Occupy Watch: Portland’s Occupation preps for winter

Published in the Portland Phoenix

OccupyMaine's Portland branch has a plan for winter survival and overall camp safety that includes using the people's mic for emergency warnings, round-the-clock warming huts, and shifting to hotels or other dwellings in times of extreme cold.

City officials will review the plans, as well as possibly tour the camp to identify potential safety hazards, according to city spokeswoman Nicole Clegg, and will work with the Occupy residents to address any remaining problems.

On November 1 the city had sent the Occupation a letter asking about the group's plans for dealing with the increasing numbers of campers in the park (some nights it's over 50 people there), congestion where tents are erected close to each other, and the soon-arriving winter weather.

"The (October 29-30) snowstorm was a good reminder that weather can be severe and we want to make sure everyone's safe," Clegg says.

The Occupy group had promised a response by Tuesday, November 15; that response was delivered on time, and a city reply is forthcoming. In the correspondence is mention that the Occupy group may at some later point ask for permission to have an enclosed wood-burning stove on the site, but at the moment the group is abiding by the city's ban on open fires and burning wood or wood pellets.

The group has also established an on-site medical team, received training in outdoor survival and treatment of cold-weather injuries, equipped itself with fire extinguishers (and is working on getting carbon-monoxide detectors), posted several key areas as non-smoking locations, and is working on insulating and weatherizing tents and other structures in the park. As far as park stewardship, the group is keeping the place clean and putting down straw on muddy areas, as well as promising to shovel all walkways within the park as needed to keep them clear to all passersby.

Denny Junkins, a member of the OccupyMaine media team, says he expects relations with the city to continue to be productive and peaceful, in stark contrast to the Monday-night eviction of the original Occupy Wall Street camp in New York City, which involved more than 70 arrests, police in riot gear, demonstrators being targeted by ear-splitting sound cannons, officers slicing open tents with knives, and many protestors' belongings — including thousands of books — being destroyed or thrown away.

The concerns expressed in New York and Portland, though, are similar: sanitation and safety. When asked if those concerns might reach a point where they could trigger a forcible eviction in Portland, Clegg audibly bristled, saying the city and the Occupy group have been working well together and expect to continue to do so. When the city has concerns, officials will "give them a chance to address it" before determining what, if any, further action is needed, she says.

The Portland group is indeed addressing safety and sanitation issues on their own, talking in recent general assemblies about ways to ensure people feel safe in camp, as well as the high demand for the two porta-potties that have been on site at the park for a few weeks now.

Their efforts appear to be falling on sympathetic ears here. Clegg says the Occupy group was originally given permission to stay in Lincoln Park, including overnight, so long as they abide by city ordinances and act as stewards of the 2.5-acre park.

Clegg notes that the city has brought concerns to the attention of the group several times since the Occupation began on October 1, and that the group has been responsive and cooperative in addressing those issues and in maintaining open communications with the city.

"Our respectful approach and their respectful approach is part of the reason we've been able to work well together," Clegg says.

She adds that the city has offered to have building and fire inspectors visit the encampment to make sure everything is arranged properly, and to help the group make any fixes that might be needed. That seems a likely next step; for its part, the Occupy group has invited city officials "to come to the OccupyMaine encampment at any time to see our operations and talk to folks who are part of that community of self-governance, sustainability and mutual respect and concern for one another."

Portland 101: Portland schools are 'learning to succeed'

Published in the Portland Phoenix

Portland's public-school employees and leaders are working hard to meet the needs of every student in the system, but when asking themselves whether they've accomplished that, "the answer is 'Not yet,'" according to School Board chairman Kate Snyder, who spoke to the League of Young Voters' Portland 101 class last week.

Snyder is just finishing the first year of her second three-year term as an at-large member of the board; she was elected in the fall of 2007, just a few months after the school department reported that it had overspent its budget. In the aftermath of that, the superintendent and business manager left the district. Also, in 2008, a new state law took effect requiring voter approval of the school budget in an annual referendum (in Portland, that's in addition to approval by the City Council, because the local charter requires it).

That meant big-time public scrutiny of school spending, and a real need for the district to rebuild the trust of the community it serves. Snyder says that effort has gone well, though she noted (in the words of the district's semi-recent new motto) "we're learning to succeed."

