Inside the Sausage Factory, Part One
The Charter Commission and its strange partnership is "listening"--to who?
To dive into the workings of our Charter Commission’s latest cogitations, you really should be armed with a lexicon of current prog-speak. Especially that anodyne, cute little word, “community.” It’s code for some communities and, emphatically, not others.
And two guesses who is in the other community.
These are not random collections of people scattered around in neighborhoods; these are “communities” neatly tucked-into non-profit organizations (Your donations tax-deductible!!) that:
Want money, usually from the government (to which it pays no taxes);
Wants power, usually beyond its numbers.
Now that we’ve cleared that up, let’s take a tour of Charterland (terra incognita, as far as our progressive media is concerned).
The first issue that crops up is a question: who’s really running the show over at the Commision?
If you bother reading the February 2022 “Progress Report,” you will find that the 20 oddball Commissioners, each neatly representing some minority-racial interest/pressure/lobbying group (aka, the “What’s In It For Me” club)—are in bed with an entity known as the Coalition of Communities of Color.
Colors with one omission.
A glance at the group’s goals includes the standard progressive laundry-list: measures handcuffing the police, money to indoctrinate teachers in mandated “ethnic studies,” legal representation for illegal aliens, and—in a measure that takes the award for self-dealing— “$50 million to provide grants to culturally-responsive community based organizations…” to do something or other. In short: a classic “gimme the mon-ay” bolt-on to the dim-witted progressive machine and its stranglehold on the state.
The Commission’s report minces no words:
The Charter Commission partnered with the Coalition of Communities of Color (CCC) on the design and implementation of community education and engagement activities to meaningfully engage Portland's diverse communities in the charter review process with a focus on Portlanders who have been historically left out of city hall decision-making.
Whoops! Another bit ‘o’ prog-speak: the history-thingy. Here’s how the Commission.CCC duo puts it:
An accounting of the demographics of previous city commissioners shows that our elected representation was continually and disproportionately dominated by white, affluent, and male councilors despite a demographically diversifying city.
Which anyone who cares to do the arithmetic about “proportions” on our current City Council and its civil service and the self-flagellation of our White politicians will find laughable. History, unfortunately, stopped with Jo Ann Hardesty, who managed to surmount all that systemic racism to become our chief racist scold, followed by…but why go on? That history doesn’t and, more importantly, cannot count, lest CCC lose one of its primary reasons for existing.
Nope: CCC and the Commission makes the goal very clear:
Increasing opportunities for communities of color to elect their candidates of choice has also been a driving goal for the Commission. Portland does not have a geographic distribution of BIPOC residents that could allow for a drawing of a majority BIPOC district, nor does it have the level of income or age segregation and stratification that characterizes other large cities. The Commission continues to investigate reforms that might give smaller and historically under-represented communities (e.g., renters, young residents, communities of color, minor political parties) a greater ability to form coalitions to elect candidates of their choice.
Golly! Have we left anyone out?
Basically, the Commission handed over responsibility for “Listening” (yet another prog-word) to the CCC. Considering that the group has been paid at least $120,000* (tax-free) for all this listening, what have they produced? The February report says in November, 2021, the CCC…
…launched a multi-lingual civic engagement survey that asked respondents how they want to participate in the charter review process. The survey was available in English, Spanish, Russian, Vietnamese, and traditional and simplified Chinese. CCC’s partner organizations and others helped to broadly distribute the survey.
Not that the Commission/CCC nexus will share any of the questions with civilians (who couldn’t possibly understand how a survey might be manipulated).
The response was so “broad” that they got back 1,036 responses. What was lacking: no base-number of how many of these surveys were actually distributed, how many were filled out; and how many might have been deep-sixed by the non-profits deputized to do the surveys. See how that works?
In addition…
The Charter Commission and our partners hosted 26 community listening sessions with a total of 580 participants.
