Community Alert: Hate Crime in Downtown Portland Last Night

On August 6th around 9-10pm a Latina woman was assaulted by a group of White men after she refused to acknowledge their initial harassment of her. They punched her and also threw garbage including beer bottles at her. The crime occurred on Stark and 13th Avenue in downtown Portland, OR. If you can identify any of the people in the photos or have any other information about this crime please contact the Portland police's non-emergency line @ 503-823-3333.

Community Alert: White Supremacist Literature Found in Milwaukee Neighborhood

KATU News broke this story earlier this week when a Milwaukee resident found these racist fliers left on cars along SE International Way. The pamphlets are mostly in Spanish and probably being used to target Latino immigrants for intimidation. They lead back to a White supremacist group. The Milwaukee woman who found them, Dinah Davis, told reporters she was horrified and that she wants the group to know they're not welcome in her neighborhood.

Please be aware and stay safe. Report and White supremacist activities to your local law enforcement officials, the media and Rose City Antifa.

It's Not Just Ice Cream

I rail about gentrification a lot, I know. I live in a city that is rapidly gentrifying around me so it is difficult not to. There have been many big issues that came up in our local media because of this, such as the bike lanes on Williams Street and leaving out Black community leaders in "urban development" projects.

I've alienated some friends recently because of my staunch stance on gentrification. Many of them don't understand why it's a bad thing. They only see the clean streets, the shiny new buildings and posh businesses that gentrification brings. The rest are inconvenient truths.

I got in an argument recently and was told  "it's just ice cream". Well, the thing is...it's not just ice cream. It's an entire row of expensive businesses like a shoe boutique, a posh ice cream store, topped by overpriced concrete lofts that no one from the neighborhood will ever be able to afford...all this where once a grassy knoll stood and people sunbathed, played music and sold their homemade goods. The ice cream represents something completely different for me, not just a fun new eatery to check out. I have to live here too. This is not the city I want.

I have lived in Portland since 2005 and I hardly recognize it lately. The gentrification of the city has been kicked into high gear with new businesses and building popping up every week. The new Portland has lost it's backbone. It's more friendly for the masses of upper Middle class White families flocking here. Rents are skyrocketing (when you can even find a vacancy), food is becoming more expensive and of course there are very few jobs. The livability for those of us who were here before is plummeting. The very fabric of the city is changing. For me and others, it's not about the fucking ice cream.

Classism & Homelessness: The Last Great American Prejudice

I want to foreword this post by saying that I do not believe racism, sexism or homophobia have been eradicated from our society I just believe it is less societally acceptable to perpetuate those prejudices than it is to be classist.

Recently I found myself questioning this idea of the acceptability of classism. I was a at gathering where there were few people I had met before. The conversation turned to homeless people, as Portland has a very large homeless population due to the availability of many social assistance programs and a vibrant street culture. A popular pastime of Portlanders (it seems) is to share stories about homeless encounters and generally bash the homeless population over drinks in a cosy atmosphere.

The partygoers exchanged various tales of how awful homeless people were here and how terrible it was to walk to work and run into someone begging for spare change. They waxed on how these people were just taking advantage of society, how they were lazy, how they were undeserving of human interaction.  The equation of negative interactions being much worse than what it is like being homeless is disingenuous, selfish and disgusting. I admit I have become desensitized to this bashing, but that evening the length of the sport became so protracted that I made up an excuse to leave with another friend of mine who afterwards shared his feelings of disgust about the attitudes of the other partygoers.

What fascinates me is people’s inability to conceptualize homeless people as people. They reduce them to nonhuman entities worthy only of revile and ignoring. I find this highly disturbing and problematic, especially as it has become so easy to fall out of your class now. There are many people who are becoming homeless who were middle class before. Foreclosures, banks, mental healthcare, job scarcity and a rise in living costs have all contributed to this. I think this is compounded by American society’s “bootstrap” idealization of success. People are measured by how well they survive on their own. We put very little validity on helping others and creating community. I say “we” but I really mean White upper-middle class capitalist Christian thinking (there are numerous communities in the United States such as Native Americans and Jewish people which are the opposite).

I have known people in my life who have become homeless temporarily or for long periods of time and I tried to help them in whatever way I could. One of my friends related to an acquaintance of mine that I was the only person he had known in his previous life before he had to sleep under a bridge that actually still spoke to him and acted as if nothing was different. I remember him still. I treated him with dignity and respect as I would treat all people. My friend was a homeless person. Homeless people are after all, people.