Admitting that only 80 percent of high-school-age students actually graduate from Portland schools (which is roughly the statewide average), Snyder spent a decent amount of time talking about some of the problems the district has; it was largely as a way to talk about what she sees as the big successes. For example, as recently as two years ago, the district "collected no meaningful data on student performance" — and what was known was almost useless because "each school did different assessments," so comparing student performance between schools and throughout the district was impossible.

Now, though, the district is "more data driven," she says, with standard testing and other assessments in every school, which allows administrators to see on-the-ground specifics, such as the low level of minority students in Advanced Placement classes at Portland High School. They can also see broader views: Not surprising, since it follows a national trend over many decades, is the fact that "student test data largely reflects socioeconomic data in the neighborhoods," Snyder says.

The district is working on improving access, largely by "creating teacher-student relationships," which increase the amount of time students get individualized or small-group attention. It's an incremental process, she says, with new programs often being phased in over several years to keep costs from increasing too rapidly.

Taking a stab at explaining #OccupyWallStreet #OWS #OccupyMaine

Published online at thePhoenix.com

Based on my observations, conversations, and reading of Occupation reports from around the globe: 

Despite mainstream media incomprehension, the message of the Occupy movement is extremely clear and lucid. It is creating a parallel, alternative society that cares for humans, represents humans, and provides for humans - using systems free of corporate influence and corruption. The message is that such a world is possible, and need not rely on politicians or corporations to exist. Rather, it can be created by regular people, supplied by donations, and duplicated widely in communities around the globe.

Naturally, corporations, governments, and media outlets want to obfuscate this possibility, to hide it from the masses, because their very existence relies on the continuation of our existing nonrepresentative democracy. Many of their drones, indeed, likely cannot even see what is directly in front of them, and therefore claim it is hazy. It's not.

The Occupiers are building a world adjacent to and yet fundamentally different from our existing. By example they are highlighting the gross inequalities and inadequacies of our existing governmental structure.

They are providing social services: feeding the hungry, housing the homeless, providing free basic medical care, and offering educational training sessions. This is all happening with no budget, made out of individuals' assets - clothes, food, money, knowledge, supplies - that are donated to the effort.

They are operating a government: gathering as local decision-making bodies to discuss the local, regional, national, and global issues of the day, and making decisions on how to take action in a process in which every individual's voice can be heard - and they are carrying out those actions. This is happening in public, with no administrative staffers and no lobbyists.

They are about to embark upon a trade infrastructure: The Occupy Wall Street group, flush with donations that fill a warehouse, is talking about renting at least one truck, fill it with surplus supplies, and drive around to other Occupy locations, dropping off whatever they have that is in need there. This is happening funded solely by donations of items and money.

Their efforts are, admittedly, laid over the basic foundation of roads and public-safety protection. But nearly everyone agrees those things are a real, necessary function of a common government.

In their creation of this parallel society from the ground up, they have already demonstrated the failures of our existing governmental system, which is focused not on the well-being of the people but on protecting the privileges of corporations.

The Occupiers are saying to the public: Look at what government does, and look at what we're doing. We can do this ourselves, in what amounts to our spare time away from being students and part-time workers and homeless veterans, better than our government is doing it, and that has to change. Government must serve the people, answer to the people, meet the needs of the people.

Right now, as is very obvious to anyone who takes even the barest glance at the Occupy movement, a group of part-time volunteers are performing the basic functions of government on donated money, donated time, and donated energy - and at times surpassing the quality, scope, and breadth of service provided by professional lawmakers and career civil servants.

They are not only calling for change, or asking whether change is possible. They are demonstrating how to execute the changes we need. Every day the Occupation lasts, it grows stronger, and its counterexample to our failed American system gets clearer.

All that remains is for each of us to choose: In which of these parallel societies do you wish to live?

Finding - and preserving - unheard voices: Speaking with Howard Solomon about his years of LGBT research

Published in Out In Maine

When Howard Solomon's name was submitted as a nominee for the Catalyst for Change Award, the highest honor given by the Sampson Center for Diversity in Maine at the University of Southern Maine, the center's board agreed very easily to bestow it upon the well-known LGBT historian.

