Occupy Eugene! Largest March in Eugene History

Occupy Eugene is HAPPENING! Saturday, October 15, was the biggest march in Eugene history. Over 2,000 people participated! 150-200 people camped out in the Park Blocks downtown Eugene. The energy was amazing. We met at Wayne Morse Free Speech Plaza where there were many speakers, some songs, and a lot of people getting together, making signs, and talking about the movement.

There were so many people, we were on both sides of the bridge waving at each other. Once we were off the bridge we could look back and see an endless stream of people continuing on! In solidarity!

Samba Ja took the lead on the march and then stopped at the courthouse for more drums and dancing before heading to the occupation site!

It was beautiful to see how many children are involved and participating!

And of course, there were several bike cops around and some cop cars, but it stayed calm and mostly friendly between the people in uniforms and the people marching. There was a Homeland Security vehicle hanging around, too, of course...

Positive vibes and Solidarity!

The lovely little tent village.

Malik Rahim, former Black Panther and founder of the Common Ground Collective in New Orleans joined us. He and many other speakers were so inspiring! In fact, EVERYONE THERE was inspiring! Malik Rahim reminds us, "The number one issue is saving our environment, and then ending these unjust wars! We can find peace! It starts like this!" and he reminds us they may evict us from a certain site, "but they cannot evict a movement!" Malik told us that when he comes back from the 45th anniversary of the Black Panthers, he will be camping with us in Eugene. :)

 

Occupy Eugene is very well organized, and getting more organized as we learn how to live and work together as a community striving for change! We have several committees, including Sanitation, Medical, Communications, Community Outreach, People of Color, Sobriety Support, Children and Families, Research, Peace Keepers, Collective Visioning, Food, Facilitation, Morale, and Engineering. Many of these committees have several sub-committees, too. If you would like to be involved, please check out the website, and PLEASE, come down to 8th and Oak and show your support in person! Join the occupiers! You can also donate money or needed items to the occupation.

7am General Assembly 10/16.

The General Assemblies have been going very well. Eugene has been using 100% Consensus and it has been working amazingly well! You can watch the General Assemblies, and many other goings-on on livestream. We have adopted St. Paul's Principles. General Assembly meetings will happen every day at 7am and 7pm.

The media is finally starting to pay attention to these movements. The Register Guard wrote a pretty good article about Occupy Eugene.

I want to reiterate, because some have expressed concern about this, that Occupy Eugene committees are discussing ways we can work with, and not interfere with, the Saturday Market.

In Solidarity!

Outraged yet? The Poor, the Homeless, and the Hungry

In the United States, there are currently about 18,400,000 vacant homes. That's 11% of the houses in Amerika (this is the most recent # I found, from February 2011). There are about 671,859 homeless people in Amerika (according to the National Alliance to End Homelessness). That means that there are 17,728,141 more vacant homes than there are homeless people. How does that make sense?!

 Unemployment, we all know, is at record highs.

According to the food security report (as a result of an annual survey conducted by the US Department of Agriculture), 15% of US households experienced a food shortage at some point in 2009. That doesn't count our homeless brothers and sisters. US authorities say that figure is the highest they have seen since they began collecting data in the 90s. Those suffering the most (not taking into account the homeless) are single mothers. About 3.5 million said they were at times unable to put sufficient food on the table. Latinos and African Americans also suffer disproportionately. Welcome to Amerika.

Hunger statistics from 2009:

• In 2009, 43.6 million people (14.3 percent) were in poverty.
• In 2009, 8.8 (11.1% percent) million families were in poverty.
• In 2009, 24.7 million (12.9 percent) of people aged 18-64 were in poverty.
• In 2009, 15.5 million (20.7 percent) children under the age of 18 were in poverty.
• In 2009, 3.4 million (8.9 percent) seniors 65 and older were in poverty.
• According to the USDA, over 17 million children lived in food insecure (low food security and very low food security) households in 2009

This past January, CommonDreams.org published an article titled "People Die From Hunger While Banks Make a Killing on Food". This past spring, Oxfam warned that prices of staple foods will more than double over the next two decades unless urgent action is taken to change the rules of world agriculture.

In Boston, doctors have reported seeing more dangerously hungry and thin children coming into the ER. In 2007, 12% of children 3 and under in the ER were significantly underweight. By 2010, that became18%.

Recently there was an article in the New York Times about Urban Foraging. This practice has become necessary for many. Concrete Jungle in Atlanta has created a database of locations of fruit trees on abandoned property and foreclosed homes, and donates the food they collect to the homeless. Technically, this is illegal, as the banks own that property. The bank isn't going to eat that food, but the police might stop real people from eating what will otherwise go bad, on the banks behalf. Who is it the police serve and protect? What a joke. Today my nine-year-old daughter learned that putting coins in other people's parking meters is illegal. She was baffled. Rightfully so. We had a brief and sad discussion about how sometimes the government makes laws so that people cannot help each other.

Another example of the law preventing people from helping each other is Food Not Bombs. Earlier this year in Orlando, a federal appeals kourt ruled that city officials can enforce an ordinance restricting weekly feeding of the homeless in downtown parks. The Orland Food Not Bombs chapter is currently meeting at City Hall while still fighting against this unjust decision by the kourt. 29 people were arrested for participating in Food Not Bombs in Orlando this past June. That is, 29 people were arrested for feeding the hungry. On their website, they state:
We Act...

Because Food is a Right not a privilege!
Because there is enough Food for Everyone!
Because Scarcity is a Lie!
Because Food grows on Trees!
Because Poverty is Violence – unnecessary and unnatural!
Because Capitalism makes food a source of Profit not a source of nutrition!
Because we need Community not Control!
Because we need Gardens not Lawns!
Because we need Homes not Jails!
Because we need...

Food Not Bombs!!

This website shows the history of police arresting Food Not Bombs volunteers, attempting to silence and break up Food Not Bombs.

 This is nothing new in Amerika. In January 1969, the Black Panthers began their Free Breakfast for School Children in Oakland, CA. In the next year, the Black Panthers had set up kitchens in cities across the U.S., feeding over 10,000 children every day before school. A few months later, J. Edgar Hoover declared that the Black Panthers were the "greatest threat to the internal security of the country."

There is so much more. Mother Jones published an article in their March/April 2011 showing the Income Inequality in the United States. "It's the Inequality, Stupid." It has wonderful (terrible) and educational charts, one of which I will post here:

 

 The bottom 80 percent of American households have lost ground in share of income since 1979. The top one percent, meanwhile, has seen its slice of the pie increase more than 120 percent. The top 10 percent of Americans earn nearly three-quarters of all income in the country, leaving the poor with whatever is left.

These statistics are disgusting! What can you do? Feed people. Ignore any and all laws that prevent people from helping each other. Participate in or organize Food Not Bombs in your nieghborhood or city. Volunteer for community kitchens. Cook a big stew and bring it out to your neighbors under the bridge. And then get involved in Action to make change! Organize for and/or participate in the Global Day of Action on October 15, 2011. Go to Washington DC on October 6, 2011 and be a part of the Revolution! Get involved with other organizations and movements to fight the system so that we the people can help each other, so that social services are available to everyone, so that food is available to everyone, so that the government is run by and for the people, not by and for the corporations and the top 1%.

Take a look at Tom Stone's photography project on the Homeless In America.

 

  

 

Why shouldn't these people have shelter?

Why shouldn't these people eat?