Portland is Dying.
February 22, 2022.
My heart is heavy, tonight. My heart aches. I grieve.
Portland grieves.
I’m looking for answers. I’m looking for something, for some tangle of hope to hold onto during this dark chaotic time in Portland history. I want Portland to be okay, to prosper, to shine again. I want the city I grew up in, where I’ve lived for over 55 years to be safe again. I want Portland, (which is not the city many presume it was) to return to its former radiance, hope and efficiency.
It was a dangerous time growing up in Portland in the early 1970s, no matter what color you were, but it was a delight, too. We had fun. We were “free range” kids discovering the wonders of the world before that was even a thing, or a term, or a cause to disagree about or call the police on other parents for, accusing them of being unfit parents.
In the early 1970s in NW Portland, I lived near Native Americans who actually told me they prefer being called “Indians.” A Black family lived right next door to my family on NW Thurman Street. These were the people we interacted with. They were our friends.
Life was different then. You didn’t talk about race. It was considered rude to bring up race unless the person of color did and even then it wasn't something people discussed much. Times were different. In some ways much better, in other ways much worse.
We were kind and respectful to each other, just the same though. My mother and the white woman who had three biracial children next door had coffee together weekly. When the father John, a black man, was at work his wife Judy and my mother Doris often went grocery shopping together. They swapped driving duties in their station wagons as they laughed and talked about current events, TV shows, or the challenges of being mothers.
When they first moved in, I was 8, and the year was 1974. My mother had a family meeting to tell us, (her nine children) that a Black family had moved in next door. We were intrigued. We didn’t know any Black families in NW Portland and were excited because we knew there would be more kids to play with.
“You are to treat them the way you would treat anyone else,” my religious mother told us. “You need to be polite and make them feel welcome and play with their kids. You need to make them feel welcome and treat them like everyone else.” Because that’s what “God” would want us to do, she told us. And so we did.
My sisters and brothers and I played with John and Judy’s biracial children Tony, Carrie, and Mariah. We had fun, we ran outside playing tag, “police show” and Hide-n-Seek. We played in the sprinkler in summer, in the snow in winter. We shared our candy, talked about our favorite TV shows, complained about school, and our mean teachers, made cherry Kool Aid together on hot summer days, and drew on the sidewalks with colored chalk in the fall.
Their color was not something we thought about, or talked about. They were just our friends. We were innocent children and skin color just didn’t matter to us. I played with my Indian friends in the same way. They lived across the street at the Dover Apartments, Nunna, Shawn, Sonya, and Julia. We listened to the Bee Gee’s and danced to Staying Alive on the upper level porch until we got damp with sweat, laughing, trying to get the moves just right, imitating John Travolta.
No one ever used the N word, or made fun of my Indian friends in any way. It would have been rude to do that and we were taught not to be rude, because rudeness was “unkind” my mother always said. No one ever told me or my siblings we couldn’t play with our friends because they were a different color. They just became a part of the neighborhood and we played together, including our other friends, “the twins” Irene and Marie, two cute red-haired girls with auburn freckles and ready smiles.
My three older brothers became friends with a Chicano family that lived down the street. Able and his brother Jimmy often sat at our dinner table and had dinner, eating my mother’s delicious macaroni and cheese made with the sharp cheddar cheese they all loved. No one ever talked about the fact that Able and Jimmy were brown, they were just my brothers friends, and by extension they were all our friends.
But during those times in the 1970s there was institutionalized racism and it impacted my Black friends, my Chicano friends, and especially my Indian friends. I saw it. I felt it. In the cruelty of other people, people who were “unkind” as my mother described them, but it was rarely other children. It was usually always white middle aged teachers and staff at the grammar school where we all went to school together, Chapman Elementary.
Those times were a long, long time ago now, a lifetime ago in many respects.
Then decades later a horrible man named Trump happened to our country and everything was changed, but not for the better. His legacy has proven to be one of toxic hatred, of radicalism from both political sides and a resolute refusal by people to return to any kind of former decency, courtesy, or kindness.
People have learned to hate or at least be open about their hatred, and they seem to like it.
After four exhausting years of listening to Trumps daily onslaught Americans voted for a better man, a thoughtful man who has proven to be a relief compared to the constant negativity and ugliness of Trump.
Americans grew tired of Trump’s insanity, his incoherent drug induced ramblings, his race-hatred, woman-hatred, his crude, blunt language and vulgar profanity, his midnight rages on Twitter. His ignorance of anything like sound political policies, or economic solutions that make sense for all Americans and not just the one percenters was another aspect of Trumpism that people objected to, and ultimately voted out when they voted for Biden.
But because of Trump, our country has been irrevocably impacted, irrevocably damaged. And I wonder if we will ever return to kindness, to acceptance of difference, to genuine tolerance of people who are not like us.
Then the pandemic happened in 2020 and again the world was changed.
And here we are in Portland, grieving after days of traumatic gun violence which has left Portlanders reeling and in dismay. A woman has been murdered after a failed protest resulted in a mass shooting by a deranged conservative man named Ben Smith. Four other people are recovering from gunshot wounds and the man, Smith, who was also shot in the melee is in custody and facing murder charges. But thankfully this man is off the streets and will not harm anyone else.