"He has an outstanding record in Maine," says Susie Bock, the center's director, who has worked with Solomon for many years preserving papers, records, and items shedding light on Maine's gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender communities. (The Sampson Center also has significant holdings on the history of Maine's Jewish and African-American populations.)

"He has played a part in educating people in Maine since he moved here" in 1987, Bock says, writing essays to accompany numerous exhibitions, speaking with school and non-profit groups, as well as teaching LGBT history classes at USM.

Solomon, a longtime history professor at Tufts University outside Boston, first moved to Maine as a result of his relationship with Ron Clark, who worked in Portland. "We moved to Kittery, which was equidistant, and so we were both miserable," Solomon recalls with his characteristic wry humor. Shortly thereafter, Clark was diagnosed with AIDS; the couple bought a home in Gray and lived there together until Clark died in January 1989. Solomon lost his partner, but found a home, welcomed by the Quaker community (Solomon, a Jew, and the Methodist Clark were pleasantly surprised by that)

Solomon also got involved with groups giving diversity workshops around Maine, and so he stayed, commuting to Tufts and doing a lot of organizing and activism here. Out In Maine spoke with him about the evolution of his career and life's work, and the importance of preserving records of ordinary people's lives for future generations.

I WANTED TO FIND OUT HOW YOUR HISTORICAL INTERESTS EVOLVED; YOU STARTED LOOKING AT SOCIAL HISTORY IN FRANCE AND THEN SHIFTED INTO GENDER AND SEXUALITY STUDIES. When I went into 16th, 17th, 18th century French history, one of the things that fascinated me from the very outset of that research was not what was happening in the throne rooms and among the diplomats but what was happening among the people who were silent in the historical record, i.e., the people in the kitchen, the people in the stables, the people in the gutters, the people in the streets. Which also coincided with an interest in France in that period, in the late '60s, which then of course exploded in the 1968 student revolution — what the French were referring to asmarginalité et pouvoir, "marginality and power," looking at the relationship between the center and the periphery. When I came to Tufts in the early '70s, I was doing as it were, the "straight French history" — but I was really more and more interested in, what in those days was called, either "marginality and power," which is a loaded term; or, even more loaded, "social deviants," i.e., women, the poor, children . . .

THE USE OF THE WORD "DEVIANT" OF COURSE BEING USED TO DESCRIBE THE VAST MAJORITY OF PEOPLE . . . Exactly! All the losers. All throughout history, it's about the winners — what we used to call "maps and chaps," white men on white horses. My own intellectual development coincided with what was happening in the historical profession, but there was a way in which my own personal journey was animating my teaching and research. I was struggling at that time, late '60s-early '70s, trying to understand who I was as somebody who was not heterosexual. I didn't even know the other words, "homosexual," "gay," "queer" — I didn't know what they meant; no one really knew. I taught those courses — the social deviants, the margin — it was all the same course but increasingly, the whole issue of sexual minorities was becoming larger and larger. I left teaching for a few years and went into administration. I took a sabbatical in 1981-'82, and I came back to the university and came out. Before that, I was out to friends but not publicly. I came out in my classroom, I came out to my colleagues, I came out in my writing. I then spun off, from the sort of generic social deviants/marginality courses, to specific courses on what today we would call queer history.

That also coincided, the early '80s, '81, '82, '83, with the emergence of AIDS. I had even from the beginning, in addition to the French history, a parallel interest in the history of community public health. I’d written my dissertation on health issues in early modern Europe.

When AIDS exploded in the early ’80s,  I was doing an awful lot of teaching, both in the classroom and increasingly out of the classroom, on the history of AIDS, the history of disease, the way in which again it's about power and language. Who controls the dictionary, who controls access. Every physician uses diagnoses, but it's also a dictionary game of how things are labeled and who gets the money and who gets the treatment, and who controls the dialogue.

