Occupy Portland + Portland Marathon

My group of friends has been holding down a camp at the occupation . We've been carefully watching the movement to see where we would be of most use.

My opportunity to be useful came sooner rather than later. On the third day of the protest, the Portland Marathon had a permit for the very parks that we were occupying. In fact, the start and finish of the race was all around us. Runners were getting their finale picutres taken right up the street.

The whole city was in a tizzy. Will the Occupation ruin the Marathon? Will everyone end up ruining the occupation? The slanderous words were flying back and forth.

Fortunately, however, the general assembly decided that we would choose to work with the Marathon so that other members of the 99% could take to the streets as well. The plan? They were going to put up a fence around the park that we were in, and not let people out between the hours of 4am and 4pm. All other occupants would leave the premises, and march around, of course.

Really? You've got to be kidding me. Lock in a bunch of revolutionaries behind a fence!? Oh good god. This is not going to work. I could see the backlash already.

"You mutha fuckin' facist pigs, you're going to try to LOCK me down? You think you're the mutha fuckin' PO-Leeese? huh? Fuck da PO-leeese. Fuck 'em"

And granted, I did hear that until about 4 in the morning. I got out of my tent several times and calmed down some drunk gutter punks. Apparently, I have skills in this area. Conflict resolution. Who knew?

View of Occupy Portland from the Justice Center --
you can see the fences going up.

Anyway, the volunteer cooridnator from the marathon came to talk to the group that was planning on staying within the fences. I was part of that group. He was answering questions about bathrooms, the lock down, the fences, and at the end he announced, "and if you want to volunteer with the marathon, come talk to me."

As I expected, after the speech he was bombarded with people interested in helping. I waited carefully for him to hear them out, try to place them, and work on getting contact information and answering all their questions. Once he was able to catch his breath, I introduced myself as as a fellow volunteer coordinator, and I could see the relief on his face.

Ultimately, I volunteered to be the liaison between the volunteers of the occupation and the volunteer coordinator of the Portland Marathon. Perfect fit, if you ask me.

(to be continued)