American Genocide and the real meaning of "less harm," in Portland, Oregon.

What does it mean to ENABLE a chronic drug addict?

“A Tutsi child cries because he can't find his mother at a refugee camp on July 30, 1994, near Goma, Zaire, now named the Democratic Republic of Congo. Some 800,000 minority Tutsi and moderate Hutu people were slaughtered by Hutu extremists during a 100-day terror campaign that began on April 7, 1994.”

GENOCIDE:

What does Genocide mean to you?

Does it bring up images of the 1994 slaughter of the Tutsi minority, (also known as the Watussi) by the Hutu tribe who had the ethic majority, in the east-central African nation of Rwanda?

During that horrific year, more than 800,000 beautiful Rwandans were murdered, by Hutu nationalists, in the capital of Kigali, but the murder quickly spread throughout the entire country. The Rwandan genocide was called 100 Days of Slaughter. If you were a Tutsi or a moderate Hutu, you were fair game for the Hutu who wanted to erase the Tutsi population because of long simmering political and social rivalries going back decades.

I remember that year. I remember watching the televised news programs and seeing those thousands of bloated dark bodies, naked and gleaming, carried on “the River of Death,” and cascading over a random waterfall somewhere. The image of those bodies falling over that waterfall has remained with me ever since. You can’t find the footage of it anymore, but back in 1994, it was shown often on news shows globally, and millions saw it, including me.

On the day I saw “the River of Death,” I was so horrified I left our living room, taking my two-year-old daughter with me. I retreated to our bedroom, while my husband continued to watch the news. We were both shaken, seeing that unearthly sight and I struggled not to become emotional in front of my small daughter.

Knowing that the genocide was not stopped but was allowed to continue by other countries, including America, for well over three months, broke my heart. Former President Bill Clinton lamented years later, in 2004, finally admitting: “The failure to try to stop Rwanda's tragedies became one of the greatest regrets of my presidency.”

Many people were disappointed by Clinton’s lack of courage. I was one of them. I knew had the victims been white, Clinton and other politicians around the world would have moved heaven and earth to save them and stop the carnage. But because they were black…

The decapitated children, the women with their breasts carved off, their tongues cut out, after being systematically gang raped, then murdered. The men with their genitals slashed from their bodies before being murdered with machetes, it was all too horrifying for me to comprehend. I couldn’t wrap my head around how people could do this to each other. How could people treat their fellow human beings with such cold indifference and savage cruelty?

Images of Rwanda are often the first images people think of when they consider genocide, or at least recent genocide.

Or perhaps they think of the unforgettable images of WW2, and the extermination camps in Germany, as documented in The Sorrow and the Pity. Six million Jewish people and hundreds of thousands of Germans with disabilities, and other German political opponents and resistance activists were viciously murdered by Adolph Hitler and his countless hideous henchmen.

Everyone knows this. Even Holocaust deniers know the truth.

Or perhaps when you think of Genocide, you think of the Armenian Genocide which began April 24 of 1915, and continued long into 1916. In that time, the Muslim Turks of the Ottoman Empire, led by the sadistic Talaat Pasha, who acted as the principal leader of the Genocide, slaughtered 1.2 million beautiful Armenians in death marches to the Syrian Desert, marches in which women and minor girl children were often raped to death. Pasha orchestrated the murder of 1.2 million innocent Armenians, but was allowed to go free, despite being sentenced to death in absentia in a Turkish court martial conducted in 1919 and 1920.

While living comfortably in Berlin Germany, on borrowed money from his “friends,” Pasha was assassinated in a planned ambush, by a young 25-year-old Armenian man, Soghomon Tehlirian, who had lost 85 family members in the Armenian Genocide. The assassination took place March 15, 1921 and Pasha’s death was painless and immediate, unlike the women and children who were tortured and raped during his campaign. After a two day trial, Tehlirian was found not guilty and freed by a German court. After his arrest, he stated: “I came to Germany only to kill Talaat Pasha. My family died in Armenian deportations, I coincidentally escaped death. Even from that time I had sworn to kill Talaat Pasha.”

Or perhaps when you think of Genocide you think of The Great Hunger, which began in 1845, and lasted until 1849, impacting those Irish people who were my ancestors. Perhaps you reflect on how England allowed 1.5 beautiful Irish people to starve to death when the potato famine devastated the crops. The fungal parasite (Phytophthora infestans), which destroyed the potato crops led to country wide starvation, cannibalism and a mass exodus to America.

Simply in order to eat and survive, an equal number of Irish left Ireland. 1.5 million to be precise, and because of that, and subsequent emigrations, Ireland has never fully recovered demographically. There are about 5 million Irish people living in Ireland today, compared to the 8 million Irish who lived in Ireland in 1841, before the famine began and created the Irish diaspora.

PORTLAND, OREGON:

But can Genocide be achieved by other means, and with other tools?

On SW Forth and Washington Street in Portland, Oregon, in the above photo, a once lovely brick fountain stands abandoned in the old 1970s Washington Center Building. The fountain was informally called the Washington Street Fountain and I remember seeing it often as a small child when I would wait with my mother for the Trimet bus that would take us home to our house in NW Portland.

