This could have been subtitled The Elite Left and Its Useful Idiots (aka voters). It used to be that the left made some vaguely Marxist complaints about unfairness. Now, it simply prosecutes American history for various cultural impurities. Sadly, there is no redemption here except taxing the rich on behalf of officially sanctioned victims (and, their champions in NGOs). If it seems like a shakedown to you, then you must be a racist! One solution would be to apologize for your obvious guilt and vote for people like Jo Ann Hardesty in perpetuity. While we can't undo 1619 but we can certainly monetize it.
Jun 7, 2022·edited Jun 7, 2022Liked by Richard Cheverton
Taxpayer money would be better spent on curbing a known threat to Portland's black and brown residents than on managing a hypothetical one. By that, of course, I am referring to gang violence, which on the whole is perpetrated by and against people of color. The conventional wisdom is that today gang members and homeless people commit most of Portland's homicides. This is not unprecedented. Portland was assaulted by a wave of gang violence in the 1980. What is new is the failure of our elected leaders to acknowledge Portland has gang problem, much less use law enforcement to combat it.
As far as City Hall's leading gang denier is concerned, the city's gun violence problem, which includes people being shot dead on the streets of Portland in gang-related incidents, has been solved. Jo Ann Hardesty and Multnomah County Commissioner Jessica Vega Pederson provided a cheery sendoff to 2021 on December 1 in their Portland Tribune piece titled "Our View: Portland Isn't Dying." Among other things, they wrote: "To address gun violence, we invested in a public health response defined by community-based organizations and upstream, culturally responsive interventions."
Readers can be forgiven for not having the slightest notion what "upstream, culturally responsive interventions" are or how they get gang members off the street. What is clear is that law enforcement has no role to play.
Though neither Hardesty nor Pederson volunteered details of their response to gun violence, in an undated document published in the past eight months or so Multnomah County went to great lengths to detail their $4.6 "investment in new gun violence prevention strategies."
The five-page "New Gun Violence Prevention Investments" opens with a statement of guiding principles, the first of which is:
"At the forefront is inclusively leading with race, which is already a core value at Multnomah County. We know that gun violence disproportionately impacts BIPOC communities. And these proposals are intended to focus on serving those individuals."
How well does the County's gun-violence prevention initiative serve a target audience that is disproportionately harmed by gang killings? Well, for one thing, the word "gang" appears only four times in the 1,668-word document; "gangs" is not used once. Secondly, of the 12 "investments" approved by the county, only three of them have anything to do with gangs. Let's see what they entail:
Elevate Program Expansion - $500,000
"The County will expand our Elevate program to 18-25 year old young men in the Latinx
and African Immigrant Community for those impacted by gang involvement and gun
violence. This will provide community support and resources to an additional 50 justice
involved individuals, including peer support, skill building, cognitive behavioral therapy,
and culturally responsive services. This will also provide opportunities to partner with
national experts to build out culturally responsive programming for this population of
justice involved individuals."
Community-Based Mental Health Services for Children and Families - $160,000
"Multnomah County is seeing an increase in gang violence, shootings and homicides.
This is predominantly affecting our African American Community. In 2020 there were 55
homicides in Portland alone. By October 2020 nearly 173 people have been struck by
gunfire and there have been over 595 shootings. This is nearly twice as much as the
same time period last year. Almost half of those most impacted identify as African
American in spite of the fact that the overall population of the Portland area is 8 percent
African American. There is an urgent need for helping to heal the African American
community that has borne the brunt of violence and loss. This offer proposes the
addition of a KSA African American Mental Health Consultant for the Direct Clinical
Services unit to serve gang impacted young adults and their families."
Gun Violence Behavioral Health Response Team - $1,200,000
"This seven member team will be composed of clinicians and peers and provide services
for gang impacted youth and families. Their goal is to address the increased community
violence we’ve seen as a result of the pandemic. The team will work closely with DCJ’s
Juvenile Services Division and use therapeutic interventions to address underlying
needs."
Adding the expenditures reveals the County initiative's most obvious advantage over the nonprofits' white-supremacy money grab. It makes more sense to spend a mere $1,860,000 to deal with the BIPOC community's known gang-violence problem than to scatter $100 million to the wind in search of solutions to a speculative threat.
I will leave it to others with more training, knowledge and experience in the field of fighting gangs to evaluate the three programs and predict their likelihood of success. But one does not need to be an expert in criminal justice to point out that it will be difficult to know whether the programs have been successful unless they have sound policies, procedures, internal controls, well-defined objectives and reasonable performance targets AND someone - preferably the County auditor - looks at each "investment" regularly and reports the results to the public, elected officials and the media.
Speaking of well-defined objectives and reasonable performance targets, it's worth remembering the old saying in management self-help books that what gets measured gets managed or, according to other sources, gets done. If the Multnomah County commissioners who spent $4.6 million of our money to reduce firearms violence put the nonprofits on the spot by demanding that they state how many gun deaths they intended to prevent during the grant period, it is not at all apparent from the County's document. How will these organizations make demonstrable contributions to saving lives if they don't know it's their responsibility to do so?
The ominously titled "TITAN Fusion Center" was actually a pretty smart clearinghouse for actual 'law enforcement intelligence', before those three words became dirty and unspeakable. Now it is verboten, unless the state is using it pursue unvirtuous non-leftists.
Before it became polluted by Ellen Rosenblum, the Fusion Center was a clearinghouse for bad things before they actually broke out.
Sure is fascinating how many problems can apparently be solved by throwing millions of dollars at it. I wonder if the history books will tell about how $100 million finally put white supremacy to bed.
