Portland: Ursula LeGuin/Writers Protest Patriot Act
April 14th, 2003

Writers, Editors, Publishers, and Readers Protest Patriot Act in Portland

Portland, Ore...Ursula K Le Guin, author of the "Left Hand of Darkness", RV Branham, editor of the new Portland literary magazine "Gobshite Quarterly", Eileen Gunn, editor of the internet magazine "Infinite Matrix", L. Timmel Duchamp, author of many short stories including "The Forbidden Words of Margaret A.", along with members of the Independent Publishing Resource Center, the 'zine co-operative Reading Frenzy, members of the Portland Bill of Rights Defense Committee, and many others gathered at Shemansky Park at one o'clock on Saturday, April 12th, for a Portland Peaceful Response Coalition (PPRC) sponsored protest against the USA Patriot Act. The four authors and editors mentioned above read poems and stories and speeches in protest.

"What do attacks on freedom of speech and writing mean to a writer? It means that somebody's there with a big plug they're trying to fit in your mouth and big plugs they're trying to fit in the ears of the people. Bad news again," author Le Guin explained to an OPB reporter on the scene. Free speech was the primary focus of the protest. Marchers included a stop at the Multnomah County Central Library in their route and one hundred protesters took a list of "subversive books" - books like the Koran, the Anarchist Cookbook, and Teach Yourself French - and checked the books out en masse. "If they want to know what people in Portland are reading, if they are going to investigate our libraries here, I want them to find that we're all reading exactly the wrong things. I want Ashcroft having nightmares about Portland. I want him to wonder how it's possible so many of us are reading Das Kapital and the Anarchist Cookbook," author Douglas Lain, a PPRC organizer, explained.

"How dare they ask what kinds of books we're reading. How dare they try to intimidate me, or stifle me in what I read or write." The protest on Saturday was against both the Patriot act and the war, and Lain said there was a connection between the war on Iraq and the attack on civil liberties at home, pointing to how the climate of fear and uncertainty around war creates a pretext for the dismantling of basic rights.

In the end, after stories, songs, a stop at the library, and a declaration of a free speech zone with an open microphone across from the Federal Building, the marchers moved on to Waterfront Park to join a larger anti-war rally. Photos along with the list of books checked out are available here: http://www.douglaslain.com/libraryfbi.html

In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material is distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and educational purposes only.