Saturday, June 30, 2012

IGC June meeting rescheduled

Due to anticipated low turn out, the meeting scheduled on Saturday, June 30 at the city hall occupation has been rescheduled to Sunday, July 1, 3 p.m. at the Che Room (1131 SE Oak St).

We encourage you to also join the St. Francis of Assisi parish for the annual all-parish barbecue starting at 2 p.m.

Wednesday, June 27, 2012

Occupy Portland General Assembly is moving


Terry Schrunk Plaza in Downtown Portland, Oregon.
Terry Schrunk Plaza in Downtown Portland, Oregon. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Starting the week of July 1, 2012, the Portland General Assembly schedule will change as follows:

Mondays starting July 2, 2012
6:30 p.m. Agenda Setting
7 p.m. General Assembly

Location: Terry Schrunk Plaza, SW Madison Street at SW 3rd Avenue, Portland.
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Tuesday, June 26, 2012

Online consensus process


Consensus Process (Electronic)

Revised June 26, 2012

(1) One person introduces a topic and that person will be called the facilitator.

(2) A discussion follows for five (5) calendar days following 12:01 a.m. Pacific Time immediately after the time of the topic's posting, led by the facilitator. (Facilitator may lengthen discussion time if s/he feels it necessary.)

(3) A second member will be appointed to help monitor tensions and help maintain balance during the discussion.  After the prescribed discussion time, the facilitator sets up a poll at the list site (http://www.facebook.com/groups/chaplainsoccupypdx) and calls the question and announces the poll in a separate group message.  Members are asked to respond to the question by taking the poll within five (5) calendar days following 12:01 a.m. Pacific Time immediately after the time of the poll's start. The questions must be responded by: "support", "stand aside" or "block."  There should always be a response that says “Clarifying questions requested.”  However, should anyone select that response, their questions must be posted immediately to the list so that they can be addressed right away.  The facilitator may choose to lengthen response time if they believe further discussion is called for.  A “lack of response” by any member during the specified time period is to be considered a “support.” 

(4) The facilitator makes the announcement of the completed consensus process to the list via a group message.  If there is no consensus, the facilitator may choose to keep discussion open for an additional five (5) day period.

(5) The poll should be set up to read something like this:
  *I support
  *I stand aside
  *I request clarifying question
  *I block

(6) If a facilitator is to be gone and unable to check messages for over three (3) days, s/he should post a message in advance so that we accommodate that absence accordingly.  If a poll is in place and this happens, s/he should make every effort to respond to the poll prior to leaving so as to not delay a vote.

(7) It needs to be emphasized that a true consensus process cannot always be strictly adhered to.  We can try our best, but we are doing business on the Internet and are not face to face.  Therefore, each member of the board has a responsibility to be “present”  which means s/he must be responsible for keeping up with messages from our list and by responding in a timely manner.  In all cases, should the process of consensus outlined here fail or become bogged down, the facilitator have the right to call the question and make decisions in the next monthly meeting.


The Interfaith Guild of Chaplains
Occupy Portland
1131 SE Oak St
Portland, Oregon  97214


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Monday, June 25, 2012

June open meeting and solidarity day

This beautiful and fascinating map Vancouver C...
This beautiful and fascinating map Vancouver City was issued for the 1909 U.S. Coast & Geodetic Survey, under the supervision of Henry Gannett. This is a 1909 reissue of the original 1887 survey. It depicts Vancouver City and parts of Portland Oregon and Vancouver Island. Also shown are topographic features, roads, and railroad lines. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Are you interested in joining the Interfaith Guild of Chaplains? This is a great opportunity to get involved as IGC explores ways to evolve into a more effective and wider-reaching organization.

The Interfaith Guild of Chaplains is a nonsectarian and multi-religious organization in solidarity with the Occupy movement in the greater Portland-Vancouver area with members throughout Oregon and Southwest Washington. We welcome new members with experiences in spiritual practices and/or ministries and/or theological/ministerial education.

We are meeting at the Occupy Portland's city hall occupation in solidarity with the small group of occupiers and with Cameron Whitten.

Saturday, June 30, 2012, 2:30-4:30 p.m.



RSVP here: https://www.facebook.com/events/434283459936478/
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Friday, June 8, 2012

Pitch a tent!

See us at the red tents today at the southeast corner of Southwest Fourth Avenue and Yamhill Street.  The IGC tent is the smallest of the three-red-tent-occupation complex.

We are in solidarity with Right2Dream Too and its parent human rights action group Right2Survive, which invited Occupy Portland to join them in this annual action at the Portland Rose Festival.

Why occupy today? http://right2survive.wordpress.com/2012/05/29/pitch-a-tent-ii-the-houseless-strike-back/

Hashtags for Twitter, Diaspora and Google+: #pitchatent #opdxsis #chaplainsoccupypdx #opdx #r2d2
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Wednesday, June 6, 2012

Celebrate the Pride, Occupy style!

