A Tombstone for the Mayor

The child was hanging from his father’s back like a bag full of school books. The father was trying desperately to open the locked plate glass door I was standing behind. The police made their move and their enormous ranks were getting ready to push the crowd back. I knew it was coming, when protesters started falling back from the front all red and covered in mace. We were there to protest the visit of George W. Bush to the rose city, but this no longer looked like a protest; it was a war.

I sensed something was wrong, so my friend Sara and I took cover in the Carl’s Jr. on the corner of 5^th and Taylor, about a block away from the front line of the protest. Moments after we had arrived , the manager locked the doors, stranding the father and child as the line of riot police approached.

Chaos ensued in the streets. People screaming and Police beating was all I could see or hear from my safe spot inside the fast food joint. I tried to let the pair in but the locked door would not budge. It was too late anyway, a cop had mace them and the child’s skin was already blistering. Then they were pushed aside with the rest of the throng.

One officer noticed us trying to snap pictures of the scene, but luckily the door would not budge for him either. The same door that doomed the father and child saved Sara and me: Then it was all over . We were back on the street. I was outraged by what I had seen , and I was determined to continue this fight another day.

More then a year passed but I still had the image of the maced father and child burned into my retinas. Every time I thought about that day a feeling of guilt come over me. I thought that I was going to go crazy from guilt because of my inaction regarding what I had seen.

The Portland Police did it again. I had logged onto the Portland Indymedia website and read about a rookie cop gunning down a young black women named Kendra James. Officer Macalister tried to use his mace on Ms. James but claimed that his finger got stuck on the aerosol can’s safety, so he shot her dead with his glock.

Less then a year later another unarmed black motorist was killed by the Portland Police. It took four seconds for officer Jason Seiry to end the life of James Perez. Perez didn’t even have time to unbuckle his seat belt and step out of his car. And even though Perez was already dead Seirys’ partner thought it was necessary to use his taser on the unarmed corpse of the victim for three full minutes. It was now obvious to me that the Portland Police were not sufficiently trained to deal with the public. The only person to blame for this was Vera Katz, mayor and police commissioner. *

At the beginning of the summer of 2004 I helped form a grassroots organization called the Organization for Non-Complacency Amongst the People (O.N.C.A.P.) our membership at the time consisted mostly of people I had known for a good number of years. We were all tired of the complacency of the American people; We felt had allowed both the war in Iraq and numerous instances of police brutality at home.

We brain stormed for a few weeks and an idea for our first action emerged. We were going to create a paper-machi Tombstone with the names of Kendra James and James Perez on it and place it in the mayors front lawn. We also included a photo of an older women getting beaten by the police at the same protest I had seen the father and child get maced at. The epitaph read “ in memory of victims of police brutality.

The idea was simple enough. We figured that there was almost no chance that we would ever be able to speak to the Mayor in person , so instead we were going to use the tombstone as a tool to convey are message to her. We wanted her to think long and hard about a sufficient punishments for the officers involved in the shootings. We also wanted to convey the message that the community felt the Portland Police were not being properly trained to deal with the public.

One of our members, Bill e-mailed a press release to a number of independent media outlets that set the time for the placement of the tombstone at high noon . I think he was aiming for an old west ok corral effect. Meaning Bill wanted this event to be a confrontation.

We placed the tombstone on Saturday June 5^th 2004. A crew from videos for the resistance and a number of other local Indy media reporters showed up to witness the event. Some one from videos for the resistance knocked on the Mayor’s door to get her response. A person I was unable to see answered and told the videos for the resistance folks that Miss Katz was ill and unable to speak with us.

Life went on and I left for New York to visit a friend. I spent about a week in NY and when I returned I found out that the reason Miss Katz had been unable to speak with us, was because she had just been diagnosed with cancer. This greatly complicated matters.

Bill had sent out another press release apologizing for what he felt was the harassment of the Mayor by the people from videos for the resistance. I was whole heatedly against the second press release, but I was in New York at the time and unable contribute my own input to the decision.

In my opinion we had no way of knowing about the cancer diagnosis at the time the placement of the tombstone. Furthermore the issue at hand was not her cancer, but the deaths of two people and the continued use of extreme force by the Portland Police Department. What ever condition Miss Katz may have been in was trumped by the fact that miss Katz inaction had killed two people already.

Although I view the tombstone as a success, our Primary goal of getting the Mayor to think about the issues may not have been accomplished There is also the possibility that she may have seen it as an attack on her own mortality.

I still view the tombstone as a success. The mace father and child don’t haunt me any more and O.N.C.A.P is still around. We are now working to support the J20 committee, and we are also planning actions that will provide further methods of communication with in the activist community. We also Have a website at www.oncap.50megs.com

Some names have been changed to protect the privacy of our members.