Let’s start with a couple of stories…
My favorite dive bar: two families occupy a booth; they’re accompanied by toddlers. One lets out errant screams; the other has started to climb out of the booth and explore the bar’s paraphernalia on the wall. Which, of course, he brings crashing down—more screams.
One of the bartenders (one of the world’s greatest, I might add) rushes over and restores some sort of order and then cleans up the debris. Do the parents help out? Nope. They’re too busy comforting their heirs.
I’ll bet they were lousy tippers.
Here’s another story: we’re in the corridor of a local elementary school, where a young boy, somewhere around eight years old, is writhing in the middle of the linoleum, kicking, screaming, flailing, a lump of complete hysteria. It’s nothing new; the kid’s a well-known menace. Among his repertoire: slugging teachers in the tummy.
Standing over him, watching, doing nothing, is a middle aged adult—not a teacher but someone paid to administer “restorative justice.” He is forbidden to touch the kid; might offer a candy bar to bribe the little menace.
The kid will not get consequences; instead a committee will draft an “IEP” and file it in triplicate. The kid will have received perhaps the most important lesson of his academic career: misbehaving gets attention and a reward. Adults? They’re patsies.
As for the rest of the kids watching from the sidelines: They learn, too: people who push adults don’t get pushed back.1
And so the kids brought up a world where they never hear the word “no;” where schools bribe junior sociopaths; whose parents (if they’re still together) come from a dysfunctional generation of lost wars, assassinations, anomie, …well, they now do whatever they want at Portland State University, not to mention the overpriced schools of drinking, dating, and deplatforming scattered across the tired old republic.
Yah, yah, yah…a few of the university prexies finally got the stones to call in the cops—who always take the fall for others’ lack of anything resembling courage.
The Portland cops finally moved in after three days—we’ll not forget the sight of the local Hamas-lovers spurting out of the library in gas masks and cut-up garbage cans. Yahya Sinwar., in his tunnel under Rafah, would have laughed mordantly.
Afterward, when the thugs had been dispersed to forage for thrills on the South Park blocks, the usual lineup of city officials stood in what seemed like a police lineup and committed damage-control.
The mayor boomed that the people who “occupied” the PSU library (“trashed” might have been a better word) were “delusional” if they thought anything they could do would make any difference to anyone in the Mideast. This is the same guy who let antifa run him out of his apartment in the Pearl and who, essentially, sat on his hands while the daily rioters trashed whatever they pleased because a fentanyl addict on a street in Minneapolis had resisted arrest.
What got trashed was the mayor’s chance of being re-elected (or working his way up the machine’s greasy pole); which further goes to prove that being a lame duck can do wonderful things for speaking the truth.
And then, looking uncomfortable standing shoulder to shoulder with the chief of police, DA Schmidt promised to prosecute the people who got arrested—but left himself ample elbow room: his office will have to match the arrested up with naughty things they might have done, and you know how that goes. Back in the riots’ salad days, Schmidt chickened out on prosecuting rioters for criminal trespass, disorderly conduct, interference with a police officer. Prosecutors also declined to pursue charges for felony rioting unless accompanied by more severe charges. Which never seemed to pop up.
Which goes to show that the prospect of losing office concentrates the mind wonderfully.
And then there was the diminutive PSU prez, Ann Cudd, who was quoted thusly:
“We took this step only after extensive negotiations using faculty members as intermediaries…. We look forward to opening our campus to all students as soon as possible.”
What do you want to bet that Cudd will never tell us who among the university’s notoriously woke faculty did the negotiating. And what they were willing to bargain away to the kiddies busily trashing the library. And why it took so long for Ms. Cudd, who holds a doctorate of philosophy and master’s degrees in philosophy and economics, to figure out she was being hoodwinked.
Although Cudd put on a show of toughness at the self-congratulatory lineup, no one seemed eager to note that 24-hours earlier she had, essentially, caved to the invaders, promising that anyone who left in the middle of the night Wednesday would get away scot-free. No suspensions. No criminal charges.
….and after the trashing was done, she actually said…
“As a philosophy professor and daughter of librarians, that space is really a sacred space, and I’m really so sad to see what has happened to it.”
Maybe she should have offered the kids candy bars. Works in other schools.
Local media kept using the cowardly word “protests.” Weirdly, WillyWeek ignored the takeover and led its web page with the GuvTina skinback on putting her “wife” into office without bothering to get the permission of voters—or anyone else. Riots? Read elsewhere.
The Oregonian, typically, gave every indication that it found this event beneath its dignity. And skated past the fact that the cops arrested a grand total of only 12 people—and that only four were actual students.
Who, you might ask, were the others? Do they wear black? Are any on the FBI pad? Questions the Oregonian pointedly didn’t want to ask.
Then the Oregonian went out looking for “protesters,” and found a few, who—surprise!—dropped little nuggets such as this…
Shayla Adkins, 33, a PSU graduate social work student, said she slept in the library for three nights.
At the beginning of the occupation, she said, there was some “kind of like imbalanced rage” by some who may have caused damaged [sic] to some electronics and alarm systems inside the building.
Note to Oregonian copy editors (if they still exist): “may have caused” begs the question—who else could have caused the damage?
Later the Oregonian got an exclusive tour of the library carnage…
…positioning the invasion as a problem of interior design esthetics. Does PSU grant such a degree?
Over at the progressive Pravda, Oregon Public Broadcasting sounded wistful…
…casting the cops as party-poopers.
No one in the town’s media thought to wonder out loud about how this had all been allowed—-encouraged, even—to happen. It’s not like anyone at PSU should have been surprised; campuses across the country had been boiling over since mid-April, as this graphic in the Wall Street Journal recorded…
…and the pro-Palestine, anti-Jewish mopes had been marching in Portland since October, soon after their Hamas-heroes had killed, raped, and abducted 695 Israeli civilians, including 36 children, as well as 373 security forces and 71 foreigners, giving a total of 1,139. The first pro-Palestinian mob had promptly paraded around city hall with professionally printed signs…
You (or for that matter PSU’s Cudd) would have to ignore the sad history of “protests” in Portland to fail to understand the escalating danger signals. Especially when the mob, starting in December, started probing the government’s resolve with a series of highway blockades…
…on the Burnside and Hawthorn and Fremont Bridges and the access road to the airport. Grossly illegal, but it is not recorded that the mayor was dispensing psychological evaluations about delusion back then. Or, in fact, doing anything. Like a misbehaving kid in school, the demonstrators learned. Quickly.
Nor did the town’s media bestir themselves to ask: what about the other students who got a Covid-style shutdown and the joke of “remote” learning? Particularly Jewish students, who now know that they’re, as always, on their own.
Some are no doubt aware of Portland’s checkered racial history—the old KKK, which effectively ran the state in the bad old days, hated Jews equally as much—maybe more—than blacks. It’s not well known, but one of the first ethnic groups targeted by the bulldozers of Urban Renewal, which created the soulless South Auditorium project, was the city’s Jewish community. Synagogues were summarily trashed, such as Temple Ahavath Achim, which fell apart as it was being removed…
…while protests by the Jewish community fell on deaf ears2…
…a chapter in Portland history that has not caused the school board to donate its headquarters building to real estate hustlers.
As for the other students at PSU—21,040 at last count (with none, as far as we know, being suspended)—their thoughts and “feelings” weren’t worthy of being considered by the media, or anyone else.
However, buried in the oodles of coverage of the riots, encampments, clearances was a small story about a lawsuit…
…in far-away New York city, where parents who are coughing up around $80K a year to get their kids’ tickets punched at Columbia have had enough.
As the complaint states…
“Columbia has done nothing to curb this outrageous behavior or meaningfully discipline those responsible,” the lawsuit states, “and the administration’s inaction and willingness to capitulate to the demands of this extremist element of demonstrators have fanned the flames of antisemitism across campus.”
…which sounds rather familiar. Granted, a year at PSU is a relative bargain ($25,350 in total tuition and fees, per the university website); the clientele is not as flush as the kind of folks who send their kids off to Columbia, Harvard, Stanford—but still, having the place shut down because crazies in left-over M95s ran riot for three days wasn’t part of the deal.
The attorney behind the lawsuit, Chicago-based lawyer Jay Edelson, is shopping around for more clients. We hope he stops by Portland.
As is said: Money talks, bullshit walks.
I could report other stories such as this, but the people who lived through them don’t want to be quoted, even anonymously. Lest they get “in trouble.” In America.
As reported in the extraordinary YouTube documentary, “The Story of Portland’s First Urban Renewal.”
Willy Week didn't ignore the takeover but they minimized the damage it caused.
https://www.wweek.com/news/schools/2024/04/29/gaza-protesters-occupation-of-library-puts-portland-state-university-president-in-difficult-position/
Thank you for mentioning the IEP issue. To which I would add that *actual* disabled students will go without IEPs, or experience years-long delays in receiving them, as a result of the abuse of the IEP process to excuse bad behavior and codify made-up identities.
The PPS offices (or what's left of them as they prepare to be donated to the same long line of real estate developers whom the city allowed to raze Portland's Jewish neighborhood and whom the city still allows to plop New Seasons in the middle of an until-recently-minority-neighborhood school route so that kids have to cross a freeway onramp to get the school, "because equity," but I digress...) are too busy hosting sit-ins over non-PPS issues to actually fulfill parents' IEP or curriculum requests.
And the few special ed staff in individual schools who are truly caring (they do exist) are too busy being forced to deal with the behavioral and gender-identity IEPs.
And though it's newly dawning on people, it's an old issue. Our child (now 21) has cerebral palsy, and it took PPS ten years--ten years--to give her a simple IEP for a key-entry locker & assisted study hall. And it took PPS four years to comply with a simple curriculum-review request. And the fact that they complied at all, with either of them, was only because my husband and I were dogged and had legal resources. But along the way we learned from the district people who finally complied with our request to see the district's sex and gender curriculum, that we were the *only* people ever to have succeeded. And we met many other IEP-denied families who had fewer resources to deal with PPS, and whose kids were far more vulnerable, and who therefore simply pulled their kids and paid for private school, or moved because of PPS's chronic IEP issue.
I can tell you from personal experience it is not simply a case of PPS catering to disruptive and abusive students; it's ultimately happening because PPS *itself* is abusive to kids who are actually disabled, and indeed to any student who doesn't match PPS in sociopathy.
It breaks my heart to say it, because disabled kids truly do need and deserve to be mainstreamed. Our daughter worked very hard to graduate regular school with honors, and we were loathe to deny her the opportunity; but looking back we are horrified at how much she suffered for the privilege. For the foreseeable future, PPS is not a safe place for the disabled. And that hurts everyone.