occupy portland

The Occupy Portland protest happened today in conjunction with Occupy Wallstreet movement and several other cities (there's a good but not completely comprehensive list here at the Detroit site). I fully support this movement but I don't quite understand how people sitting in a park in Portland are going to eliminate debt. I guess you've got to start somewhere though and this movement has got more people talking about the financial inconsistencies. Big businesses get bailed out, get tax breaks and the people get screwed over, thrown out of their houses, laid off, and/or go hungry. It's not a clear and visible path that we're moving down, toppling the 1% that oppress the 99% but it's uplifting to see that there's movement in that direction.

What else?

The march started at 12pm. I was originally planning on taking a long lunch break and heading down there to see it. However, I was eating lunch with four of the clients, including G and W. G's girlfriend asked me when our next inservice was and, although we were all just told not to be on our phones during client breaks, I had to glance down at my phone to get the date for her. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed the assistant to the president of the company do a double-take by my table. I looked up and W was flipping off the clock on the wall and the assistant was standing between him and the clock.

I immediately told him to drop his hand and he started screaming, "F*** you, you motherf***ing b****!" W has screamed before but never this long of a string of profanities and never in the presence of the assistant to the president of the company who, by all measures, actually runs the company and could fire anyone at anytime. Luckily, W is a client and he can get away with this. In a way, I'm jealous.

I did head to down to the protest right after work, experienced it for a little bit but then biked over to Seven Corners where I got new pedals for the first time. They switched it out quick and even fixed two broken spokes for me. Those people are awesome!