By Adam Sanchez
A week of antiwar activities in Portland, Oregon, culminated on Thursday, March 20th with a student walkout that drew over 2,000 students. The larger-than-expected crowd began in the downtown North Park Blocks where students chanted and a couple of rally organizers spoke. Sarah Levy, a Lincoln High School senior and a member of the International Socialist Organization yelled out to the crowd, "We're here today, not because we're mad at our schools, in fact, they're some of the establishments most affected by this war, but because we realize that we aren't being taught what we need in order to end this occupation, and so have learned that we must educate ourselves if we want to make a difference. The goal for today is to reinvigorate the student anti-war movement, and demonstrate through struggle the immense power that we can have as a mass of students."
And that, they did. What started out as an unpermitted march on the sidewalks of downtown Portland soon slipped out of the organizers' control as the larger than expected crowd quickly finished the short march route and thousands of high school students, many of whom had never been to a protest before, grew restless and decided to continue the march. The students strode, still on the sidewalks, down to city hall where students began scaling the walls and shouting slogans from the top of the building. A small group of organizers, realizing the moment's potential, began scribbling a list of demands onto a piece of notebook paper. After quickly settling on four demands (funding for schools not the military, no more funding for ROTC programs, all military recruiters out of Portland schools, and making Portland a sanctuary city for GI Resisters), a few of the organizers tried to take them into city hall as the students kept shouting slogans outside. They found the doors locked and the mayor had already left the building to address the crowd. Few protesters could here the mayor's speech, and few seemed to care. The energy of the crowd was far from over.
As the students headed next door to the Wells Fargo building, a number of the organizers managed to swindle a megaphone from the police in exchange for directing the crowd away from much of the downtown traffic. After march organizer, Marko Lamson, spoke about corporate profiteering from the war, the megaphone was used to rattle off the four demands, each one receiving a loud approval from the crowd. But when organizers finished the demands, a number of students in the crowd began yelling for the march to go to Pioneer Square, a central downtown location. This quickly won the approval of the crowd and the march headed to the center of the city. On the way to Pioneer Square police arrested a few students for stepping off the sidewalk, handcuffing one high school student and forcing him into a cop car in front of the crowd. After angry chants of "Let Him Go!", the incident backfired on the police as the protest split into two and took to the streets. I marched with a group who went down Broadway, one of the main Portland arteries and took over two lanes until they reached Pioneer Square. The police, taken by surprise, could not stop the crowd.
At Pioneer Square the group gathered behind the PDX Peace Coalition Banner that read: "Stop the War, Bring the Troops Home Now," and collected money for those who had been arrested and received traffic tickets. The march, now a bit exhausted, headed down to the Willamette River waterfront where they formed a gigantic human peace sign and ended by strolling back up to Portland State University where participants discussed the possibilities for future student organizing.
I have never seen such energy, creativity, and excitement at a protest. Rarely do Portland students get together, unless they are competing against one another for sport. On Thursday, students from over ten different high schools and colleges came together in a stunning display of solidarity against the war. By taking a day out of school to protest the war these students were able to educate themselves and those around them about something most rarely feel—the potential of protest to shake up a city. By the end of the day there were about 30 cops on horses, another 30 on bikes, 30 on motorcycles, 20 or so police cars, and a helicopter, all trying to figure out what was going to happen next and arrest any leader they could find. But the movement was organic, spontaneous and difficult for even the organizers to control. It revealed that students were angry and no longer willing to let politicians continue to cut funding for education while spending exorbitant amounts on the military. This protest was an inspiration, not just to students, but to long-time activists as well, many of whom had never seen such an outburst of mass spontaneity.
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