:: may 1 march ::
I took a somewhat professional insider view of the protest's level of organization, which I found to be high. I"d been on some May 1 organizing committees as the AFSC (Quaker) delegate, over the years. However the last one I was on didn't go as planned, when our police-approved downtown marching route got hijacked by another committee.
We gathered in the park where we listened to speeches designed to focus the message, and practiced the slogans we'd be using along the way. This was a small neighborhood gathering in southeast Portland near my house, on a Thursday during rush hour. The big events are set for Saturday downtown.
The park we gathered at is the same one Patrick and I usually go to anyway, if not to Laurelhurst, to give our dogs some off-leash fun in the sun time.
This preview and warm-up gave would-be participants sufficient information to judge whether they wanted to join.
Maybe some would be put off by the anti-ICE sentiments. Others might cringe at the word "socialism" which is when I turned to Patrick and said: "this is already a socialist nation, but it's military socialism the people practice".
The military is largely a sprawling camp system for economic refugees. A lot of the jobs the "illegals" do are similar to the jobs learned in camps, having to do with cooking, logistics, maintenance. Then one learns skills associated with "negative work" i.e. undoing the hard work of others, with explosives etc.
