Mr. Whitten's Merry Ride Through Non-Profitland

When the big, tax-free money rolls in, watch out!

It’s endlessly amusing to watch our media outlets tap-dance around a hot news story that they really don’t seem to want to cover.

Case in point: the kerfluffle concerning the head of one of Portland’s strangest racial preference non-profits, Brown Hope. The star of the saga is one Cameron Whitten, who has been a one-man pasha of protest since he moved to Portland in 2009 at the age of 18.

He has attached himself to, started, and now appears to be in trouble with a laundry list of organizations in the red-hot equity, diversity, racism, LGBTQ+, defund the cops, “housing crisis,” market where guilt-stricken progressives can dump some spare tax-deductable bucks.

His adventure in protest started, in the words of his Wikipedia listing (which sounds suspiciously like an autobiography)…

He helped plan the Jamison Square occupation in October (2011), and was arrested when police cleared it out. He was arrested during some occupiers' last stand in Chapman Square. And then he was arrested during a theatrical occupation of tiny Mill Ends Park downtown. He also has another arrest in January 2012 for actions during an Occupy the Courts rally.

This qualified him to run for Portland mayor in 2012; you’ll be shocked to learn that his platform was “diversity and inclusion.”

Then he somehow convinced the Oregon Progressive Party, a kind of rent-a-ballot outfit, to put him up for state treasurer. Then, in 2012, he embarked on a hunger strike to protest the “housing crisis” on the steps of city hall which lasted two months and prompted this Oregonian headline…

Portland activist Cameron Whitten's hunger strike goes on; can anyone stop him?

(Answer: nope. And we know about how that particular crisis has played out.)

His Wikipedia profile notes that the starvation ended…

…after concessions were made by the Portland Mayor's Office.

Undeterred, Mr. Whitten turned to campaigning for same-sex marriage; then it was off to…

…in 2013, Whitten protested the banning of community members who set up 24/7 vigil for the homeless, and their replacement with a fast food cart. The cart was then removed and the furniture put in storage.

Then he started an outfit called “Know Your City,” which caught the Oregonian’s eye…

Know Your City takes a quirky approach to community-building and publishes a renters rights comic, as well as the "Jade Journal," a newspaper chronicling East Portland. It hosts "people's history of Portland" walking tours.

…and added that Mr. Whitten had made the transition, somehow, from “Occupy activist to respected city leader.”

As he edges toward his mid-20s, he's realizing something big: Working for civil rights won't erase his suffering. It only amplifies the pain. So what's a young man who wants to change the world supposed to do? Can you help save the human race and save yourself?"

Know Your City seems to have devolved into an app on the Apple store, where it has a single review (four stars) and the comment…

Such a rich tapestry of sight, sound and righteous narrative!

But leading tours wasn’t going to help Mr. Whitten “change the world,” and he quickly got back into protest-mode, arrested after complaining about conditions on a Portland streetcar while serving simultaneously on Portland's Transit Equity Advisory Committee; then took part in protests against President Trump's executive order banning travelers from specific countries; and lectured City Council on “culturally relevant education.”

Oh yah; he also attended Portland State University. Did he graduate? His various web sites are strangely silent.

Whew! We’re barely halfway through his Wikipedia entry…and now we come to 2018. He became “Interim Executive Director of Q Center, a community center serving Portland's LGBTQ+ community,” which was formed under the wing of then-Commissioner Sam Adams The current web site notes that it is “undergoing renovations please expect delays and closures.”

In 2018, adding to his portfolio of 501 (c)(3)s, Mr. Whitten started a non-profit called “Brown Hope.” Aside from not paying taxes, the organization”s “Vision” seemed a little…well, out of focus.

Our wild dream is that the seeds we plant will flourish into the fruits of justice, healing, and love– for every person, every community, and the entire world.

The Brown Hope web site lists a cornucopia of peppy-sounding programs that sound like something out of the standard self-help handbook: the Equity & Beyond educational program, for example, is a sort of post-graduate course built around Portland’s favorite trope…

Society’s undisrupted complicity with racism is a snowball rolling into the avalanche that is white supremacy. Equity & Beyond is a powerful space to  confront that complicity.

And here are its first graduates…

…Mr. Whitten on the right.

Then there’s the “Solidarity Squad,” which hawks donations for…

… a variety of hygienic products listed in the graphics; these items are our most needed ones in the community!

The organization’s “Power Hour” advertised…

Show up! Black, Brown, and Indigenous people, this event is specifically for you.

Be nourished! Food and drinks will be provided by Brown Hope and the business sponsor.

Receive $35 in cash as reparations, paid for in part by racially privileged folks.

Mr. Whitten’s most effective attention-getter was the Black Resilience Fund, which caught the local media’s eye with its breathtaking goal: Pick (out of 11,000 applicants) twenty-five lucky participants for a monthly stipend of $2,000 for three years. It’s called the Black Resilience Fund, and it is clear that…

…we lift up community solutions for reparations-inspired action…

Local media ate it up. KGW, which occasionally casts a wary eye on race-preference politics in Portland, was all-in. The print media followed suit. It was so…so…heartwarming. Not that anyone in media bothered to ask: how were those 25 folks selected? What happens when the cash runs out in three years? And where, exactly, is the dough coming from?

It’s a matter of the hoariest maxim in journalism: never let the facts stand in the way of a good story. Especially in a town where the media is hungry for “good news” as an aperitif before the daily menu of crime, murder, drugs, and homelessness.

Blackstreet Bakery is another spin-off which might (or might not) exist as anything that might resemble bricks, mortar and ovens…

We educate participants on local Black history to help rally and inspire our team around the vision of owning a non-profit cafe space to provide a long-term home for Blackstreet Bakery in North and Northeast Portland.

