By Michael Munk
Whether they were aware of it or not, the thousands who launched Occupy Portland choose both the site and the form of protest which have deep roots in their city's history. For by setting up camp on Lownsdale and Chapman Squares they evoke the "Hoovervilles" of the Great Depression and revisit a site favored by radical demonstrators and protestors for at least 125 years.
Daniel Lownsdale and William Chapman, early Portland land speculators, would probably not be amused at the use made of their namesake parks. Lownsdale was originally for "gentlemen" while Chapman was reserved for women and children--no men allowed unless escorting women.
For a movement drawing attention a tightly restricted political process that favors the wealthy and powerful "1%," it's ironic that the squares, known as the (Courthouse) "Plaza Blocks" for much of the city's history, saw their first recorded action in 1886, when a white racist mob kidnapped 160 Chinese workers at the Oregon City Woolen Mills, marched them to Lownsdale ("Plaza Park") and demanded their jobs.
One contingent of the 99 percent had attacked another. The Occupiers of today are more likely descended from protests responding to the Depression of the 1890s, when "Coxey's Industrial Army" brought its demand for public works jobs to Washington DC. The Portland contingent held its first recruiting rally for 1,500 unemployed in 1894 at Lownsdale Square (then called the "Third Street Plaza").
After about 500 members of the army were arrested in Arlington on a train they had commandeered and brought back for trial in Portland, thousands of their local supporters, including C.E.S. Wood, returned to Lownsdale to rally for the arrestees.
After the turn of the century, the radical Industrial Workers of the World and the Socialist party adopted the "Plaza Square." A "free speech" fight by the Wobbliesat the Spanish-American War Monument in 1913 was attacked by angry war veterans and 25 Wobs were sent to jail. The Socialist party regularly observed May Day with speeches and marches before World War I.
In 1919, the Portland Workers, Soldiers and Sailors Council, modeled afterthe "Soviets" of the Russian revolution, brought over 500 to the square to protest thejailing of Dr. Marie Equi for her opposition to U.S. intervention in the European war.
In the 1930s, the Oregon Communist party became the most prominent radical organization on Lownsdale Square. The 1932 "Red Funeral" for Communist ditch digger Ben Boloff called for trucks to pick up mourners at the Plaza Block and take them to Riverview Cemetery. In 1934, Communists raised a Red Flag over City Hall and led a march of the unemployed from the square to demand work relief. In 1939, the May Day rally included support for President Roosevelt.
It was also in the 1930s that predecessors of today's Occupiers established Portland's "Hoovervilles"-- shacks made of wood and tarpaper built by the unemployed to house them and their families "for the duration"--which sprung up on vacant land in every city in the nation. The largest was in Sullivan's Gulch and another, which included a municipal commissary, under the west end of the Ross Island Bridge.
After World War II, the Squares saw far fewer demonstrators as McCarthyism destroyed what had been a robust radical political movement. But as some voices are heard calling for the end to today's occupation and warning of a police "Oakland-style" eviction, we are reminded that the existence of tents in Portland parks seem especially provocative to the city's political leaders.
In 1970, it was an anti-war protestor's first aid tent in the Parks block that drew a police attack on the PSU students in the infamous "Battle of the Park Blocks." Will history record that Occupy Portland lasted "for the duration"?
Michael Munk is the author of "The Portland Red Guide," 2nd edition (Ooligan press, 2011).