In 1970, when I was four-years-old, I would stand next to the fountain and watch the sparkling water dance from the oddly shaped sculptured sections jutting upwards in the center of the fountain. I always thought they resembled wild birds in flight. With my chest pressed against the top of the low circular brick basin, (as seen in the photograph) I would dangle the tips of my fingers into the clear water, my mother standing next to me, lost in the delight of childhood, a shy little girl, playing gently with water.

The fountain has always held a special place in my memory. Now, inoperative for decades, vandalized and covered in ugly graffiti, the fountain is home to chronic Fentanyl addicts who smoke “Blue” with squares of tinfoil and Bic lighters and urinate in it, pass out next to it, oblivious to the world around them.

WHAT IS GENOCIDE?

The Oxford Dictionary defines Genocide as: “The murder of a large number of people from a particular nation or ethnic group, with the aim of destroying that nation or group.” But when you consider the definition of Genocide, it is the word murder that becomes problematic. The word murder suggests intention, as the word literally means, “unlawful killing of another human being by a person of sound mind with premeditated malice." Some older definitions claim that murder is defined as “Malice aforethought.”

There are other forms of genocide, happening right now, and specifically in the United States. In my view, some of those forms come under the gentle seeming umbrella term of “less harm” or “harm reduction.” Could we say that a form of genocide is occurring in this country and specifically in Portland right now? Or is that too harsh a descriptor to use? Is it “offensive” to suggest that a form of genocide could be happening in Portland?

You tell me. Explain to me how and why I’m wrong.

To me, Genocide seems like an accurate description of the Fentanyl Crisis that’s happening in Portland and the hundreds of people, perhaps thousands, who are being allowed to kill themselves on the streets of this city.

I’ve known for a while about the Portland clinics that give out clean hypodermic needles for drug addicts, free condoms, tin foil, and even free straws, and glass and metal pipes, if addicts come to those clinics and request those items. But now hired enablers are going out on foot, on the streets and handing out these items to the drug addicts that aimlessly wander the downtown area and all throughout the city, smoking… Fetty, Blue, King Ivory, Poison, Murder 8 and Tango.

POISONOUS FENTANYL!

One local Portland woman, Angela Todd of PDX Real, is gaining a tremendous audience and following on Instagram and on YouTube by sharing her impressions of what is really going on in Portland and how tax paying citizens are being conned. Todd shares with Portlanders how Portland’s most vulnerable are being allowed to die on the streets, with the city’s gentle harbingers of death, kindly placing the tin foil, needles, pipes and straws into the grimy unwashed hands of addicts, helping them along in their slow, drugged, foggy demise.

Who are these people, who are handing out needles, straws, pipes, and tin foil so chronic addicts can continue to kill themselves? Well, specifically some of their names are, Kelsi, Julie and Ben and they want you to “come visit us!” In the attached video above, and with smiles on their young faces, you can almost feel their excitement to be working full time and making good money. They seem genuinely happy that they can help you use more drugs and there is something extremely sinister and very wrong about that.

Is the homeless Industrial Complex really just a career choice? Is there a plan in action here in Portland, or are the power players in city government just allowing a process of depopulation to take place? Five to ten people overdose each week, and as many are dying every seven days.

The Medical Examiners officer is running out of storage space to house all the refrigerated dead bodies. And with the Portland Ambulance companies going to overdose calls day in and day out, regular Portlanders are not getting the medical transportation they need and are having to wait 30 minutes or longer for an ambulance.

When drug addicts in Portland state, “They are loving us to death,” should we take them at their word? Should we listen? Should we try to understand what that means and how we can actually get these folks into drug treatment?

I understand this idea of “harm reduction” is not just happening in Portland. Its happening all over the country, in states that promote extreme liberalism, but what does it mean when addicts are not placed into Drug Treatment Facilities, even after repeated criminal offences? What does it mean when drugs are made legal, with destructive legislation like Measure 110?

What does it mean when chronic and often lethal drug use is normalized and accepted?

In 2022, in the entire country, more then 109,680 people died from Fentanyl overdoses or poisonings, with the hardest hit states being West Virginia, New Hampshire and Kentucky.

The Fentanyl crisis in Portland seems to be getting worse, despite the city streets looking better since the sweeps of the Fentanyl Camps which began earlier this year. When city government has millions of dollars in funds for drug treatment, but those funds are hidden away and never allocated for use, and the city of Portland ranks at the bottom for providing drug addicts with drug treatment, what are citizens supposed to think?

When Portland has a failed, despised DA, Mike Schmidt, who will not prosecute criminals, many of them chronic Fentanyl addicts, and releases them again and again, to go back to their addictions, what are Portlanders supposed to think? Is it too outrageous to call this crisis Genocide when you consider all of these aspects together as a whole?

Why are “less harm” or “harm reduction” programs enabling drug use rather than providing treatment programs for sick, longtime addicts?

Why is Portland at the bottom in the nation for funding Drug Treatment?

Why is Portland not getting chronic addicts into drug treatment?

Why are so many people being allowed to die from Fentanyl poisoning?

Is Portland supporting a drug fueled Genocide on its most vulnerable citizens?

~Theresa Griffin Kennedy