So long Schumacher Furs
Posted by Josh on February 24th, 2007 in Activism.
Many of you have heard the amazing news, a furrier in downtown Portland has decided to close their doors forever citing the year long protests and the city’s unwillingness to shut down these legal protests as the main reason.
You read that right. Using free speech a bunch of protestors, according to the store owner himself, shut down a fur business in Portland.
I made a very quick cut of a film I made showing the one year anniversary of the protest and posted it here.
I made a 9 minute little film that is in the subscriber section of our website with interviews and lots more footage. It was an amazing day. The guess is there were 200 marchers in downtown Portland that day. There were cakes made, clothes taken off, signs hoisted, chants chanted, and radical cheerleaders. There were dogs and babies and older folks and punks and “normal” folks who find fur disgusting and don’t want it in our city.
The day after the protests Schumacher announced they were leaving downtown Portland for the safer confines of a mall in the burbs. A week ago they announced they were closing forever because, they claimed, protestors were intimidating mall owners. No mall owner has confirmed this of course.
While I love the idea that this was entirely due to the protestors I’m not so sure that’s the reason they are going under. The protests were one day a week. If you wanted a fur you’d get one, you’d just go some other day wouldn’t you? My feeling is that the fur industry itself is hurting really bad and Schumacher is blaming protestors but ultimately the public, at least in Portland, is finding out more about this industry and won’t support it.
The protests might have hastened Schumacher’s closing, but it was inevitable I’m thinking.
If you follow the first link to the news story about the closing you can scroll to the bottom and see what is largely a really pathetic conversation about how those “wackos the protestors” needed to be reigned in by the cops and so forth. I’m guessing these comments were coming from folks who are pro-war and freedom, yet don’t believe we should be able to practice our free speech rights.
I would argue that this shop being shut down was a testament to a working democracy, one that those objecting to the protests claim our troops are over there fighting to preserve, yet, they don’t want to see in action.
Good riddance to a cruel store profiting off torture and death and high five to Portlanders who have decided they can survive just fine without a dead fox or mink on their back.