Right wing white people. What are you gonna do?
https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2022/06/09/a-disturbing-poll-in-the-aftermath-of-the-attempted-assassination-of-brett-kavanaugh-n1604326
From out friends and the companion of the ACLU:
https://www.splcenter.org/news/2022/06/01/poll-finds-support-great-replacement-hard-right-ideas#methodology
This could have been subtitled The Elite Left and Its Useful Idiots (aka voters). It used to be that the left made some vaguely Marxist complaints about unfairness. Now, it simply prosecutes American history for various cultural impurities. Sadly, there is no redemption here except taxing the rich on behalf of officially sanctioned victims (and, their champions in NGOs). If it seems like a shakedown to you, then you must be a racist! One solution would be to apologize for your obvious guilt and vote for people like Jo Ann Hardesty in perpetuity. While we can't undo 1619 but we can certainly monetize it.
Taxpayer money would be better spent on curbing a known threat to Portland's black and brown residents than on managing a hypothetical one. By that, of course, I am referring to gang violence, which on the whole is perpetrated by and against people of color. The conventional wisdom is that today gang members and homeless people commit most of Portland's homicides. This is not unprecedented. Portland was assaulted by a wave of gang violence in the 1980. What is new is the failure of our elected leaders to acknowledge Portland has gang problem, much less use law enforcement to combat it.
As far as City Hall's leading gang denier is concerned, the city's gun violence problem, which includes people being shot dead on the streets of Portland in gang-related incidents, has been solved. Jo Ann Hardesty and Multnomah County Commissioner Jessica Vega Pederson provided a cheery sendoff to 2021 on December 1 in their Portland Tribune piece titled "Our View: Portland Isn't Dying." Among other things, they wrote: "To address gun violence, we invested in a public health response defined by community-based organizations and upstream, culturally responsive interventions."
Readers can be forgiven for not having the slightest notion what "upstream, culturally responsive interventions" are or how they get gang members off the street. What is clear is that law enforcement has no role to play.
Though neither Hardesty nor Pederson volunteered details of their response to gun violence, in an undated document published in the past eight months or so Multnomah County went to great lengths to detail their $4.6 "investment in new gun violence prevention strategies."
The five-page "New Gun Violence Prevention Investments" opens with a statement of guiding principles, the first of which is:
"At the forefront is inclusively leading with race, which is already a core value at Multnomah County. We know that gun violence disproportionately impacts BIPOC communities. And these proposals are intended to focus on serving those individuals."
How well does the County's gun-violence prevention initiative serve a target audience that is disproportionately harmed by gang killings? Well, for one thing, the word "gang" appears only four times in the 1,668-word document; "gangs" is not used once. Secondly, of the 12 "investments" approved by the county, only three of them have anything to do with gangs. Let's see what they entail:
Elevate Program Expansion - $500,000
"The County will expand our Elevate program to 18-25 year old young men in the Latinx
and African Immigrant Community for those impacted by gang involvement and gun
violence. This will provide community support and resources to an additional 50 justice
involved individuals, including peer support, skill building, cognitive behavioral therapy,
and culturally responsive services. This will also provide opportunities to partner with
national experts to build out culturally responsive programming for this population of
justice involved individuals."
Community-Based Mental Health Services for Children and Families - $160,000
"Multnomah County is seeing an increase in gang violence, shootings and homicides.
This is predominantly affecting our African American Community. In 2020 there were 55
homicides in Portland alone. By October 2020 nearly 173 people have been struck by
gunfire and there have been over 595 shootings. This is nearly twice as much as the
same time period last year. Almost half of those most impacted identify as African
American in spite of the fact that the overall population of the Portland area is 8 percent
African American. There is an urgent need for helping to heal the African American
community that has borne the brunt of violence and loss. This offer proposes the
addition of a KSA African American Mental Health Consultant for the Direct Clinical
Services unit to serve gang impacted young adults and their families."
Gun Violence Behavioral Health Response Team - $1,200,000
"This seven member team will be composed of clinicians and peers and provide services
for gang impacted youth and families. Their goal is to address the increased community
violence we’ve seen as a result of the pandemic. The team will work closely with DCJ’s
Juvenile Services Division and use therapeutic interventions to address underlying
needs."
Adding the expenditures reveals the County initiative's most obvious advantage over the nonprofits' white-supremacy money grab. It makes more sense to spend a mere $1,860,000 to deal with the BIPOC community's known gang-violence problem than to scatter $100 million to the wind in search of solutions to a speculative threat.
I will leave it to others with more training, knowledge and experience in the field of fighting gangs to evaluate the three programs and predict their likelihood of success. But one does not need to be an expert in criminal justice to point out that it will be difficult to know whether the programs have been successful unless they have sound policies, procedures, internal controls, well-defined objectives and reasonable performance targets AND someone - preferably the County auditor - looks at each "investment" regularly and reports the results to the public, elected officials and the media.
Speaking of well-defined objectives and reasonable performance targets, it's worth remembering the old saying in management self-help books that what gets measured gets managed or, according to other sources, gets done. If the Multnomah County commissioners who spent $4.6 million of our money to reduce firearms violence put the nonprofits on the spot by demanding that they state how many gun deaths they intended to prevent during the grant period, it is not at all apparent from the County's document. How will these organizations make demonstrable contributions to saving lives if they don't know it's their responsibility to do so?
The ominously titled "TITAN Fusion Center" was actually a pretty smart clearinghouse for actual 'law enforcement intelligence', before those three words became dirty and unspeakable. Now it is verboten, unless the state is using it pursue unvirtuous non-leftists.
Before it became polluted by Ellen Rosenblum, the Fusion Center was a clearinghouse for bad things before they actually broke out.
Sure is fascinating how many problems can apparently be solved by throwing millions of dollars at it. I wonder if the history books will tell about how $100 million finally put white supremacy to bed.