Given the three short weeks we had to plan this event, given the fact that only 15 people came to the first planning meeting, and only 7 to the second – it really was a miracle that we got the large numbers to come out on a weekday at noon. Between 1500 and 2000 people came to our rally in the tree-lined south park blocks of downtown Portland.
To promote the event we spent rush hours standing on Portland’s many bridges, where you have a captive audience of commuters to read your banners. We flyered all the universities and colleges, co-ops, coffeeshops. We attended street fairs, farmers markets and art shows.
At our third meeting we suddenly had 30 people to help plan and that is when the ramp up kicked into high gear. A website designer offered his services and within a few days we had an effective web presence. We targetted specific movies and speaker events like US vs. John Lennon, Iraq for Sale: War Profiteers, Left to Die: Katrina, America: from Freedom to Fascism, where we knew that truthseekers would be eager to hear about our event.
One of our members has alot of experience in street protests and he was able to get a permit for the park ampitheater where we held the rally. Portland doesn’t require a permit to march on the sidewalk, and since the street marching permits were so expensive we opted to leave it at that. Two days before the event one of the organizers went to the mayor’s office to hand deliver a letter stating our purpose and had the good fortune to be able to speak to Tom Potter in person. They exchanged similar concerns for the safety of participants and that everything proceed along very peaceful lines. Because of this goodwill a consequent meeting with the police sargeant in charge of march security ended in them offering us a permit to march in the streets for free.
The route was to carry us in front of the local newspaper, the Federal building and the City Hall, where letters stating the goals of World Can’t Wait had been delivered that morning. 1500 people in the streets delivered a powerful message to all who heard. We handed out World Can’t Wait flyers along the route and urged people to join us. Some did join. The route planned would have taken about an hour and a half, with rallies in front of each building and an interview with local media at City Hall. Many Portland activists have been urging Portland City officials to sign the articles of impeachment. We were going to rally for that in front of City Hall in view of the news cameras.
Some marchers broke off from the main march and took a different route than the permitted one. The police arrested ten people from this breakaway march. This meant that the media coverage tended to focus on the arrests rather than the main World Can’t Wait message. However, overall there was a strong message delivered of “Drive Out the Bush Regime”.