I apologize for my lack of organization and not having a speedy reply to everyone who may have messaged me. My work schedule and the fact that I do nearly all my redditing/internetting on a phone has prohibited me to be as active and available for this as I'd like to have been. Once again, I apologize and assure you all I'm trying my best and I take this movement very seriously.

Earlier this week I posted in /r/portland something like "hey if we can ride bikes naked by the thousands than shouldn't we get together and rally against our constitutional rights being trampled upon" or something to that effect. Not surprisingly, it reached the top and sparked a robust conversation which was my sole intention. I am angry with my government and more importantly I'm angry with myself for my relative apathy towards the civic process I've had my whole life. It was not meant to criticize anyone. I just wanted this city's awesome inhabitants to start talking and I felt a reddit post was the least I could do. Literally, the least I could do and everyday I feel I should be doing more.

What I TOTALLY didn't foresee was people looking to me as some kind of organizer or leader. My inbox was flooded. People wanted direction and no one had answers. So I took it upon myself, inexperienced as I may be, to answer those questions as best I could. I just want to get that off my chest. I'm learning by the seat of my pants how this works and it may ultimately be a problem. But for now, I am very happy to help the Portland chapter of RestoreTheFourth in any capacity I can. However, I encourage you to speak up and lend your abilities in a greater capacity during the budding moments of this movement despite whatever trepidation you may have to do so. There is a lot of snark and cynicism directed towards us because of the failure of Occupy (among other reasons). I feel we have a lot to learn from Occupy and we can turn their failures into successes by learning from where they went wrong. That is what people often fail to see. Understand, even if we do fail, we may inspire the next bigger and badder movement. So, that negativity that comes from others or even within yourself please remember that it is your enemy.

Anyway. First things first. Our meetup on the 15th conflicts with the global reddit meetup here in Portland and they were not shy in letting me know this on /r/portland. The meeting on the 15th will still happen but I think it's imperative to schedule another one asap to accomodate those who may forsake our meeting for the global meetup. Regarding our meeting, I personally don't feel qualified to run it but I will do my best. If any of you are good at this type of thing who will be attending please PM me. Personally, I think it's important for us to focus on the logistics of the July 4th rally. Who, what, when, where, why, how, types of things. I am compiling a list of stuff I think needs addressing immediately. I say again, as much as I want to talk about the future of RT4, in PDX especially, I think this first meeting we should really concentrate on the visible statement we will make on July 4th in concert with our peers around the country.

Required reading - I think the tone has been set that this is going to be a more sophisticated movement than occupy. The national movement has already appointed a PR specialist. Here are his words. Please read.

Here are some general guidelines about what we are generally all about and will make us more effective as a movement. Please read.

here is another article about "waging peace." Essentially stating we need to fight fire with fire. We need to be smart and disciplined. There are geniuses who have walked before us and we would do well do heed them. Please read.

Social Media- http://www.restorethefourthpdx.com/ /u/ISHOOTMAYOONYOURBACK (lol) totally stepped up and coded a sharp and simple website which conveys our immediate interest for you to link not only on reddit but on FB and Twitter etc. It's very important this goes beyond reddit to make our rally a success so please, please, please, spread the word early and often via the Portland specific RT4 website and any other means.

Mods- I would like to recruit at least one other person to mod this sub. So far the content has been on point and there aren't any trolls or troublemakers...yet. However, I'd like to have someone who is reddit savvy who can populate the sidebar with useful info and links etc and generally keep an eye on the place. Like I said, I do all my redditing on the phone so it's difficult for me to maintain/improve the sub. So PM me if you want the job. Also, I made a portland centric twitter: @RT4PDX. I need help promoting it or even someone to take it over. I'm a twitter moron.

If you are reading this you rock, please don't be afraid to comment whatever you may be thinking. The whole point of this that the democratic process has gone awry and we need to fix it. YOU & ME. It's as simple as that. I'm tired with the results of relying on others, particularly our "representatives." They certainly aren't representing us anymore so lets exert some of our power as citizens.

Cheers