Whites Get No "Affinity"

...The Coalition of Communities of Color shows its colors.

One of our eagle-eyed subscribers, Ricardo Z, sent us this head’s up:

Have you seen that the Portland Charter Commission is now holding BIPOC only public meetings? No non-BIPOC’s allowed. Meeting scheduled for 3/23/2022. https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZIuceGvrTkiGdZJmFLJJCDBghhG4ND88z-F

We had not.

We are appalled.

Let’s spend a moment dissecting this artifact. The Charter Commission, if you have read our previous four posts on this effort to rewrite Portland’s governing document, has made a curious “partnership” with the Coalition of Communities of Color (hereafter CCC), hired (for at least $150,000, probably more) to handle “listening” for the Commission.

As we ponted out, the Commish’s own records reveal that most of the “listening” has been—surprise!—with people of color, however that might be defined at the moment. And now—another shocker!—the CCC is putting on a little Zoom dog-and-pony show and whites, no matter their various shades, are verboten. (CCC calls it an “affinity group.” I’d call it “segregated.”)

I promptly signed up, after answering the usual intrusive query about which POC I belonged to: “Black, Latine, Asian, Native American, etc.” I cheated and listed “mongrel,” which seemed to work, because I got a secret code in return along with a stern admonition not to share it with anyone else.

Which I will happily do with any other non-POCs who might want to crash the affinity klavern.

Is this legal, in light of “All Men Are Created Equal,” not to mention the 14th amendment or, for that matter, the 1984 Civil Rights act which, essentially, repealed the Constitution’s right of association? Did Martin Lurher King Jr. march (and get assassinated) for race-exclusive “affinity groups?”

And then there’s the matter of the state’s Open Meetings law, which would seem to be pretty clear:

The public meetings law applies to the governing body of any state agency, regional government, city, county, school district, special district or municipal corporation. It also applies to their subcommittees.

But—aha!—the CCC is not a “governing body.” They’re “partners” and, kinda like Google or Facebook, they’re private and say they can do whatever they want. You could put it another way and say: The Charter Commish offloaded the dirty work to an entity beyond the reach, if not the spirit, of the law. How…clever!

And so the chummy conclave will be addressed by card-carrying Charter Commission POC’s Amira Streeter, Becca Uherbelau, Robin Ye, and Salomé Chimuku. How they feel about pointedly excluding whites is not recorded, but we can guess.

Believe it or not, there are people of no particular color on the Charter Commish, including Debra Porta (she’s Executive Director for a local LGBTQ+ nonprofit organization), and Debbie Kitchin (a primo joiner; among other honorifics the Board of Directors of Greater Portland Inc.) and David Knowles (another joiner, and former member of the Portland Board of Education, and therefore guilty, in the view of the Oregonian, with “failing” to improve the plight of POC students).

They can’t attend.

Most fascinating of the left-outs: Vadim Mozyrsky, who, in addition to being an immigrant from plucky Ukraine, is on…

several city commissions and committees, institutional advisory boards, and in community-based organizations. Currently he is on the steering committee for the Portland Committee on Community Engaged Policing and the Citizen Review Committee under the Auditor’s Independent Police Review division.

And, not mentioned in his official Charter Commission bio, he’s running for City Council against the city’s arch-racist scold, Jo Ann Hardesty.

Under the CCC rules ‘o’ the road, many of his supporters won’t be allowed to attend, including Scott Showalter (biggie in the arts scene) and Keith Wilson, (CEO of Titan Freight Systems) and—yikes!—Stephen Kafoury (of the political dynasty).

Banned. Wrong color.

I dropped Vadim a little note, through his campaign’s web site, asking what he thinks about this CCC affinity thingy; if it makes it out of the slush pile on his campaign’s server his response (if he bothers) will be interesting.

Particularly because he is engaged in a nasty little hissy-fit with a couple of his colleagues on the Police Oversight Board, both POCs who, basically, don’t like his “tone” with his POColleagues. So he filed a complaint with the City Attorney’s Office, claiming that Candace Avalos and Shaina Pomerantz used the committee to politically smear him. The complaint, you can bet, is resting in yet another City Hall slush pile.

Unless the CCC wises up to my “mongrel” ruse, I plan to attend the affinity group and—if I don’t fail the color-test—report back to our faithful readers.

I’m sure that, somewhere in the Cheverton family tree (my mom 100% German, but dad’s side was pretty iffy), I have some POC blood gurgling through my veins. And, besides, if gender is just a choice, why not one’s “professed” race?

See you all on March 21, 5pm. Be there or be square.