When I think of what I tried to do in teaching, and certainly up to and through my work with the Sampson Collection, it's about listening to the voices, finding the voices that have been systematically silenced. That's what the LGBT Collection is about, finding a place where previously unheard voices can be heard, by collecting everything that is and has been a part of LGBTQ life. Ranging from the obvious public documents of legislation, and the papers of important people, to what archivists call "ephemera." I love that word. The "unimportant," insignificant stuff of our lives like T-shirts and bumper stickers, buttons and ticket stubs, and love letters, the "flotsam and jetsam" of daily life, which, when they're put into a context, tell a story which otherwise cannot or otherwise is not heard.

I’m a recovering historian. The real passion of my life right now is art. In the last four years I’ve been doing found-object sculpture. It’s taken over my life and I’m realizing that I’ve been a Dumpster diver all my life; I was Dumpster diving for subjects in the late ’60s and ’70s, looking into as it were the gutters and garbage for subjects and then I was doing that in a sense with the collection. Going through people’s attics and basements and now I’m the king of yard sales and recycling barns, so it’s all of a piece.

It really is about finding the ephemera, the forgotten, the otherwise dispossessed and rejected. “Discarded” is a better word, and putting into a context and once it’s put into a context, into a frame, it has extraordinary meaning. Things have meaning only when they’re put into a context and if the only context is of the traditional “winners,” straight versus gay, men versus women, the powerful versus the powerless, those stories never never never can be told.

That brings us up to the present. In ’93, ’94, when the first conversations were happening about setting up what was then being called a “gay archive” at USM, I was involved with those conversations from the beginning, along with others.

AND THEN BEGAN THE SECOND PART OF THE DUMPSTER DIVING. Yeah, rural Dumpster diving, right. In 2001, ’02 I took an early retirement from Tufts. I was at an annual meeting of the advisory group for what was then the Gay-Lesbian Archive. USM Provost Joe Wood had just introduced Susie Bock, she had just come to Maine. Joe was saying we’ve got great stuff going here, but we need somebody to help.

All of a sudden it hit me, I could do that. In fall ’02 Joe appointed me scholar-in-residence of the collection, and an adjunct professor of history.

WHAT WAS THE STATE OF THE COLLECTION IN 2002 WHEN YOU JOINED THE CENTER AS SCHOLAR-IN-RESIDENCE? The story I like to tell is I had a colleague at Tufts who taught Chinese history, and whenever we'd have these long conversations making a proposal or curriculum and getting more and more complicated, she would suck on her cigarette and in Mandarin say something. And we'd say, 'What the hell is that?' She'd say, 'Old Chinese expression: A sparrow is a very small animal, but all its parts are there.' In '02 there were the elements of what had the potential to be a really exciting collection. The first issue was the space that was the library then — the university had just bought that old bakery building, and there were absolutely inadequate facilities. So number one we needed facilities, which eventually happened. They're really state of the art now, Library of Congress standards in terms of all the things that are important.

Number two, I — with the help of an advisory board and others — was able to do a more concentrated project of talking to LGBT activists, organizations, allies, on the importance of creating a really vibrant archive. Not only for our community, but for the benefit of the quality of life in Maine in general. So we did that.

Number three, as more people within the community became aware of what archiving is about and why a community needs to have a history, more and more people have given their materials and understood that even the most mundane pile of old T-shirts and bumper stickers and love letters has a real historical value.

Then fourthly, and Susie's been great at this, we did an increasing amount of public programming and partnering with other organizations. Key in that, in 2004 we did a 20th anniversary retrospective of Charlie Howard's death. Charlie died in 1984, so we did a three-day-long conference. We also put together a traveling exhibition, which is still traveling through the state, so literally thousands and thousands of people have seen it.

In the last couple of years, organizations like the Rainbow Business and Professional Organization and Down East Pride Alliance and obviously EqualityMaine and so on are partnering with the collection all the time. Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network is really, really, really using the resources. Susie brings in school groups regularly; she's doing great work.

It’s a collection that must integrate its work with the work of the other two major pieces of the Sampson Center, the Judaica collection and the African-American collection, so they are of a piece.

