PORTLAND — A small group of people that came together early this month to express bitterness with the nation’s corporate and political ways isn’t giving up — it’s now into its second week of demonstrations in Portland.
Members of OccupyMaine show up at Monument Square each day to hold signs of protest and share their opinions on what they see as corporate greed, political corruption and the need for change. At night, more than 20 of them have been camping in a city park a few blocks away, their tents in plain sight to hundreds of motorists who pass by each day on busy Congress Street.
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Everybody has a different take on what’s important, but all agree it’s time for Americans to come together, share ideas and find common ground, said Evan McVeigh, 26, a restaurant worker from Portland who’s been camping out in support of the movement.
“There’s no reason we should be flopping back and forth between Democrats and Republicans, going, ‘Well, the Democrats didn’t work so let’s vote for Bush, or that didn’t work so let’s vote for Obama,”‘ McVeigh said Tuesday at the makeshift campsite at Lincoln Park. “We need to realize people are people and if we actually sit down and rationally talk we can come to good ideas, strong ideas that reflect the needs and concerns of all parties and all philosophies involved.”
The OccupyMaine group started as an offshoot of an Occupy Wall Street demonstration, which started in New York City last month.
What began as a three-day demonstration in early October has turned into a cause for those living in the camp. Some jokingly call it “Hooverville” in reference to the popular name for the shanty towns named for President Herbert Hoover built by homeless people during the Great Depression.
Some people say they’re willing to remain in the camp indefinitely, until something changes. “Optimistic answer, a couple of months. Pessimistic answer, three years,” McVeigh said when asked how long he’d be willing to stay.
Under a large tent, the camp has a communal kitchen stocked with spaghetti, crackers, fresh bread, canned goods and other food items that people have dropped off in support. There’s a communal library with selections ranging from Plato’s “Republic” to “Calvin and Hobbes” comic strip books. When the need arises, campers have to seek out a public restroom.
The camp has signs with guidelines — but don’t call them rules — reminding people to clean up after themselves.
On a wrought-iron fence on the park’s edge, members have taped up makeshift signs with messages such as “Stop the Greed,” “End Corporate Control” and “The Billionaires Need Us. We Don’t Need Them.”
The campers range in age from 18 to about 70, with the average age somewhere in the mid- to late 20s. Some are homeless, but others include a lawyer, a paralegal, two bank employees, restaurant workers and students, McVeigh said.
Deseree Tanguay, 19, has been staying here every night except Mondays and Wednesday, because she has early morning classes on Tuesday and Thursday at the University of Southern Maine in Gorham, where she lives in a dormitory.
When she’s not in class, she comes here to share her views calling for more representative government and less corporate involvement in politics.
“Politicians often feel the need to represent the interests of corporations because the only way they can run for office is by getting the money to run for office,” she said. “So once they’re in office they have a responsibility to the people who got them elected to office — which happens to be the corporations.”
Every evening at 6, a group of 30 to 60 people meet at Monument Square to hold a “general assembly,” where they make announcements, put forth proposals and reach consensus on various issues.
For the most part, OccupyMaine members say the public has been supportive. Motorists honk their horns in support or give them thumbs-up signs.
Steve Demetriou, 55, of Portland, said the only opposition he’s heard was a couple of people who shouted that they should get jobs.
“If people have negative feelings about it, they’re keeping it to themselves,” he said.
Tuesday at Monument Square, a young man stopped by an OccupyMaine table and said he was confused about what the group stood for. The man, who didn’t want to be identified, said OccupyMaine seems to have so many different messages that it lacks focus.
But Florian Stenschke, a 30-year-old tourist from Berlin, Germany, said he’s been impressed by the demonstration groups he’s encountered on his vacation, not just in Portland but also in Washington, D.C., and New York.
“There’s something fundamentally wrong, not just in the states, but in most western democracies, including Europe,” Stenschke said.
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