On Dec. 6, the Blackstreet Bakery Facebook site put out a pitch for donations…

But that was followed by this update…

Unforeseen circumstances?

And how!

Things were going swimmingly for Mr. Whitten and his 503 (c)(3) until the Oregonian dropped this little story on Dec. 8…

Portland nonprofit leader Cameron Whitten placed on leave from Brown Hope amid investigation, board president says

…wherein ace reporter Shane Dixon Kavanaugh reported…

The head of a celebrated Portland racial justice organization has been placed on paid leave pending an outside investigation.

Just to make sure readers understood, Mr. Kavanaugh used “celebrated” in yet another lede to a follow-up, although both stories weren’t able to establish exactly who was “celebrating” the non-profit.

It was all so very awkward: the president of the non-profit’s three-member board, Gregory McKelvey, was close to Mr. Whitten—like a “brother” popped up in stories. And yet he placed Mr. Whitten on leave and took the CEO job himself.

And wouldn’t you know that Mr. McKelvey has some history in the protest department—and some run-ins with Mr. Kavanaugh himself. Back in 2018, the O ran this headline…

Portland activist finds himself snared in #MeToo movement

…atop a story that, well…seemed to waffle between something or other that happened to Mr. McKelvey back when he was 18 and a student at Oregon State U and an arrest and…it’s too complicated to fully explicate (even Substack has length limits), but suffice to say that it was a typical Oregonian smear. Mr. Kavanaugh said nice things about his target…

Eloquent and energetic, McKelvey emerged as a visible presence in Portland politics in 2016, first as an outspoken supporter of Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign and later as a media-friendly figure in the city's Black Lives Matter movement.

…but, then again…

But some people and groups have quietly distanced themselves from him. Others have asked him on social media to address his arrest, but he has ignored or rebuffed them.

McKelvey, in a statement, put it more bluntly…

I am frustrated because this story is attempting to cast me into the archetypal black male. One that is violent, preys on white women and cannot be trusted. I am better than that. I am saddened that this is the state of journalism in this city, however I have known this for a long time and have chosen to not speak out until recently.

Lesson: media giveth; media taketh away. Welcome to the Bigs, Messrs.. McKelvey and Whitten.

The defenestration of Mr. Whitten by his so-called board was all very confusing: if this was a typical 503(c)(3) board, it would have been hand-picked by the leader as ineffective window-dressing to appease the feds and the gullible donors. Oversight? Who you kiddin’?

It began to sound like a panic in the executive suite, what with state auditors making odd, grunting noises—the public trough does occasionally work both ways.

Confusion grew a day or so later, when it all went into reverse and Mr. Whitten announced he was remaining as CEO until the “still-unspecified” allegations of something-or-other were put to rest.

And then WillyWeek’s perennially Pulitzer-seeking guided missile, Nigel Jaquiss, dropped a small grenade…a leak! An “anonymous” memo…

…alleges Whitten gave himself a raise, regularly used ayahuasca, and created a “toxic” work atmosphere.

All this on the heels of some grumpy reporting buried in the O that the charity was, well…a little behind in filing its proper federal form 990, the yearly report on a non-profit’s finances (just to make sure the feds don’t miss a few bucks they can scoop up.).

Brown Hope’s last 990 was filed for the year 2020. Remember that summer? It turbo-charged Brown Hope, along with outfits from the ACLU to a whole explosion of race-preference outfits, not to forget BLM, and—infamously—the Portland Freedom Fund (which bailed out a man who promptly killed his wife after being lobbied by the “victim’s rights” coordinator of yet another big non-profit, the African Youth & Community Organization, AYCO). We wrote about the sorry episode back in August. Rest assured, there hasn’t been a media follow-up for months, although many questions remain to be answered.

The magnitude of the money-flood can be seen in Brown Hope’s last form 990…

The gifts kept on giving—the Oregon Health Authority, flush with federal Covid funds, dropped around $800,000 on Brown Hope for…something. Other public agencies got in on the dump as well, including the Portland Housing Bureau, Office of Civic Life, and Portland Clean Energy Fund (according to Nigel Jaquiss’s research in Willy Week).

Needless to say, not one cent of the money-gusher was ever matched up against any metric for the non-profit getting any measurable results.

It was a nice idea, our local progressive specialty.

As it turned out, the journalistic war over the twitching body of Brown Hope was just getting started. Mr. Jaquiss’s leak put the O’s Kavanaugh in a tight spot; on Friday he fired back with a demi-leak of his own…

Prior to the tumultuous past week that’s played out in the public spotlight, leaders of the organization ran the multi-million dollar enterprise for more than a year without basic financial or operational oversight, The Oregonian/OregonLive has learned.

Take that, Nigel!

If history is any metric, this kerfluffle will soon pass.

Will the state of Oregon put the hammer down on a racial non-profit, absent Mr. Whitten stuffing his pockets with progressive dough? Nope. No upside in going after anything black—and what will it say about all of those other Salem bureaucrats who gave so freely of other people’s money?

If the Jaquiss Leak is an indication of unrest on the Brown Hope staff (28 at last count), it’s inevitable that the kind of people drawn to the race-preference non-profit world might be a little touchy and oversensitive.

They’re probably university products that have been swaddled with “trigger” warnings and easy grades and the heady fun of deplatforming people with something unpleasant to say…so what d’you expect? These are victims, folks.

Plus, there are tons of jobs in the non-profit sphere and don’t let the door hit ya on the way out.

As for Mr. Whitten: he’s a kind of pet for white progressives; good for servicing their guilt…but not too much. And, deep down, they like the idea of paying off 25 selected families to be quiet and grateful and—best of all—dependent.

Prediction: Mr. Whitten, as good a shape-shifter as exists hereabouts, will skate. You can’t keep a good they/them down.