Held to answer

The one-month anniversary this week of the Occupy encampment at the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in Portland, Ore., ended with a quiet thud – not the day of action and celebration it was supposed to be.

“Organizers behind #OccupyICEPDX are celebrating one month of collective resistance in a movement that has spread across the country. Interested activists are invited to join them now, but especially at the Portland ICE office for their day of action. … 5 pm to midnight” read the invitation for this week’s anniversary.

As the hour approached midnight, though, word still hadn’t reached some of the occupants that an initiative petition to end Oregon’s sanctuary status had qualified for the November ballot. The state’s voters will get to decide whether Oregon will remain a sanctuary state.

A woman sitting at what looked like an information table hadn’t heard of it.

“No, what is it?” she asked.

When I told her, she didn’t seem concerned.

Neither did another woman who saw me walking through the camp and started showing me around, pointing out the garden plots they had planted a couple of weeks ago.

For these women the issue is abolishing ICE and reuniting children with their parents who illegally entered the U.S. The problem is ICE – not illegal immigration.

Portland media, always looking for something different to champion, declared Occupy ICE the first time a federal immigration building in the nation has been occupied.

Initially, protesters blocked the entrance to the building. Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler announced that local police would offer no assistance to ICE. There were other various gestures of support for the protesters. Fifty-Licks Ice Cream Store sent a truck to hand out free treats. With pleasant weather, it looked like a great way to spend the summer in Portland – a new protest.

Eventually, federal law enforcement agents cleared the doorway so ICE employees could enter the building. Occupy ICE protesters dug in and staked a claim on the property between the federal building on one side and South Waterfront Heated Storage on the other.

In a swath of land about the width of a street and extending more than a block long, two rows of tents lined up on opposite sides of a railroad track, which now has been covered with a crude wooden walkway. (The railroad tracks are used by Willamette Shore Trolley, which has had to cut back service in the area.)

Most of the tents are supposedly for overnight campers, who can rise up and protest if police from the Department of Homeland Security try to clear out the camp. It’s hard to tell how many tents are actually occupied at night without peering inside. The night I was there, some people left with backpacks and got into cars in the parking lot near the Old Spaghetti Factory.

The Occupy ICE camp looks like a smaller version of Occupy Portland, which took over two downtown parks during the Occupy Wall Street heyday. A commentator at Oregon Public Broadcasting – with a note of satisfaction in her voice – even declared Occupy ICE could be another Occupy Portland. She apparently forgot what the nationwide Occupy Wall Street movement ultimately led to: not much.

Wall Street marches on, and in 2016 Donald Trump was elected president.

Like Occupy Portland, Occupy ICE is filled with nostalgic rubbish and real garbage.

The Occupiers resemble Civil War fanatics who like to do re-enactments, only the Occupiers are trying to relive the passionate 60’s, which they’ve only read about. They don’t have a Vietnam War to protest or a Civil Rights Movement to push. They are desperately seeking meaning but accomplishing little. Immigration was a mess before the Occupiers set up camp, and it will remain a mess when they strike the tents and move on to the next new cause.

In Occupy ICE, like Occupy Portland in 2011, there are tents and small areas designated according to purpose. Among them: A Medical Tent (with the most rudimentary First Aid supplies); Mental Health Tent (nobody home); Engineering Tent (a sign asks for donations to the Pizza Fund); Day-Care Tent (a sign warns “Do not drop off your children. … Do not assume there will be responsible adults to take care of them” ).

A woman worked in a cluttered kitchen area where a sign read, “We need kitchen volunteers.” Another sign laid down rules, the first being “Pick up after selves.” Nearby were a couple of couches that looked like they could have been retrieved from a Dumpster.

Outside the entrance was a pile of discarded stuff with a sign, “Excess supplies please take away to people who need them.” Among the items: Yellow mustard and pantiliners.

Everywhere was homemade political signage, some of it as ubiquitous as “Black Lives Matter,” while other placards were surprisingly ignorant. A large cardboard sign, one corner starting to wilt in a red wading pool stated: “White people always get what they want. Lois Farkhan.”

Louis Farrakhan would be insulted.

Another protest sign – “Important Do Not Talk to Cops They Are All Bastards” – accompanies a long list of derogatory ways to refer to police. Among the more creative: colostomy bag sippers. These protesters are going to lead illegal immigrants and their children to the Promised Land?

It seems appropriate that Occupy ICE has all the ambiance of the homeless camps that have proliferated in Portland.

The same week Occupy ICE was celebrating its one-month anniversary, Officer Daryl Turner, president of the Portland Police Association, exercised his rights to free speech and posted a commentary on Facebook: “Our city has become a cesspool.”

He described in detail how the homeless have trashed parts of Portland with their drug use and criminal offenses, and how Mayor Wheeler has ultimately blamed the police.

“The rank and file of the Portland Police Bureau are working tirelessly to improve livability in our City, preserve public safety, and connect our vulnerable communities to social services,” Turner wrote. “We are the first line resource on the streets serving the public…. The fact that our officers have become the scapegoats for Mayor Wheeler’s failed public policies aimed at solving our homelessness crisis is insulting.”

Police – whether city or federal – are convenient villains for politicians and activists who don’t want to admit their politics aren’t working.

The saddest aspect to Portland’s various protest movements is the waste of human energy. In 2011 I met 26-year-old Antonio Zamora at Occupy Portland. He was as exuberant as a puppy. Finally, he was doing something with his life. Or, so it seemed.

He told me how he had sat around after the earthquake in Haiti and wanted to do something, like go to Haiti and help out. But he had nothing to offer. No skills, no useful training. Had he been an EMT or had the resources to build alternative housing, Zamora thought he could have done some good in Haiti.

So he was thrilled to be mentored at Occupy Portland.

“You see those tarps up there? I make sure they stay up and check for damage and see if I can improve them,” he told me.

Zamora was learning so much in the Occupy Portland camp he stopped attending Portland Community College. That was in 2011. Where is he now? Occupy ICE.

“We want the zero-tolerance policy to end. We want children to be released from cages,” he told KATU.

Between Occupy Portland and Occupy ICE, Zamora also has protested Shell Oil and been to Standing Rock. He’s a “community organizer.” How many young people have become community organizers thinking it’s a path to become the next Barack Obama? It’s one thing to be a community organizer with an Ivy League law degree; it’s something else to be a community organizer with an arrest record.

Zamora has wracked up a few arrests, which is too bad. If he really wanted to do something useful and help people, the Portland Police Bureau is recruiting.

As a cop, he could show off his social worker skills and help clean up Portland’s cesspools – while being called a colostomy bag sipper for his efforts.

– Pamela Fitzsimmons

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