I encourage you to think about that next time you decide to join in some bitching about how annoyed you were that someone asked you for change. Keep your classism to yourself.

Cultural Diversity & Portland's White Heterosexual Middle Class Monoculture: An Open Letter to Meg Descamp

Dear Meg, I recently received a copy of my alma mater's alumni news magazine and your article "Is Portland really Portlandia?" angered me. I am frustrated especially in light of the recent Blackface incident in North Portland. You detailed a "cultural diversity" here in our city that I don't agree with. You wrote, They [the young professionals] are committed to Portland and to all the city has to offer: cultural diversity, natural beauty, and a progressive political and social climate.The irony-cum-hypocrisy was especially poignant with the photo of all the lily-white faces at Ms. Tunstall's sewing factory. Seriously?

Please explain to me how a city that is 76% White is culturally diverse. A city where Mars Hill Church, an unabashedly homophobic and sexist religious organization set up shop in what was once a hippy heartland (the Hawthorne neighborhood). How is a city progressive when it can't solve its issues with homelessness, rampant gentrification and when the police force has admitted that it racially profiles? How can a city call itself "liberal" when it consistently votes against police accountability and statutes to assist the homeless?

The "cultural diversity" buzz phrase really angers me the most. Portland is home to a large DIY, sustainable/green, crafty organic type of culture, but it is still a monoculture practiced by mostly White upwardly mobile Middle Class heterosexuals who want to dye themselves as unique and progressive. It's still just a monoculture.

How does that qualify as diverse? That is not diversity. Bike lanes, pop-up shops and organic grocery stores are not diversity. This is especially true when they are here to serve the monoculture. To call Portland diverse insults the experience of the poor, the people of color and the queer folks who have to somehow exist within the phobic, classist and Whitewashed culture that Portland has created.

Please stop ignoring us.

Sincerely,
A community member.

Portlandia Needs to Check Its Privilege

I've always had the sneaking suspicion that Fred Armisen, SNL darling and co creator of Portlandia, was a smug dickhead. I was right! 

Armisen, who ironically admits to living in the posh Pearl district (a-not-so-Portlandy neighborhood), was recently interviewed by the Willamette Week. The interviewer asked some tough questions of Freddy, which was right on, but he gave mostly non-commital answers. When pressured about Armisen & Brownstein's safe, if not unrealistic portrayal of Portland, this eloquent gem caught my eye: Armisen states,"In fact, that's kind of like, you know, our world, for a lack of a better word. White people, sort of like privileged people."

Let me stop you right there, Armisen. First of all, White people (in Portland) are not "sort of like privileged", you're definitely privileged. It is a privilege to be able to go about ignorant of people of color's experience because your city happens to be overly White in it's racial makeup and segregated otherwise. Second of all, I live in Portland, I'm not White and I can safely say the world Portlandia portrays is not my world. Those people, those characters, are the folks me and my friends (and yes, some of them are White too) don't want to be. We make fun of those people. We don't associate with those people. We try to be aware of our privileges, White, economic or otherwise.

I think the big problem with Portlandia for me personally is that you have the opportunity to make fun of ignorant silly White Portlanders but you choose not to. You can tackle gentrification, you can tackle subtle racism, you can tackle micro-aggressions and cultural appropriation: that shit happens here. Why not make fun of it? That is a way to subvert it. I think I'm giving Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein too much credit though, that they'd actually use their "art" to do something revolutionary. They choose not to, to play it safe, because they don't want to offend their target audience: White people.

Grow some balls, Portlandia. Until then, I won't be laughing at you.

Classism & Shoplifting Accusations: Why Intersectionality Matters

I went to a popular/famous bookstore here in Portland yesterday to find some thank-you cards and a gift for my friend. The device to enter my debit card password was acting up and the cashier treated me like it was my fault.

This reminded me of the time I was accused of stealing by one of their managers...I had been reading in the café there for my anthropology class and when I left, the security system went off. The security guard stopped me and the manager went all passively apeshit as they are wont to do here. She was very condescending and the security guard kept trying coerce me into admitting that I knew him. I was adamant in my refusal and denial. The item in question was a  book that I had bought at my college bookstore. It even had the sticker from that store still on it and was filled with my reading notes! It wasn't my fault that they couldn't find their only copy. It was humiliating.

