Occupy Portland calls for a national day of non-violent direct action to reclaim our voices and challenge our society’s obsession with profit and greed by shutting down the corporations.  We are rejecting a society that does not allow us control of our future. We will reclaim our ability to shape our world in a democratic, cooperative, just and sustainable direction.

We call on the Occupy Movement and everyone seeking freedom and justice to join us in this day of action.

There has been a theft by the 1% of our democratic ability to shape and form the society in which we live and our society is steered toward the destructive pursuit of consumption, profit and greed at the expense of all else.

We call on people to target corporations that are part of the American Legislative Exchange Council which is a prime example of the way corporations buy off legislators and craft legislation that serves the interests of corporations and not people. They used it to create the anti-labor legislation in Wisconsin and the racist bill SB 1070 in Arizona among so many others. They use ALEC to spread these corporate laws around the country.

In doing this we begin to recreate our democracy. In doing this we begin to create a society that is organized to meet human needs and sustain life.

On February 29th, we will reclaim our future from the 1%. We will shut down the corporations and recreate our democracy.

Join us! Start organizing in your city. Get your General Assembly to join, your organization to endorse or otherwise participate in this call to action. Any organization or affinity group interested in this action should join this call. We will be working to both support and coordinate the action with conference calls, outreach materials and trainings. Once you know you will be participating please fill out this form with info about your city or organization so that we can add the details to the website and help people plug in locally!

On this site you can also find a variety of resources for planning direct actions. This includes ideas on different tactics, direct action planning, preparation, facilitation, affinity groups, etc. We would also encourage you to check out our section on organizing your action with a spokes council and affinity groups. This is one important and effective way to organize these types of actions. It also does so in a way that is consistent with our movement’s value to direct democracy, participatory decision making, and non-hierarchical structures. Of course there are many ways to do this, but we have had enormous success with this model in Portland. The direct action spokes council, the Portland Action Lab, which is organizing Portland’s action used this organizing model on N17 to shut down most of the major corporate banks in downtown Portland!

Leap into action! Reclaim our future!  Shut down the corporations!