Occupy Portland fights a few people using their wealth to manipulate the law to make them richer at ALL cost. This is not the story of all rich people. It is, however, the story of Monsanto and the
House Committee on Agriculture (and Bayer, Dow, DuPont and more). While there, it became clear that homelessness in Portland was not just an overlapping reason for tents. We spoke with many homeless people before going to Occupy because of the
Right2Know campaign. The literacy rate on GMOs was 10 of 10. "You mean rBG something?" That is why when we saw people getting involved in community and politics at the same time as working to survive together, we decided to focus on ending homelessness after camp was taken down.
All the time we spend making connections and learning public speaking and town hall participation, we're also earning people's will to hear our message on GMOs with our personal connections and earnestness as volunteers. After some time, if we give a GMO lecture, people will want to come that wouldn't have otherwise. It's very important to get to a point where people want to hear your words because they trust your judgment and that can only happen with consistently good presentations, and consistently good work in service of others.
We've just received sponsorship for 1,000 more education packets. Occupy gives us a platform to show the heart of the matter with people who care and hand out these materials to folks who will see us again if they want to. Our first work at Occupy is to end Portland homelessness and together, we're actually coming along with a plan. Every night that we find more shelter and less harassment from the sit-lie law is a victory... but the true victory comes when people see people. The picture below shows garbage- that is what everyone wants to see is how much garbage there was. This is a recycle corner just before the bags were picked up. But the video is wonderful. Please watch.
Seeing this news clip below, I could not believe my ears that after announcing mentally ill people were going to be dumped on the streets in winter, the end of the sentence was concern for downtown and businesses. My god. What we do to them is what we do to ourselves. Our society is defined by how we treat the least of our brothers and sisters- and by least,I mean least visible and apparently, least cared about except as their bodies on the sidewalks and wails from untreated mental illness disrupt shopping. Happy Holidays KGW! (from Twitter)
After the anchors introduction, listen to what they say for their lead-in.
There will be much more on this subject on Twitter. Please take a look.
http://twitter.com/#!/GMOFreePortland