Occupy Portland supplies keep flowing into the camp from outside supporters

Savannah Selle
November 01, 2011

View full sizeAnne Saker/The Oregonian A man living in the Occupy Portland encampment downtown tells Police Chief Mike Reese that he is waiting for someone to help him secure a donated generator inside a fenced-in space at the southeast corner of Chapman Square. Reese met Friday with a contingent from Occupy Portland to discuss how best to help mentally and physically ill people who have settled in with the political protesters. Police Chief Mike Reese took his daily walk Friday afternoon through Chapman and Lownsdale squares. He cast his eyes over Occupy Portland’s infrastructure — the sea of tents, the kitchen serving a hot lunch, the engineering section with a fenced-off generator.

“People have the best of intentions,” Reese said, nodding with recognition at one camper after another. “I understand the impulse.”

Lots of people understand the impulse. Even as officials, police and the public wonder about an end to the occupation, the political demonstration establishes itself more firmly by the day. Contributions of food, clothing, tents and other goods are steadily flowing into the camp, often from people who only want to drop off goods and won’t leave a name.

“We’ve tried to get a list going of who is donating,” says Raya Cooper, 23, who has been living at Occupy Portland and volunteering in its information tent since the inaugural protest march through downtown Oct. 6. “But most often, it’s just people bringing stuff by, dropping it off and that’s it. Yesterday, someone brought ribs for the whole camp.”

The donations point to a reality of Occupy Portland: Its “We are the 99 percent” message resonates with the public. Beyond the individual contributions, the campers have received help and support from unions, nonprofits, churches, credit unions and local merchants.

The occupation’s website and its information tent keep lists of needs. Somone drops off bales of hay to put down on the ground to soak up moisture. A separate tent serves as a community closet with donated clothes, shoes and blankets. Voodoo Doughnuts delivers several dozen donuts every day. Donated chain-link fencing surrounds a donated generator at the southeast corner of Chapman Square.

Reid Parham, who volunteers to talk with reporters for Occupy Portland, said Friday that people have brought pots of hot soup and stew “straight from the gardens and kitchens of the city.” Many avid knitters have dropped off their handmade goods, too.

But Parham said some donors have felt a backlash from giving aid and comfort to Occupy Portland.

“Many conversations of community support end up devolving into meta conversations about unions this, Astroturf that,” he said. “Revealing this information also provides angry Tea Partiers like (local radio talk-show host) Victoria Taft with a list of businesses, organizations and people to speak poorly about or call and threaten silly boycotts.”

All stories All photos All videos Labor unions have been renting portable toilets for the occupation, for example, but Parham said seven of nine toilet providers in the area now will not deliver to the encampment.

The difficulty that such plenty engenders, however, is playing out in the fact that “a lot of people here are the same people the patrol officers have seen before in doorways and in the streets,” Reese said during his walk Friday.

He met with a group of Occupy Portland people about the challenges of managing an outdoor concentration of physically and mentally ill people.

He also had a telephone conference call with police chiefs in other cities with Occupy camps, including Oakland, Calif., where police and protesters have clashed in the past 10 days.

“Nobody’s really got a clue about how it’s going to end,” Reese said.

About 500 people have been living in the two downtown Portland squares since Oct. 6. A large minority is driven by the philosophy of the Occupy Wall Street movement, to protest the nation’s economic disparities and the impact of corporate money in politics. They are doing the work of the camp’s three dozen committees and its daily general assembly, the decision-making body.

But an as-yet undetermined number of the campers are motivated less by the political message than by the reality that their needs are being met, with a space to sleep in shelter that police patrol around the clock, hot food and access to bathrooms.

Maureen Lauterbach and her adult daughter, Elena, made their own delivery Friday to the information tent, of a bag of toiletries, some blankets and some pots and pans for the kitchen.

“I fully support Occupy Portland,” Lauterbach said, and her daughter nodded. “This is a place and time for us to wake up and enact change.”

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