Even before the pandemic, Portland homeless were growing entitled. A couple of months before everything shut down, the Oregon Humanities held a Drink & Think on Democracy and the Courts at the Alberta Rose Theater.
The panel members were various shades of liberal, including a representative from Partnership for Safety & Justice (formerly the Western Prison Project).
Audience members were allowed to ask questions. One of them, a woman who called herself homeless and has appeared before the city council, didn't have a question but had a tirade about the "crappy" housing being offered to the homeless. She pointedly criticized the Bushong Building, which hadn’t even opened. She said the mentally ill will not stay in SRO's that have cockroaches. They will go back to the streets instead.
I haven't any idea what's to be done as voters decline to think and act like adults. We are doing what we can to smother the foundational unit of society, the family. I think this has much to do with it. No family, no adults.
The successful use of the elastic but meaninglessness term equity to destroy those standards requisite for the sustenance of civilization has been brilliant. LSAT? Classical Music training, engineering qualifications, citizen, and on and on?. . .all neutered, under attack, or discarded. Swept away in the name of equity.
I do not see a way forward. Recently antifa again acted out with impunity. BLM caused a great slaughter of blacks, put the safety of everyone at hazard, and stole uncounted millions but is still very powerful and a name with which to conjure. Even if BLM were to vanish the damage it has done is surely ineradicable.
The floodtide of bums, dope fiends, and the mentally ill will not be staunched or diked until the last pro bono attorney decides to go someplace and make himself useful. Until that fantastical day arrives it will be impossible to place the helpless mentally ill under compulsory care, the dogged drug fiend under restraint, and to move the determined layabout out of your town.
Frankly, Schrader's replacement, a Bay Area politico who is Kotekish to the core is not stepping up to the future. The educated core of urban Oregonian's are determined to go where none have gone before and are taking the rest of the state's inhabitants with them
All of downtown's power players know what's happening. Some of them, like the Goodmans, made fortunes during Portland's meteoric boom starting in the 1980s and only sputtering out during the pandemic. That in turn was worsened by the Compassion Police who stipulated that every effort must be made to allow camping on city sidewalks. The homeless, we are led to understand, are your "neighbors", who have been temporarily inconvenienced by greedy landlords (see: Goodmans, et al), and "capitalism". If it weren't for these malign forces, we'd be living amicably among one another. True, the traumatized might need treatment and permanent housing, but the rich can pay for all of that. Real communities must make every effort never to blame the victims.
Portland is the whitest large city in America, which is at the root of its civic neurosis. Why aren't we Sweden yet? We know who's to blame, however, and it's white people with money. They live in places like Laurelhurst and then begrudge their "neighbors" who are forced to live on its sidewalks. You might resort to occasional drug use yourself given that brazen display of "inequity".
There is no reasoning with rhetoric. It has all the answers and none of the responsibility. Being high minded does allow a righteous fury, however. Victims always come with victimizers. Write down their names. We're looking at you, Jordan Schnitzer, Ted Wheeler, People for Portland, and all those parking lot moguls and donut tycoons.
I’m not sure Schnitzer belongs in that group. He did salvage the never-used Wapato Jail.
You might appreciate this. Last night Ted Wheeler appeared briefly before the Police Accountability Commission to sing their praises for designing a new board that will provide police oversight. But before he got to speak, the commission — predominantly female and POCs — reviewed “White Supremacy Culture Characteristics.”
Maybe that was a slender thread to hoist Schnitzer's legend. My intention was to contrast that group to Woke, Inc., now the dominant force in Portland's leftist governance. It's fascinating to consider how Portland was once this renowned urban success story going back to the '80s. Yes, it was weird, but not so much that it frightened tourists. That said, homelessness soon became the crucible on which Portland would stake both its authenticity and contempt for bourgeois values. This meant undermining the effectiveness of the police while celebrating various victim entities. This obviously wasn't Portland's unique creation as Seattle, Oakland, and San Francisco also demonstrated the same impulse. Anarchy in conjunction with cultural Maoism is the new dispensation. White liberals will advance this project with contempt for other whites while constructing a militant social justice regime on behalf of the "victims".
Portland doesn't have Seattle's world-class economy or San Francisco's cultural capital. But its loony left is capable of going toe to toe with the downtown power brokers, aka, the old guard. Will we survive this marriage of nihilism and hysteria? Let's ask Jo Ann Hardesty, who will likely emerge Lazarus-like from the grave she was prematurely assigned to.
We are Portland and we are bottomless.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IlCj4NvMeKc&t=139s
Even before the pandemic, Portland homeless were growing entitled. A couple of months before everything shut down, the Oregon Humanities held a Drink & Think on Democracy and the Courts at the Alberta Rose Theater.
