Our six-strong Occupy group met that morning at the gazebo in our Central Park little dreaming of the success which awaited us at the 2012 Oregon State Legislature. Or that our story would attract the attention of Mother Jones.
Earlier that week, we had been alerted by one of our fellow Occupiers who had combed through the proposed 2012 bills and found one which appeared to be directly targeting freedom of assembly and free speech. Senate Bill 1534, which criminalized electronic communication, changed any misdemeanor into a Class C felony if it was arranged via the internet “aggravated solicitation”) and carried a $125,000 fine and up to five years in prison. Sound like anyone you know?
We posted a Stop Senate Bill 1534 iPetition which gathered around 200 signatures over the weekend. Fliers were distributed around town. Very late on Friday, SB 1534 appeared on the list of scheduled hearings for Monday. One of us caught it.
Ironically, we had arranged this particular Monday action face-to-face at our Saturday potluck; if this bill had been in force, we would have been in no fear of having our jaywalking misdemeanors morphing into Class C felonies.
We joined two Occupiers from Salem, so Occupy made up eight of the ten citizens who testified against SB 1534 with no one testifying in favor. One of us caught most of the testimony on video (part 1 and part 2). We spoke of the threat to civil liberties guaranteed Oregonians under the Oregon Constitution by this bill which could be used as a threat to our right to practice civil disobedience and free speech. We also promised “extreme opposition” if it somehow passed through the committee. The attorney representing the Oregon Progressive Party remarked at the end of this testimony, “I have to say, this is the kind of law that I would expect to see in Myanmar, Turkmenistan, North Korea or Zimbabwe, but not in Oregon.”
After the hearing, we decided to visit the Republican Senator from our adjacent town who had been a cosponsor of this ill-conceived attack on our civil liberties. He sat down with us for a long rather uncomfortable dialogue about the bill since he was not on the Judicial Committee which heard the testimony. We asked him to withdraw his sponsorship, and he did distance himself from the bill. We also told him that we were watching the legislature very closely this year which is how we found this particular bill, and we would follow up if the bill moved forward.
I stayed overnight, meaning to drive right home in the morning. However, I just felt drawn back to our Statehouse. I wanted to be very sure that SB 1534 was no longer listed, but it turned out to be more than that. I spent the entire day there. I visited the office of the Eugene Democrat, Senator Floyd Prozanski, who as Judicial Committee Chair had declared the bill dead, and left my thanks. I enjoyed the buffet lunch—along with legislators–served by the compost/recycle organizations which were set up in the lobby. I was given a small complementary bag of compost. I visited my own representative. I wandered around every floor and hallway, reading posted bills, viewing art, checking schedules, stuffing my parking meter, and watching the Senate Assembly from the gallery.
I wore my red suit coat and Occupy shirt from yesterday’s meeting, complete with my 99 percent button. I began to notice that I was being noticed which is when I realized why I was there.
This was the walk around.
Not that I was gloating. Well, maybe a little. I was proud of all of us and how we the people had made our voices heard. In Western Oregon, local Occupys had organized into a loose coalition of “Occupy Oregon” so we could Occupy the Legislature for this month-long session.
And it all worked.
