Pitch a Tent in solidarity with Right2Dream Too!

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.