The panel members were various shades of liberal, including a representative from Partnership for Safety & Justice (formerly the Western Prison Project).
Audience members were allowed to ask questions. One of them, a woman who called herself homeless and has appeared before the city council, didn't have a question but had a tirade about the "crappy" housing being offered to the homeless. She pointedly criticized the Bushong Building, which hadn’t even opened. She said the mentally ill will not stay in SRO's that have cockroaches. They will go back to the streets instead.
I haven't any idea what's to be done as voters decline to think and act like adults. We are doing what we can to smother the foundational unit of society, the family. I think this has much to do with it. No family, no adults.
The successful use of the elastic but meaninglessness term equity to destroy those standards requisite for the sustenance of civilization has been brilliant. LSAT? Classical Music training, engineering qualifications, citizen, and on and on?. . .all neutered, under attack, or discarded. Swept away in the name of equity.
I do not see a way forward. Recently antifa again acted out with impunity. BLM caused a great slaughter of blacks, put the safety of everyone at hazard, and stole uncounted millions but is still very powerful and a name with which to conjure. Even if BLM were to vanish the damage it has done is surely ineradicable.
The floodtide of bums, dope fiends, and the mentally ill will not be staunched or diked until the last pro bono attorney decides to go someplace and make himself useful. Until that fantastical day arrives it will be impossible to place the helpless mentally ill under compulsory care, the dogged drug fiend under restraint, and to move the determined layabout out of your town.
Frankly, Schrader's replacement, a Bay Area politico who is Kotekish to the core is not stepping up to the future. The educated core of urban Oregonian's are determined to go where none have gone before and are taking the rest of the state's inhabitants with them
Schrader did a little too much listening to constituents and paid the price.
All of downtown's power players know what's happening. Some of them, like the Goodmans, made fortunes during Portland's meteoric boom starting in the 1980s and only sputtering out during the pandemic. That in turn was worsened by the Compassion Police who stipulated that every effort must be made to allow camping on city sidewalks. The homeless, we are led to understand, are your "neighbors", who have been temporarily inconvenienced by greedy landlords (see: Goodmans, et al), and "capitalism". If it weren't for these malign forces, we'd be living amicably among one another. True, the traumatized might need treatment and permanent housing, but the rich can pay for all of that. Real communities must make every effort never to blame the victims.
Portland is the whitest large city in America, which is at the root of its civic neurosis. Why aren't we Sweden yet? We know who's to blame, however, and it's white people with money. They live in places like Laurelhurst and then begrudge their "neighbors" who are forced to live on its sidewalks. You might resort to occasional drug use yourself given that brazen display of "inequity".
There is no reasoning with rhetoric. It has all the answers and none of the responsibility. Being high minded does allow a righteous fury, however. Victims always come with victimizers. Write down their names. We're looking at you, Jordan Schnitzer, Ted Wheeler, People for Portland, and all those parking lot moguls and donut tycoons.
I’m not sure Schnitzer belongs in that group. He did salvage the never-used Wapato Jail.
You might appreciate this. Last night Ted Wheeler appeared briefly before the Police Accountability Commission to sing their praises for designing a new board that will provide police oversight. But before he got to speak, the commission — predominantly female and POCs — reviewed “White Supremacy Culture Characteristics.”
Among them: Worship of the written word.
Forget writing essays. Let’s all learn to grunt.
Maybe that was a slender thread to hoist Schnitzer's legend. My intention was to contrast that group to Woke, Inc., now the dominant force in Portland's leftist governance. It's fascinating to consider how Portland was once this renowned urban success story going back to the '80s. Yes, it was weird, but not so much that it frightened tourists. That said, homelessness soon became the crucible on which Portland would stake both its authenticity and contempt for bourgeois values. This meant undermining the effectiveness of the police while celebrating various victim entities. This obviously wasn't Portland's unique creation as Seattle, Oakland, and San Francisco also demonstrated the same impulse. Anarchy in conjunction with cultural Maoism is the new dispensation. White liberals will advance this project with contempt for other whites while constructing a militant social justice regime on behalf of the "victims".
Portland doesn't have Seattle's world-class economy or San Francisco's cultural capital. But its loony left is capable of going toe to toe with the downtown power brokers, aka, the old guard. Will we survive this marriage of nihilism and hysteria? Let's ask Jo Ann Hardesty, who will likely emerge Lazarus-like from the grave she was prematurely assigned to.
I admire Pam for being able to sit through these grotesque meetings.
Great comment; well said. Write some essays--we'll pass 'em along.