[Leica] Occupy Portland Demographics and thoughts and photos

[mak at teleport.com (Mark Kronquist)]

Have not been there since Friday. Pix at my Facebook and Flickr sites 
viewable by all Search markkronquist or mark kronquist. The folks at 
Portland number about 500 in the two block park (actually one park has two 
names one for each block) anyhow peaceful. Needless to ay the homeless made 
a beeline for the camps and the 99% folks are feeding them with a very 
efficient, very clean, very well organized soup kitchen surprising the heck 
out of local commentators who expected a clash. Local Unitarian Churches and 
others have made the experience clean, comfortable and safe. The people 
range in age from 2 to 92 and, on Friday, included a phalanx of 60-70 
something boomers marching to "finish the job of social justice that they 
started". In the summer of love I was in nappies..so, this sort of wide 
ranging movement is new to me domestically (i covered the riots in Moscow in 
1993, the WTO Battle for Seattle, the Iraq War protests along with outer 
bash the windows unrest...this is not that.)

They managed to get a newspaper going with a Ditto Machine and mechanical 
typewriters. They have a darkroom tent with basic black and white d&p with a 
Durst F301...and click on click off timing...surprisingly, the campers 
include a number of film shooters with a Canon Leica Copy, a totally 
thrashed Tom A like M2, a Bronica SQ, a Olympus RF, and, of course the huge 
contingent of SRTs AE1s and OMs...and, needless to ay at least an equaly 
number of low to mod end DSLRs (only D3 or recent Canon seems in hand of 
media best the campers seem t have is a D2h)

Production suite has a Dual Processor X Serve up and running with two RAIDs 
in evidence.

Bales of hay have been brought in to keep the mud down and they have a 
ruthlessly efficient team of street sweepers/cleaners (and this is a huge 
compliment as Portland typically is as tidy and a Scandinavian city....they 
do it even better) 

Library is well stocked with leftist literature including Gun Digest, 
National Geographic and the Hunger Games books along with a smattering of 
Marx and Engles. Zines in huge quantities (some even typed and dittoed) 

I have been through in a suit and in jeans and in all cases they were 
unfailingly polite, pretty well organized and in no hurry.

In Portland (East Berlin/Bagdad on the Willamette etc a famously left of 
left town) it has become a family outing on these delightful fall days.

While I wish their message were more finely honed, I wish them well. For 
those who complain that they are camping in parks, I would not have walked 
in these parks at dark without a sidearm before they got there. No one did.

My 2 cents for the left coast

Mark