By Eric Coker Our institutions of higher education are now havens for private banks to extract wealth from the 99%. Student debt has skyrocketed to over a trillion dollars. More and more young adults cannot afford to pay back their student loans. The average Oregon University System student leaves school with roughly $24,000 in student…
Month: April 2012
Why Occupy?
• 10 Comments
by John Wood At a recent Portland General Assembly, some of us had concerns about how a proposed action might be perceived by the general public. One person countered with (paraphrased) “If we don’t act on something because we’re afraid of how the public will view it, we’re going against everything we believe in.” If…
Why I Occupy – William Haas
• 3 Comments
Every person has a story to tell about what is important to them. A story about decisions they have made and the motivating factors for those decisions, whether it be family, friends, economics, ethics, or some other reason. Every person has a story to tell about an event that changed their life. A turning point…
Rekia, Trayvon and the Colors of Violence from Chicago to Sanford
• 0 Comments
This article is from the Occupied News Wire. It was originally published in the Occupied Chicago Tribune. By Chris Geovanis The week that Trayvon Martin’s killing blew up as a national story, another Black person died of her skin color on the west side of Chicago. 22-year-old Rekia Boyd was shot in the head Wednesday,…
VIDEO: wacportland’s F29
• 0 Comments
Occupy Trimet: Save Public Transit
• 8 Comments
by K. Kendall TriMet General Manager Neil McFarlane is directing TriMet as a corporation and not as a public service, according to James, an Occupier whose wife, daughter, and granddaughter have all been TriMet drivers. “He’s giving the fare inspectors quotas,” James says with outrage. “They have to give four citations an hour from now on,…
Hit the Streets to “Tomando Las Calles” (Taking the Streets), PCASC’s Annual Art Show
• 1 Comment
by Pete Shaw Portland Central America Solidarity Committee’s (PCASC) second annual art show debuts this Friday, April 6. Like last year’s Criminales Todos (We Are All Criminals), which assembled a worldwide palette of artists, Tomando Las Calles (Taking The Streets) uses multiple media to challenge the labels “criminal” and “illegal”, as well as demanding a…
50,000 March in Support of Indigenous Culture in Southern France
• 2 Comments
by Teleri Williams On a hot spring day, the last day of March, up to 50,000 people both young and old, danced and sang their way through Toulouse to the music of traditional instruments like the cabra or cornemuse, bagpipes made from goat skins, pipes, and drums. They had come from towns in southern France,…
A Tale of Two Ships
• 0 Comments
by Lauren Paulson Two Occupy Portland ships didn’t meet in the night, recently, though they steered an impressively close course. One ship is the Oregon Area Jewish Committee (OAJC) who put on a meaningful update of the Occupy movement during an august group luncheon March 28th, at the tiny digs of the Miller Nash…
Anti-Police Brutality Protesters Wage Constitutional Battle
• 1 Comment
By Occupier Staff The legal battle continues for three Occupy Portland activists arrested at a February 6 Occupy Oakland Solidarity and Anti-Police Brutality March. Emmalyn Garrett, Taylor Sharpe and Nefi Bravo are seeking evidence and witnesses to aid them in the fight to uphold their constitutional rights. The trio have joined the mass defense for…