I am aware that I am very White-passing, so I do not think that race was playing a factor. I do think that class was. When I was in college I dressed gothy or grungy (because it was cheap) and favored hoodies. I also had prominent piercings. I don't wear expensive looking clothes. I dress differently at work, but when I'm on my own time I dress how I please. What I notice is that people definitely treat me differently depending on the context and the clothing I'm wearing at the time. You never see well-dressed people being accused of stealing. This is why intersectionality matters. We have to be aware of all these things and how they work together.

Needless to say, I don't shop at that bookstore very often now.

Portland's Questionable Urban Development Strategies

I have complaining writing about gentrification and development of metropolitan Portland for some time now. It is a subject I think many people don’t want to examine. Recently, it came to my attention (in this PBJ May article) that city commissioners voted 3-1 to create a $169 million dollar “urban renewal area” around Portland State University. For geographical knowledge, PSU is in downtown, flanks the business district as well as the wealthy neighbourhoods around Good Hollow.  The Portland Business Journal said the move would “revitalize the sleepy south side of downtown” and that officials at Portland State claim it’s critical for PSU’s continued growth. (Sidebar: if PSU is growing, then why is it cutting student jobs and health care coverage?)

My apartment complex lies near PSU, on the edge of the so-called business district. As a long-time resident of the downtown area, I will bluntly say that this is an obscene waste of money and resources. This area absolutely does not need any “urban renewal”.

If you compare my neighbourhood to that of the Alberta neighbourhood, the N Williams area, Kenton area, or the Southeast Powell neighbourhoods…you can see we got it good. We have infrastructure that isn’t falling apart, we have direct access to a major grocery store and easy access to an organic grocery. The roads are not messed up, we can access the MAX, the streetcar, safe sidewalks, all of the bus lines and there are well-placed bike lanes. The major source of crime in the area is larceny, which is benign if you compare it to the major source of crime in neighbourhoods further out from the SE Hosford-Abernathy and Belmont neighbourhoods buffer or in North Portland.

In their 2011 November article “Market of No Choice”, the Willamette Weekly pointed out that the Portland Development Commission (another supporter of the urban renewal area) conducted a study that concluded a “high-end grocery store near Portland State University” was needed. Furthermore, it was also evident that the PDC’s study didn’t consider the “food deserts” of Portland. Food deserts are defined by the U.S. Department of Agriculture as concentrations of low-income residents living a mile or more from a large grocery store.

Instead, the study looked at high-income areas including the PSU site, Belmont and 10^th as well as two sites at the South Waterfront (the South Waterfront is nothing but high-rises with condos and overpriced townhouses. There are leases due to the housing market bubble, but the residents do not qualify as “low-income”).

Willamette Week further reported that the PDC’s spokeswoman Anne Mangan claimed the agency paid for the $18,700 study because it had heard complaints from downtown residents unhappy with their choice of grocery stores.

Let me break this down for you, assuming that most of the residents of downtown are high-income earners (which minus the students and low-income housing projects, they are); they already have more access (money) to be able to buy food at the grocery store of their choice. I researched mileage from my neighborhood (which is demographically high-income earners) and found four different grocery stores under a mile and a half away: the aforementioned Safeway is 0.5 or half a mile, a Whole Foods is 1 mile, a Fred Meyer is 1.2 miles and a Trader Joes is 1.4 miles away.

So why are these supposed downtown residents unhappy with their access to grocery stores? Two of their choices are high-end and Fred Meyer has all the basics with reasonable prices and quality. It’s true, Safeway isn’t the best…but it is still there. Downtown is not a food desert.

These actions and proposals show that the Portland Development Commission, the Portland Business Alliance, the mayor (also in favor) and city commissioners are not on the side of equality when it comes to access to basic needs for its residents. It looks like it’s pandering to a few whiny rich people honestly. Why not use the grant to improve roadways in Southeast (many with gigantic dangerous potholes), or build a grocery store in the Lents neighborhood of East Portland?

Perhaps most telling of all, the vice chairman of the Portland Multnomah Food Policy Council, David McIntyre, says he didn’t know the PDC was conducting the study and that “when it comes to food [access], this is an issue everywhere, but Portland can be a bit segregated.”

Think about it. Urban development/renewal reinforces the economic (and yes, still sometimes racial) segregation that splits our city. That’s gentrification at work.

More Portland Police Bureau Bullshit

In a SHOCKING (lol) article this week, the Portland Mercury stated that the latest data from the Portland Police Bureau on all traffic stops in 2010 shows that officers pulled over and searched Blacks and Latinos TWICE as much as they did to White Portlanders.