Only one day after that tragedy a family returning from shopping was shot up in what appears to be a random drive-by shooting in SE Portland. The mother was killed, the father is in critical condition and the two toddlers also shot up, but expected to survive.
Portland is grieving. And I am grieving.
I am grieving for the innocent, well-meaning people wanting to make the world a better place but going about it all wrong by othering people instead. By reinforcing an Us vs Them dynamic that only dehumanizes folks in the process and creates sides that cannot be bridged.
I grieve for the people who can’t see past their differences, and choose not to see the humanity inherent in their neighbor, their former friend, or a stranger on the street. I grieve for the little nobody people trying to make the world better, who get caught in the crossfire and die, like June Knightley and the other currently unnamed SE Portland woman, also murdered for no apparent reason.
People are dying in Portland. They are dying.
And we in Portland are dealing with the incredible sorrow and anger over a series of failed policies that have had catastrophic results on all the citizens of this city by three failed leaders.
Those leaders are: Ted Wheeler, Mike Schmidt and JoAnn Hardesty. All horrible examples of absolute failed leadership, ignorance and elitism.
We are a city divided. We have conservatives who hate liberals because they do not agree on everything. We have liberals who hate conservatives because they do not agree on everything. Their hatred is all consuming. They firmly believe they are in the right camp, hating their political enemies with such fervor that they lose the ability to be rational or logical, or kind.
They embrace extremism and radicalism which literally benefits no one.
Liberals hate police and focus only on the ways police, (human beings capable of human error) make mistakes. They feel sorry for the little man, the criminal, or the mentally ill person who might be “just turning their life around,” while conservatives feel empathy for the regular working man trying to support his family, and the hard working men and women of law enforcement who daily have to see people at their very worst behavior.
People from both political camps absolutely refuse to have any common ground. None. They steadfastly refuse to see their opponents as human. They objectify those who do not agree with every aspect of their political stance and are unapologetic when they turn away from each other.
Is there not a way we can try to expand our consciousness and see BOTH sides? Does this Us vs. Them stance really promote peace, harmony, social equity or racial justice?
The three leaders in this city who have failed Portland, Ted Wheeler, Mike Schmidt and JoAnn Hardesty MUST be replaced with balanced and intelligent leaders who will not vilify police or anyone else.
I identify as a Moderate Democrat, but like many people in this current world, I’m far from perfect. I find myself disgusted with extreme liberalism, but I am also disgusted with extreme conservative ideology, too. Anyone who knows me knows that I detest radicalism or extremism in any form and that I will not choose sides.
I’ve been known to debate with extremists myself, on both camps, while on social media, disagree with them about various things, and agree with them about other things. But that’s what people do, they try to share ideas, they try to understand each other, and often they disagree. But at least I try to find common ground, something not all people in Portland try to achieve.
What I think ALL Portlanders can agree on is that we no longer feel safe living in Portland, and the policies that were supposed to result in better safety, racial equity and social harmony have not materialized, as promised by the three aforementioned political leaders who have failed all of us.
The leaders in Portland who promised us that Defunding the Police by millions and firing the Gun Violence Reduction Team would result in better public safety in Portland have failed in their careless social experiment.
This social experiment has FAILED. It has resulted in 92 homicides in 2021 alone, just last year. 92 people lost their lives in Portland because our elected officials do not know how to lead or govern this city. They have not created sound, reasonable and rational policies, which address issues like racial equity, public safety, and addressing the need for law enforcement to identify, arrest and incarcerate predators and criminals who prey on others, including vulnerable children.
The politicians have adopted trendy policies with no data to support the policies ever working or being successful in real time. They have destroyed former public safety policies that were effective and were working, again all in an effort to be trendy and popular.
These three leaders have FAILED all of Portland.
Obviously, Portland needs better leaders and sound public safety policies that work. Policies that do not involve rewarding dangerous criminals with the freedom to return to the streets and commit more crimes. Or policies that punish the working Portland residents, some whom were just returning with their children from food shopping to make dinner.
Adopting trendy policies that prove how “woke” politicians are do nothing to create public safety for the citizens of Portland.
Perhaps most of all we need to think about NOT hurting each other anymore. About NOT being unkind, dismissive, rageful, judgmental, or aggressive with each other. Portlanders need to think about the city that they want to exist in the future.
Do we want a No Man’s Land, a WILD WILD WEST to be the new Portland, where gun violence prevails, and women and girls are regularly being raped and prostituted? Or do we want Portland to return to some semblance of sanity, and again become that city that was once voted one of America’s most “livable” cities?
Portlanders need to do some serious soul searching and make some real quantifiable changes in leadership. We need common sense policies that are proven with best practices data, based on sound research, and not unproven, trendy social experiments that result in absolute chaos and overall bedlam.
The Defund the Police Trend failed NATIONWIDE.
This is a known, quantifiable FACT and it has been proven with empirical research and numbers crunching in multiple states. It does NOT benefit anyone to cripple police departments by gutting funding, and preventing needed training (police training is a CONTINUOUS process and always will be) or preventing the purchase of regular equipment that is an integral part of law enforcement.
I think we all know these things, and that they have already been proven.
A changing of the guards is LONG overdue!
Theresa Griffin Kennedy