Re-Occupy!

Occupy Portland's attempt to reoccupy another public space on Saturday December 3rd, 2011 was hastily planned and destined to end in grief. Indeed, Portland Police clad in paramilitary style riot gear began chasing protesters from Shemanski Fountain, OP's fledgling reoccupation site, at about 9:00 p.m., merely four hours after protesters ended their march through downtown Portland and assembled there.

This setback has not dampened enthusiasm throughout the Occupy Movement for reclaiming public space. This article hopes to evolve into a planning document for doing just that. While that's taking shape, it's also worthwhile to consider proposals, ideas and plans already circulating within and outside the movement.

Events

• Save the Date!/House! NATIONAL DAY OF ACTION AGAINST FORECLOSURES COMES TO PORTLAND

The Occupy Wall Street movement has extended its focus to include spaces that the banks are trying to empty. Go here for some remarkable victories that have already happened. This Tuesday, December 6th is an escalation of that new focus with a national day of action against foreclosures with events happening all over the country, including Portland.

• Occupy Homes lauds a radical new phase for the movement

The drive to stop foreclosures and squat bank property marks a radical shift from the occupation of public space to the public repossession of private property.

See Also

• Neighborhood Assembly
• Reoccupation - 3 December 2011
• Foreclosure
• Re-Occupy Your Public Space On Martin Luther King Junior Holiday
• Make Revolution Not War
• Represent The People
• Right 2 Dream Too
• Right 2 Survive

Spatial Deconcentration

• Spatial Deconcentration in D.C. - Midnight Notes

The story of a covert US Government housing policy - conceived in the aftermath of the 1960s ghetto riots - to remove concentrations of potentially rebellious Blacks and other poor people from the inner city and disperse them in small groups to the suburbs.

• Spatial Deconcentration Theory: Government Motives for Redeveloping the Lower East Side

“Spatial deconcentration theory has since been a subject of hot debate among some urban scholars, anarchists, and activists. It is a set of housing, economic development, and land-use policies designed to disperse low-income populations. Deconcentration of the poor is achieved through slum clearance, aggressive tax collection, and code enforcement resulting in foreclosure or condemnation of slum buildings. Section 8 Certificate and Voucher programs, which encourage relocation by providing the poor with portable housing allowances, is a more recent spatial deconcentration tactic. Since the targets of such policies are often poor minorities, theorists speculate that the policies' goal is to re-establish white, middle-class dominance in the inner-cities. Although spatial deconcentration theory did not surface until 1980, it has implications that relate to the inner city abandonment that escalated after the Kerner Commission released its 1968 report. The theory also provides an explanation for the slum clearance and urban renewal policies of earlier decades.”

• SPATIAL DECONCENTRATION by Yolanda Ward

This article is based on material that is publicly available, especially the "Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civic Disturbances," known as the Kerner Commission Report. However, it is also based on materials not publicly available, specifically a number of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) files which Ms. Ward and her collaborators apparently stole from the HUD office in Washington, D.C. Spatial Deconcentration was first published as part of a collection of notes for a national housing activists' conference held in Washington, D.C. No more than 500 copies were made at that time. Shortly after this first publication, Ms. Ward and two associates were accosted on a Washington street one night by two well-dressed white men, who singled out Ms. Ward from her two friends, ordered her at gunpoint to lie face down in the street, and then shot her in the back of the head. The documents she and her friends allegedly stole from HUD have never been published, nor are they included here.

• *From the Ramparts* Junious Ricardo Stanton *Spatial Deconcentration, Katrina and New Orleans*

(Medley of article snippets related to spatial deconcentration.)

External Links

• Organizing for Occupation: Spread the Word: It’s time to Occupy to Liberate Everywhere!

They have evicted us from our homes, from our apartments, from the streets where our homeless try to find rest. And this week, they even tried to evict us from the public spaces where we have a right to assemble and speak our voices freely. But you just can’t evict an idea–yes, one whose time has definitely come. It’s time to Liberate ourselves from the occupation of our communities by banks and a government that only serves the 1%. And it is time to organize for our occupation everywhere. In those vacant spaces throughout the city, in our foreclosed homes. To actualize the human right to a home through our collective direct action. To rebuild our communities with love and solidarity. To rebuild our democracy with passion and collective strength.

• Picture the Homeless | The Blog | ORGANIZING FOR JUSTICE AND RESPECT

PTH's Homeless Organizing Academy is a weekly series of FREE trainings, open to all homeless and formerly-homeless people, designed for them to get the skills and experience they'll need to fight for justice—and pursue employment as community organizers!