PORTLAND TREND OR OREGON’S FUTURE ON A NEW TRAIL

While I usually drag on about other things, I sense a Portland trend here:

@Oregonian Portland’s police chief and mayor are set to announce Tuesday that city police will no longer stop motorists for low-level infractions, such as equipment failures or expired plates, to reduce disproportionate stops of people of color.

Fewer tickets for minor traffic violations, hard drug possession charges treated like parking tickets, and an unhoused camp that ran a major golf tourney out of town over safety concerns.

Sports talk radio (my go-to news source) says Portland is gone.

Gone? From what? From the sports world?

From the schedule of other events held at Moda Center? The Oakland A’s won’t relocate here? The Blazers move to Seattle? That kind of gone?

Portland is a community willing to accept change. It accepted the Rajneeshees. It accepted the people the Rajneeshees bussed in to swing an election in case a poisoned salad bar wasn’t enough.

Change For The Better?

The reputation before Portlandia was as a place where rich hippies retired and sent their kids to Reed. It was beerlandia with fresh hop month. It was a food Mecca before food carts.

Changing the rules of the road didn’t go over big for everyone.

From twitter:

Is this what giving up feels like? It feels like this is giving up.

So, we don’t have to get our cars inspected anymore?

Or just don’t harass them when you do have to make those stops maybe?

Portland is becoming a 3rd world city. Who wants to walk around downtown with all the addicts and homeless people yelling at you.

Code for: “we need more police officers because no one wants to be a cop in this city, so we’re making it easier for them by no longer requiring them to give a shit about the small stuff”

No, it’s code for “We don’t have the staffing to enforce low level crime.”

They have the same staff they’ve always had, they just don’t want to do work any more.

Occupy Portland Part II

Ten years ago Occupy Portland lived downtown.

It was a protest that drew concerned people, along with lots of others who wanted a voice.

I went down to listen and understand a Portland trend.

From the Oregonian:

Some of the campers Sunday morning looked old enough for the ’60s. If they lived through the Vietnam War protests that brought the gas, a Chicago Democratic Convention that cracked heads, and a Kent State University clash that opened fire, they ought to tell the younger campers how it felt.

It’s one thing to protest with your physical presence, it’s another being gassed until you vomit, whacked on the collarbone by a mounted policeman, or shot by National Guardsmen with poor fire control. Tell the young campers that what inspires them from Libya and Egypt and China has already happened here.

That was ten years back.

A Portland Trend Thirty Five Years Ago

A black man died after a police interaction. They used a choke hold on him.

The neck, or carotid-artery, hold was banned by Ms. Harrington after the death of Lloyd ″Tony″ Stevenson, 31, an off-duty security guard. Stevenson died when the hold was used to subdue him during a disturbance outside a convenience store. The T-shirts were sold on the day of his funeral.

The shirts said, “″Don’t Choke ‘Em, Smoke ’Em.″ Two policemen were fired. However:

An arbitrator has ordered the reinstatement of two white police officers fired in May for selling T-shirts with the slogan, ″Don’t Choke ‘Em, Smoke ’Em.″ 

Arbitrator Paul Hanlon ruled Wednesday that the firings of Richard Montee, 46, and Paul Wickersham, 31, were excessive. However, he found their actions serious enough to warrant suspension for six months without pay. 

The T-shirts, bearing the image of a smoking revolver, were sold after a black man died at the hands of officers who used a ″sleeper″ neck hold. The hold was banned after the incident.

If this sound all too familiar today, should it?

City Commissioner Mike Lindberg called Hanlon’s ruling ″a devastating blow to the police chief and City Council and our ability to manage the police department.″ He added that the police force was ″almost unsupervisable.

This was from 1985.

Today’s Portland Trend Needs To Look Back Further

Good citizens are the riches of a city?

I didn’t make that up for this post, but who first said it about Portland? Good citizens know who.

From the Oregon Encyclopedia:

C.E.S. Wood may have been the most influential cultural figure in Portland in the forty years surrounding the turn of the twentieth century. He helped found the Portland Art Museum and was instrumental in making the Multnomah County Library a free and public institution. He secured the services of his friend Olin Warner, a nationally known sculptor, to design the Skidmore Fountain, and his words “Good citizens are the riches of a city” are inscribed at its base. The Portland Rose Festival was his idea. He numbered among his friends Mark Twain, Emma Goldman, John Reed, Clarence Darrow, Lincoln Steffens, Ansel Adams, John Steinbeck, Charlie Chaplin, James J. Hill, and Langston Hughes. Soldier, lawyer, poet, painter, raconteur, bon vivant, politician, free spirit, and Renaissance man, Wood might also be the most interesting man in Oregon history.

Where is a similar character today to help guide Portland forward? To lift the city out of the impression that it’s too far gone?

Where are the good citizens when you need them? The big thinkers well enough connected to make important changes that good citizens can embrace?

Are they found in underpass tents? In the Portland Police rapid response team? In city hall?

They’re here, and when they step up Oregon will be ready to follow.

In a tradition as long as the Oregon Trail, breaking new ground is just around the corner.