Publish Date: 12/4/2011 this piece was censored for publication elsewhere.
The City of Portland has been sympathetic with the goals of the Portland Occupation movement from the beginning. The whole camp out event in the twin public parks downtown was practically orchestrated and co-choreographed by the city from the beginning. Culminating in a pre-planned Christmas bonus to police with nearly infinite over time. The city put so called Occupation liaisons in the park who were essentially double agents for the occupation cause. Thanks to the present city commissioners and mayor of Portland the city of Portland now has the second highest taxes for any city in any state of the country except for New York City coupled with State taxes which are the dog's tail wagged by Portland city power on the state wide level. The city has long wanted an excuse to make adjustments to the occupation parks and welcomed occupation from the beginning. No mater the city has found a way to spend more than $60,000 just to buy and replant grass seed in two acres of over grown downtown park land. Making work and subcontracting it out in the Vera Katz no bid process is why we call Portland the city that works. It takes at 30 eighty thousand dollars a year salaried bureaucracy and so called city planners years to instruct the actual workers from the private sectors to replant the grass in the parks. It may take an additional $300,000 for a subcontracted environmental impact study before any of the grass planting can happen. Certainly the city will have to put out their famous erosion control signs in the park even when there is no possibility of erosion as they do throughout the city. The city can embrace the occupation movement but what they cannot embrace is anarchy. The pretense of order and infinite deliberation to the ultimate degree of stupidity is what most pleases the local editors of city newspapers. It makes no difference that reality intervenes and approximately 95% of the land area of the Portland Metropolitan area is no more planned nor organized than zoning free Houston Texas. Portland has a tiny show case of planning with every sort of variance from the last major planning impact decisions and implementations going back in successive soviet style five year plans.
The area where Portland planners put the new up town condos used to be exclusively "industrial" not too many years ago where virtually all mixed use was forbidden in close proximity to the downtown proper areas. The city believes that raw capitalism with individuals being allowed to make most of their own decisions in life is the exact same thing as anarchy so the idea of self described anarchists who say they are against capitalism is both music to city father's ears and a perceived threat. Anarchists who say they care and say they have a valid cause are necessarily acceptable. That is why the city will over charge tax payers for a new sewer system that is not going to work with the volume of water that the city can generate in a rain storm and with careful planning , cause and infinite love for people living in the city the city commissioners voted to extend the sewer taxes to pay for million dollar a mile bicycle paths after the new sewer is finished being built and still call it a sewer tax. The occupiers are Portland City commissions type of people. Understanding the thought process of the Mayor and the City Commissioners on what makes them think that Portland is a show case city that works can help us understand why they would consider firing police and hiring the occupiers to replace them. They share the power of the Queen of Hearts in Alice in Wonderland with the methodology of having red roses by planting white roses red.
Why would the City of Portland consider firing police and replacing them with the occupiers? Money. Portland police cost something like $120,000 a year including benefits on average for the city and the expense would love to get their hands on more of that money or at least give more of those jobs to their friends. The police mostly have nothing to lose if they are retired early because thanks to generous state pensions they can look forward to getting more than $25,000 a month depending on how long they have been vested in the state pension fund. Occupiers have no jobs and it is certainly not fair that there is such income disparity between them and the city police. Greed! Not Fair. The city of Portland is not just sympathetic they are listening. Don't be surprised if on Monday the city will hand out pink slips to virtually everyone in the police department and hire most of the occupiers to take their places. The city will have to hire consultants to decide if the city is going to keep the old police uniforms to make the occupiers look official or if the city will need plans to design more Star Trek looking designs for uniforms. Occupiers can decide for themselves how they want to be paid , if they want to carry guns or just switch back to Old style Portland community policing where the police are only armed with tasers, bean balls and pepper spray. Pepper spray in the right hands for a change! Anarchists with police power. The Portland way with amazing savings to the city. New non union occupation police can be paid around $35,000 each including benefits instead of $120,000 for the sake of equality and to erase income inequality or at least to start. Anarchists in police uniforms can really shake things up. Maybe take over most of the big downtown Portland banks and give away the money to those they believe are most in need without any loan or mortgage strings attached. Once the city is occupied by the occupier police none of the city commissioner will ever have to worry about re-election . At City commission secret occupy revolution meetings, which do violate state laws but really the way things work in secret, there was some sense that their plans to replace the police with occupiers might backfire .
What could possibly go wrong? Portland police are blamed for everything that goes wrong and here is an opportunity to put the people most concerned with community policing in a place where more votes will be generated in future election. It also gets the occupiers off the streets with jobs as a means of occupying their time. The city's secret revolutionary meetings also considered great new ideas as giving more young people in Portland the opportunity of learning what the occupation movement is about. They talked about re-naming SW Broadway downtown after Che Rivera and about putting occupation into our schools possibly by firing over cost teachers and replacing them with occupiers who don't have jobs that are worth $90,000 a year including benefits. It is just not fair all this official inequity of income in our society. Occupiers can add shop lifting classes to the high school curriculum and maybe force ex capitalists to go to Portland State for socialist re-education taught by professional occupiers who can be paid less than half what college professors used to be paid. Welcome to the true people's republic of Portland. In time even the most hardened opponents of the occupation movement will get used to the occupier police or they will be in jail or just disappear. Viva la Revolution. Viva the occupation. Portland it is the city that works.
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