoirs."
Floy Jones, a prominent member of Friends of the Reservoirs, says she won't have that conversation—she's supporting a People's Utility District ballot measure, which could go to voters by May 2014.
"We have politicians that have failed us," Jones says. "We really just need to remove the utilities from City Hall."
WWeek 2015