THEY CERTAINLY ARE VOICES THAT HAVE GONE UNHEARD AND FOR A LONG TIME, DESPITE THEIR NUMBERS. GLBT PEOPLE, OR JEWISH PEOPLE, OR AFRICAN AMERICANS AREN'T ACTUALLY MAJORITIES IN MAINE, BUT THEY'RE VERY SIZABLE MINORITIES. When you're away from Maine, people say 'What, they've got gay people in Maine?' Part of the real contribution of the LGBT collection is regionally and nationally. There are and have been LGBT archives in New York, San Francisco, San Diego, Minneapolis, the big cities. Part of the stereotype which was also ingrained among scholars, many of whom were LGBT scholars, was that the whole LGBT thing is fundamentally an urban phenomenon. What we have shown in the collection, what makes it a national treasure, is that it documents and celebrates a rural statewide phenomenon. There were LGBT groups organizing and active in rural Maine in the late '60s and early '70s; we have the documents of that. That's part of the history. That's a real contribution.

It helps break down the urban-rural thing; it also helps break down the gay-straight issue, because much of the collection is about the ways in which LGBT issues have been and are inextricable from larger issues of community formation, identity politics, politics and spirituality in Maine.

Let’s talk a bit about the use of the collection as a historical record. Susie and I were just talking about the trans and bi communities; we need more of their documents and history in the collection. We have it, but we need more. It’s about not only the content of our lives, but how we, and others, understand and describe those lives.

The thing you have to do is to say, ‘I want to hear them,’ and then you’ve got to devise questions which enable you to find those places where their voices can be heard and if you don’t do either of those, they’re never going to be heard. For us, even asking those two questions has been the luxury of privilege. People in places of privilege, whether they’re historians, or prime ministers, or white, WASP males, have the privilege of not having to ask.

IN MY OWN READING ABOUT 17TH-CENTURY ENGLISH HISTORY, I OBSERVE WHAT I SOMETIMES CALL THE PEPYS PROBLEM, WHERE ENGLISH DIARIST SAMUEL PEPYS IS REALLY THE ONLY VOICE HISTORIANS HAVE OF “REGULAR PEOPLE” OF THE TIME. IN THE BEST OF ALL POSSIBLE WORLDS HE SPEAKS FOR ALL WHITE MALE LONDONERS; IN THE WORST, HE SPEAKS FOR ALL BRITONS, OR FOR ALL EUROPEANS, AND IT REALLY BECOMES A PROBLEM BECAUSE THERE’S SUCH A LIMITED ARCHIVE FROM WHICH TO DRAW. It’s part of the takeaway that I always try to leave, whatever presentation I make, is that there are documents out there which are vulnerable to disappearing. There are flooded basements and mice in the attics and moving companies which every day are destroying materials that need to be preserved. We take for granted that the Gutenberg Bible is going to be taken care of, but the handouts that we get on Monument Square at some demonstration, or the ordinary photographs that we have in a shoebox in our basement about the Fourth of July picnic 20 years ago — the LGBT archive can protect those and enable them to speak 50, 100, 200 years from now. We have those in the collection and they speak volumes.

ONE OF THE THINGS I'VE ALWAYS LIKED ABOUT HISTORY IS SEEING, IN SOME CASES, HOW LITTLE HAS CHANGED, BUT IN OTHER CASES HOW MUCH HAS CHANGED. In the media 20 years ago, let alone the 50 or 60 years ago when I was coming up as a younger person, the presence of LGBT issues was — there was no presence. Or if there were presence, it was the most painful, inaccurate, frightening, pathologic presence one could imagine. When I was 12, 13 years old — I was born in '42 so that is '53, '54 — there were no queer presences on TV other than Milton Berle in drag. There was a nationwide, Senator Joseph McCarthy purge of liberals and homosexuals in all areas of the government. That was filtering down to a 12- or 13-year-old kid in western Pennsylvania. It was on the radio.

I remember I hung out in the school library looking around, making sure nobody was looking at me as I looked in the big dictionary under the word "homosexual," and saw that it was described as a pathology. It's still a tough world and people are being bashed. Andthere has been progress. I would like to think that the collection is a piece of that.

When the Charlie Howard collection is going around the state, we'd set up in a school and you'd see the civics class come in and the history class, and they'd look at it. It would be 20 or 30 students. Then an hour later, maybe during a break or in between class, you'd see two or three students come in and look at it more closely. Those were the ones that really touched me. It's tough enough being a gay teenager. But their awareness perhaps that somewhere else in the state of Maine there were some other gay people, and there were resources and possibilities and promises for us today that may not have been there before, and I am not alone.

