poems from N17 Occupy the Banks

[Kaia Sand]

Here's footage from the poetry readings at N17/Occupy the Banks yesterday...

• Nicky Tiso reading "Cata/strophe"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FVgjH4wzvsQ&feature=mfu_in_order&list=UL

• Nicky Tiso reading "Long, Too Long America" by Walt Whitman

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_DM3OreIzeA

• John Beer reading "Sunflower Sutra by Allen Ginsberg:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_KUZQXhRD8&feature=mfu_in_order&list=UL

• Kaia Sand reading "Beyond the fury of the financier"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jAEI_s5r00&feature=mfu_in_order&list=UL

[Nicky Tiso]

So excellent! We have to do this again!! 

FYI The march afterwards went really well, some incidents with the police notwithstanding. I'd say around 1000 ppl showed up to march and we headed to Wells Fargo, BofA, and Chase, hosting dance parties in front of each courtesy of a mobile PA blasting funk music. Wells Fargo was shut down for the day because of this march! There were riot police inside all the bank branches preventing entry/guarding private property in gross contradiction of their function. Outside Wells Fargo their American flag was pulled down and hoisted up upside down, along with an "Occupy the Banks" sign attached to the adjacent pole, which flew prominently many stories high. I don't take this as being against America but against Wells Fargo having the right to associate its conduct with patriotism. 

Let it also be known there were radical clowns present whose antics suffused the expected anger on both sides @ each other w/ laughter, making even some of the frighteningly outfitted riot police smile, and I thought this an excellent tactic! There were an obscene amount of (riot) police deployed, such that they must have been expecting thousands more to show but also showed that they are very afraid of our power! 

Tonight at 10pm there will be a vigil around the fenced-off Chapman/Lawnsdale parks to commemorate those spaces: http://occupyportland.org/2011/11/18/2288/ and then Occupy Your Block starts this weekend, see occupytomorrow.org for more info on that.

- Nicky

[Nicky Tiso]

and by the vigil being tonight I mean it is tomorrow (sat) night, sorry.