In Portland every year, many churches participate in the Pride parade.  Thanks to organizations such as the Community of Welcoming Congregations (CWC), an increasing number of Portland area churches have adopted resolutions to welcome people of sexual minorities into the life and leadership of their respective faith communities.  With the repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell and recent Obama Administration's statements in favor of same-sex marriage, it may look like this is the year to celebrate the Pride.

But this only tells part of the big picture.

The Occupy movement is once again challenging everyone to question the institution and reclaim the people power.  This summer, the global Occupy the Pride (Occupride) actions spanning across the globe from Tel Aviv to Madrid to Montreal to New York to Portland will reclaim the spirit of the Pride.

As the Pride celebrations everywhere have become commercialized, the organizers call for reclaiming the Pride from the One Percent.  In many major cities Pride parades are literally sponsored by ALEC member corporations.

From California to North Carolina, and around the world, our relationships remain under assault by the State. The progress made so-far by the established LGBT Rights movement has been uneven, excluding trans women, homeless youth and elders, people of color, low-income and poor communities, immigrants, gender non-conforming people, people with disabilities, neurovariant people and sex workers — the very communities whose militant resistance to police brutality and vice patrol raids first gave life to the Gay and Trans Liberation movement. Now, the life-or-death (primarily economic) needs of marginalized people are ignored by the mainstream LGBT Rights movement in favor of symbolic victories for relatively-privileged members of our communities.
For too long, we have been force-fed an ¨LGBT Rights¨ program centered largely around the priorities of wealthy gay cisgender white men (whom writer Allison Kilkenny aptly referred to as the 1% of the LGBTQ community). Of course every relationship should be cherished and honored. But why are we fighting for marriage equality while trans, queer, and gender non-conforming people are dying, losing their jobs, and being locked up at dramatically higher rates than straight, cisgender populations? Why are we fighting for a few more documented monogamous couples to be let into an exclusionary institution instead of demanding health care, immigration status, respect, and autonomy for everyone? Of course no one should be discriminated against on their job (or anywhere). But why are we celebrating the repeal of the U.S. military's Don't Ask Don't Tell policy (which does not even benefit trans servicemembers in any way) while soldiers are still being sent to die in unjust wars and veterans are doomed to poverty because every social program has been cut in the name of austerity?
Transgender people face universal job discrimination and half have considered suicide. In Washington, D.C. alone, at least half a dozen trans women of color have died violently in the past year, and there are many more in other cities. We will not fight for inclusion in institutions that are built on profit, hierarchy, competition, violence, incarceration, and coercion — especially when these very institutions are the ones carrying out our oppression by killing us, putting us in jails, and leaving us hungry in the streets. We do not need to assimilate into an unjust system. We need mutual aid. We need a revolt. We need — we demand — homes, food, communities, health care, and legal status for all. We demand the end of poverty, criminalization, police brutality, profiling in the criminal justice system, ¨bullying¨ (better known to us as assault and harassment), psychiatric control of our identities, and discrimination. We demand a radically re-imagined society, and we are here to build it.

Occupy The Pride Portland will be on Sunday, June 17 at the Tom McCall Waterfront Park.  It will be primarily a non-commercial "parkupation"-style community gathering to celebrate together as the Occupride greets the parade contingents.

For more information about this action, see http://occupridepdx.wordpress.com


This is not an official Interfaith Guild of Chaplains event, and this is not an official statement of the Interfaith Guild of Chaplains.  This is provided solely for informational purposes.
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Pitch a Tent in solidarity with Right2Dream Too!

English: A float in the 2008 Grand Floral Para...
English: A float in the 2008 Grand Floral Parade of the Portland Rose Festival, in Portland, Oregon. This float, sponsored by the Portland–Kaohsiung Sister City Association, took the form of a Chinese dragon boat, representing one of the festival's annual events, dragon boat races on the Willamette River. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The Interfaith Guild of Chaplains (IGC) will be present and participating in the Right2Survive-Occupy Portland joint action, Pitch A Tent II, during the 24 hours preceding the Portland Rose Festival Grand Floral Parade along the parade route.

IGC will provide a sacred space area for quiet contemplation, meditation and prayer.

Find us next to (or close to) the Red Tent of the Occupy Portland Sisters In Strength, somewhere between Alder and Burnside on Southwest Fourth Avenue.


Each year in Portland, Oregon, the city government permits pitching tents along the Grand Floral Parade route. For 24 hours, the city allows camping in the city, an activity that is criminalized the other 364 days, causing houseless people to seek shelter in doorways, under bridges, and in bushes, in hopes of surviving the rain and cold without shelter.
Right 2 Survive, an organization led by houseless and formerly houseless community members, says that it isn’t right to allow people to camp for leisure and not for survival. “What kind of message is the city sending?,” asks long time homeless advocate Leo Rhodes. “They are saying it is okay to camp for recreation, but if you are one of the thousands of people in Portland without housing or shelter you will be fined and harassed for erecting a structure for survival.”



IGC is a nonsectarian, ecumenical, interfaith organization in solidarity with Occupy Portland and other Occupy movements in the Greater Portland-Vancouver area.
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