RIGHT, AND HERE ARE PEOPLE YOU CAN TALK TO, AND THERE ARE PEOPLE WHO WILL HELP. AND THAT'S A REALLY POWERFUL THING. Had there been a gay-straight alliance in Bangor High School, Charlie might still be alive. When Susie has the school groups and provides resources to teachers, that trumps just about everything in my mind. How do you measure the benefit of something as amorphous as a library? You can count the number of people coming in the door, count the number of people who show up at a presentation. But one has to trust that's what culture is about. One trusts that the preservation and publication of documents in their broadest extent is an act of faith, an investment in the future.

Press Releases: Mayors, media, masses

Published in the Portland Phoenix

Portland's 15 mayoral candidates are missing an opportunity to connect with the people, both directly and through the media, by failing to publicize their support for OccupyMaine. Perhaps their reasoning is that the underlying demand of the Occupy movement — supporting the removal of money from politics — might upset their donors.

Why else would they avoid a chance to publicly join the largest and most popular reform movement the US has seen in decades? As Ralph Carmona told us, the Occupiers are "basically saying to people in this country, 'We feel your pain.'" Remember how that used to win elections?

Maybe it's that positions on the issues of "the 99 percent" are not something that differentiates the candidates from each other — of the baker's dozen the Phoenix was able to reach, not one objected to the group's efforts (and the other two seem pretty unlikely to dissent, from what we can tell of their campaign messages).

But part of winning an election — especially in an instant-runoff ballot situation like this — is attracting people who will support you. While some of the candidates — Michael Brennan, David Marshall, Richard Dodge, John Eder, Charles Bragdon, and Ethan Strimling — have been down to Monument Square and/or the tent village in Lincoln Park to hold signs and/or speak directly with members of the Occupation, others say they are sending their support virtually.

Perhaps it's confusion about the message. Activists like Carmona, Eder, Marshall, Peter Bryant, Hamza Haadoow, and even the conservative Bragdon grok the breadth of the movement (with Carmona saying, "Major change in America has always come from outside the mainstream political process" and Eder proclaiming "The only thing that politics responds to is direct action").

But others, including Brennan, Jed Rathband, Chris Vail, and Dodge, say they see a lack of focus in the movement (Rathband says "we're all wanting to see what life form it's going to take") and would like the purpose to be clearer. Similarly, Jill Duson finds "a lot of messages I agree with," but hesitates to offer stronger support because "I'm not sure what all the messages are."

Nevertheless, economic justice is on the candidates' minds. Jodie Lapchick says she thinks the city should pull its money "out of Wall Street" — Portland's money is presently held at TD Bank — and put it into a state-coordinated "public bank" along the lines of the Bank of North Dakota. (Portland Democratic state rep Diane Russell proposed such an idea, but it died in the last legislative session.)

Dodge, who says he recalls protesting in the 1960s and '70s, defends the concept of profit, but in the same breath condemns laissez-faire attitudes of government regulators: "Capitalism isn't a bad thing. It's the government and its regulations that allows what's going on."

And Bragdon agrees the issues raised by the Occupy movement are pressing: "I anticipate whoever gets elected having to deal with it very soon."

Given the increasing comfort of the Lincoln Park camp, and with OccupyAugusta settling into fancy-ish digs (fire pit!) basically on the steps of the State House, it's coming time for candidates and lawmakers to declare themselves — and for the media to ask them about it if they don't.

It's also definitely time for anyone in the Occupy effort — as well as any who sympathize with it — to take Dodge's advice: "I hope they're all registered to vote."

• In other news, both the BANGOR DAILY NEWS and the PORTLAND PRESS HERALDannounced SIGNIFICANT STAFF REDUCTIONS in the past week; 61 at the PPH (23 buyouts and 38 layoffs, nearly all among news-related staff) and unclear numbers at theBDN so far, though the paper itself reported management was looking for as many as 30 people to accept the carrot of voluntary buyout offers, with the stick of possible layoffs to follow. Departures have already begun. Best wishes to those leaving — and to the ones staying, who will continue the increasingly difficult struggle of keeping their papers interesting.