The Coalition gathered racial data on the participants and found that, of the “Racial and Ethnic Community Identified,” 19.8-percent were “white, Western European.” Latinx hit the 30.1-percent mark; blacks and Africans at 19.4-percent.
CCC also gathered data on “Additional Communities they identify with.” Renters (49.3-percent) and low-income (48.1-percent) hit the jackpot. LGBTQ+ community got listened-to at 18.1-percent. And they got 3.7-percent of the city’s homeless.
Homeowners? Well, they’re lumped into this category: Other: Property owner, citizen, older, business owner, taxpayer, long term resident, veteran, Chuukese, first-generation, first-time homeowner, Muslim, student, Taiwanese American.
There were 10.6-percent of these poor souls in the CCC-conducted listening-sessions.
So, these were anything but people picked at random off the street, although the non-profit Street Roots was among the partners of the CCC partnership. All of this feedback went, not just through the filter of the CCC, but first through…well, the mind reels with the many “community” non-profits lined up around the table, banging their forks and waiting for the feast. Prepare yourselves:
Asian Pacific American Network of Oregon (APANO), Hacienda CDC, Africa House, Pacific Islander & Asian Family Center, Muslim Educational Trust, Native American Youth & Family Center, Street Roots, Slavic & Eastern European Center, Unite Oregon, Urban League of Portland, Verde, Next Up, Taking Ownership PDX, Hygiene4All, Equitable Giving Circle, Rosewood Initiative, East Portland Action Plan, Rohingya Youth Association of Portland (RYAP), Sunrise Movement PDX, Somali American Council of Oregon, Regional Arts & Culture Council, Native American Youth & Family Center, Self Enhancement Inc., Human Solutions, Bradley Angle House, Home Forward, AFSCME, SEIU Local 49, East Portland Action Plan…
Nevertheless, let’s do some arithmetic: a total of 1,616 Portlanders, all cherry-picked by community groups, have given the Commission their ideas about our next government. This is 0.24-percent of the city’s population.
If the city’s pay to CCC is accurate (see below), that’s a mere $77.35 per response. Chicken feed…but, never fear: CCC cooked up yet another survey, this one gathering a massive near 100-percent increase to 2,977 (how many took the survey the second time around is not disclosed). CCC is still chewing through the results. They’ll let us know. (Hopefully by July 2022, when they’ve got to close up shop and dump whatever they concoct into the laps of City Council and the voters. Who have, in every instance when the city charter was rewritten, turned it down.)
And we still haven’t seen the actual surveys.
These are the people—and the forces—hard at work devising your next government. What are they up to?
That’s our next episode. Be sure you’re sitting down…
*The Commission’s PR person, “Sofía Álvarez-Castro (she/her/ella),” refused three requests to tell me what the Coalition is now making running the Commission’s listening-show; she referred instead to an RFP (Request for Proposal) that gave a figure of “Up to $120,000 will be awarded for services through June 30, 2022. Based upon the proposals received, the City may award multiple contracts.” The city made it clear what they wanted—to the point one might suspect it was tailored for the Coalition: “Organizations based in the Portland metro region who primarily work with, advocate for and/or provide services to historically underserved communities and who have experience with civic or community engagement, leadership development, or community organizing and advocacy.” Done deal!
The other night I was perusing odd channels and happened upon a Zoom meeting of this Commission. On the Zoom were 5 women - 3 white and 2 black (I may be mistaken and one of the "of color" women may have been Hispanic). Zero men.
One of the women was riffing regarding "research shows" under-represented groups - and she included women in that group - earnestly and with a straight face. I was dumbfounded - has she looked at the rulers of our State, County, City?
In any case, the irony escaped them.
*** Like Nikole Sheri Hannah-Jones assaulting the coverage of the war in Ukraine as RACIST!!! ... it seems to me this crowd HAS to resort to not-so-recent history and keep Intersectionalizing EVERYTHING - or else they will turn into a NothingBurger - and will have to stop and think about real issues facing real people and selecting the best human, best structure to address them.