Mayor Sam Adams Lays it Down: He's In No Hurry to Clear Tents from Downtown

Photographs by Denis C. Theriault

While Mayor Sam Adams is out of the country, Commissioner Amanda Fritz, right, will be in charge.

Mayor Sam Adams convened a quick Occupy Portland press conference this morning before heading to the airport for a 10-day business and cultural trip to Asia. Although thanks to handsome man Lars Larson and some other TV reporters asking TV reporter-like questions, things got a bit testy at times. But the mayor stuck to his guns.

He declared himself a "progressive" and repeatedly used the word "discretion" in a message that roughly distills to this: I support Occupy Portland's message and methods, and as long as things stay peaceful and polite in a campsite that's not close to many residents or businesses, I'm not going to clear out Chapman and Lownsdale squares. In fact, he sounded a lot like Randy Leonard, whose bullish support of Occupy I first reported yesterday.



Lars Larson!

"I know this might frustrate folks," he said, including media, asking about an "end game." "The answer is we're looking at this on a day-to-day basis and the details matter."

Earlier, he said, "I have long held the view that there are national policies that hurt Portlanders and Oregonians, that make it more difficult for hardworking folks to get the kind of employment and educational opportunities they have a right to. That Occupy Portland and Occupy Wall Street have come along is great. It puts a focus and a spotlight on some national policy issues that need to be addressed."

Update 1:35 PM: Occupy Portland's media team has posted its press release here. I've got it pasted in at the end of the original post.

The mayor also partially shrugged off concerns from business interests like the Portland Business Alliance and said the same discretion he's extended to Occupy Portland—not enforcing camping ordinances and parks curfews—would also apply to a tent refuge set up by homelessness advocates on a private lot at NW Fourth and Burnside. (Later, when pressed, he even said he'd do the same for rabidly homophobic Westboro Baptist Church if they came to town—which I hope they won't now see as in invitation to, you know, actually come to town.)

"Fundametally, we are using the same type of discretion for that. With slight differences because it's private property," he said of the Old Town camp. "Again, it depends. If suddenly their activities change tomorrow, there might be a different balance that would require us to treat that encampment or the encampments at Lownsdale and Chapman squares, differently. The location matters; the behavior matters."

What about the inconsistency of selectively enforcing the city's anti-camping laws? Larson, who twice was passed over for asking too many questions, kept hammering the point, at one point getting City Attorney Linda Meng to reaffirm that she believes the camping laws are constitutional, even though the city has the right to choose how and when it enforces them.

Adams, when he spoke, once again invoked the word "discretion."

"Like every city in the United States, we still have folks who are homeless. For me, as your mayor,

for me, it's hard to see people on the street, to see folks who are suffering for one reason or another. That happens every night in this city, and we do use discretion," he said. "If we arrested every single person sleeping outside, in parks, or in doorsteps, we wouldn't have a place to hold everybody. We use discretion. It's just the practical reality of any city government. It's no different here than anywhere else."

Adams also said what Leonard said yesterday: He's been communicating with other mayors who've been less accommodating, and he agreed that taking a more violent tone with policing could have easily wound up costing Portland far more in police overtime costs (plus park repairs) than what some other cities are facing. Preliminary numbers are expected the first week of November.

"I'm pleased that our costs will be lower because we have all dealt with this in a peaceful manner," he said. "There will be overtime costs, but it could be a lot worse."

Adams deftly handled what potentially could have been a vexing question, on whether he'd extend the same courtesies to a group he didn't agree with. Although I'm not sure if the assembled crowd of reporters necessarily believed him.

"I'm a progressive. I'm a Democrat. You all know that. But when I'm acting as mayor, our discretion is not based on the content of free speech. We all need to wear different hats," he said. "If the Westboro Baptist Church wanted to occupy a portion of the park in relation to a free speech issue... we would approach this in the same balanced way. This is day-to-day discretion."

Adams closed by invoking "unscrupulous and illegal actions" by businesses on Wall Street that he says directly drove the economy off the cliff in 2007 and 2008.

"I'm just a local mayor [a turn of phrase that actually made me chuckle out loud] and I read the same info and I read the same news as you all do," he said. "There have been relatively few people brought to inquisition, justice, trial, whatever on what roles they've played. The fact that so few people have been held accountable makes me angry and it makes most Americans angry, and it should."

Here is Occupy Portland's release: