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Phil Stanford's avatar

Magisterial yourself, Richard. Very nice takedown and thanks for the plug.

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Jack Sotallaro's avatar

I don't live there and don't know anything about your specific city birthed problems. I do live in a small city with crappy roads and statues on street corners downtown to provide a "sense of place", which is just another progressive socialist term for liberal bullshit. We build a water park so that people can swim and enjoy themselves in a city that has several miles of riverfront property on the Arkansas and Cadron rivers, and at least 2 existing parks on those river fronts. We don't have your problems, however we have liberals, and they're the same useless drones here as they are there. Making life decisions on 'feelz' while being the center of crime and corruption seems to be in the left's genes.

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Ollie Parks's avatar

Albina Vision Trust was holding racially-segregated community meetings year ago. It has been an unabashedly racist project from the outset.

The lid may be history, but the Albina Vision Trust's board is still in charge.https://albinavision.org/our-team-1

They have too much momentum to close up shop. They're likely to find a path with less resistance, which is not impossible given the city's aggressively leftist politics.

Given the widespread prestige and establishment clout some Albina Vision Trust board members enjoy in progressive circles, one might even say the racism is on the verge of becoming systemic if it isn't already. They're not going to stop until or unless they are forced to do so by the Trump administration or litigation by an organization such as America First Legal. https://aflegal.org/

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Richard Cheverton's avatar

I agree--it just begs for a lawsuit. They're using public money to aid a classic wink-winik racist project.

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JR's avatar

Oregon lives by the grant and dies by no grant. Hell of a way to get things done.

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Allan W's avatar

MLK. When it was named union Avenue was a no go area unless you wanted to pick up a prostitute.

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Theresa Griffin Kennedy's avatar

"Under the big, fat umbrella of “equity,” was a scheme by the Albina Vision Trust—a nonprofit in name only—to recreate, somehow, the lost paradise of the segregated Albina ghetto (run for decades by a mobster named Tom Johnson who was making deals to sell off land in the paradise to white power brokers2—thus proving the adage that the black community really ought to fear its “leaders” more than anything else)."

The above quote is a powerhouse statement. And all true.

"...the paradise of the segregated Albina ghetto..."

This is what the newbies like dumpling Candace and fuzz face Jaime, along with the other haterz vehemently refuse to accept. That Albina was actually a dump, of fire trap, falling down houses, prostitution, heroin addiction, booze and every possible form of vice. From the 1950s, all through to the 1980s, when things started to turn around.

It was not this utopia for black folks. It was where black residents struggled. Hard working black men and women, trying to raise their children so they wouldn't end up drug pushers or hookers, that was what the hard working black folks were dealing with. And it was their black neighbors who were more than happy to suck their daughters into the slavery of prostitution, shackled by the heroin they got them addicted to in that first week when they promised them the stars, the sun and the moon if only they would...

I can remember driving through that area in the late 1970s with my older brothers, long before most of these nitwit "leaders" were sucking tit on their mama's, and I can attest, the whole area was falling down houses, broken beer bottles and overgrown blackberry brambles for front lawns.

Well, that is my two cents. LOL...

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William MacKenzie's avatar

Re. " retiring Rep. Ol’ Earl Blumenauer—all millionaires on the government’s paycheck", he's certainly no man of modest means after a long career in government (REP. EARL BLUMENAUER: STILL A MAN OF THE PEOPLE? https://shorturl.at/ryZT3) though some say his wife has been the big moneymaker.

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Richard Cheverton's avatar

Yah; they marry up, I guess.

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Jo Highet's avatar

This has to be one of my favorites, Richard. Just the right amount of snark to call out each and every bit of BS. You know Portland has a bad reputation throughout the US that extends far beyond weird, woke and radical. Portlanders are viewed as downright stupid. With this harebrained boondoggle it's hard to disagree. Keep it up!

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Allan W's avatar

Really good news and really well written. Some good laughs in there.

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