Now the 2010 census reported that Portland is 72.2% White and only 7.8 and 9.4% Black and Latino respectively. Theoretically more White people would be pulled over because of numbers, right?

Even more outrageous numbers in the Mercury article indicate that despite this trend, White Portlanders had a higher percentage (32%) of having contraband than  Latinos (23%) or Blacks (26%).

So what does that say about the PPB that we didn't already know? Despite the bureau's surprising admission that racism is playing a factor, it doesn't sound like they're doing much to curb it.

(Ed. note: You can read the full article here.)

UPDATE: The Ron Frashour Case

So, according to the Oregonian, lawyers for the city of Portland are arguing that the reinstatement of Ron Frashour, a Portland police officer fired in 2010 for using excessive force on an unarmed black man, Aaron Campbell, who then died from his injuries, would violate many statutes. These include but are not limited to violation of the city charter, the state constitution and also the national constitution. I am very pleased with this news and I hope that the city can continue holding up its decision to fire Frashour. He does not deserve to be reinstated. 


This would be an amazing step towards justice in our city because Portland has had a history of reinstating racist killer cops after they are removed from service. This would be the first time an arbitrators reinstatement decision is ignored and fought. 


For example: In 2009, Portland police officer Christopher Humphreys shot an unarmed 12-year old black girl with a shotgun at close range, on her own doorstep. He was suspended by the city commissioner but later reinstated after the Portland Police Association staged a rally and announced a no-confidence vote taken against the city commissioner and the chief of police.

In 2005, Portland police officer Scott McCollister shot Kendra James, a 21 year old black female and left her handcuffed and bleeding on the street to die. An all White jury found McCollister not guilty of excessive force and he was reinstated after arbitration. 


These are just a few examples of why our police force is out of control and needs to be stopped. They have a history of killing unarmed people of color or people with documented mental disorders and disabilities. And they get away with it.






(Ed. note: Thanks to the Portland Independent Media Center organization for continued vigilance and information on the history of Portland's racist killer cops.)

Personal Space: The Grocery Store is Not a Country Club

My friend S. recently told me a disturbing story. This is nothing new to me, but it was one of the first times he had experienced racism in Portland due to his experience. So you know, S. is half Moroccan like me, but he has darker skin than I do.

S. is health-concious and prefers shopping for his food at places like Whole Foods, New Seasons etc. He was in NW Portland's Whole Foods (located on the skirts of the Pearl District) last Sunday to do some shopping but he had to use the bathroom. Whole Foods has a customer only policy on bathrooms, and S. for all intents and purposes was a customer. He did not have the entry code on a receipt though, because he wasn't finished shopping. This is where the trouble started. S. waited while the bathroom was occupied and then tried to enter after an older White man came out. The man tried to stop S. from going in, demanding to see his receipt and when S. didn't answer him the man started calling for security. S. theorized to me that his skin color and his reticence (and possibly his attire) led the man to believe he didn't speak English nor was a customer of the store. It was humiliating and afterwards S. went to the manager and told him what happened. Fortunately the manager was sympathetic. Unfortunately there is nothing he can do about. Nor will it be the last time something like this happens.

I have had many experiences like S.'s and sadly I was not surprised by his story. I was disgusted, of course, and also saddened that he had to experience this. S. comes from a more multicultural/multiethnic community in Pennsylvania and I don't think he has had to confront other people perceiving him as an "Other" before.

I found myself thinking more about this incident and then about two days later I had an epiphany. Rich (and/or) White people constantly feel entitled to question the presence of people like us in a space that they perceive as "theirs". The neighborhood in which this particular grocery is located is demographically-speaking, overwhelmingly White and furthermore the Whole Foods brand attracts mostly wealthy White customers.

What I don't understand is why the customer decided to intervene. It really wasn't any of his business. That is what Whole Foods employs security guards for. Moreover, S. was carrying a Whole Foods bag, so theoretically he was also a customer. This man decided that my friend did not belong in his space, his neighborhood and felt threatened. Why do White people feel they can question this? The rest of us are certainly made to feel that we can't question gentrification, be it in our working class neighborhoods, our gay bars or our religious community centers.

The grocery store is not a country club.

Do you have Genovese Syndrome?

I was reading an article on my local paper about a woman who, during an episode related to a medical condition, fell onto the light-rail train tracks right as a train was approaching. According to witnesses and a security tape, it took over 20 seconds for anyone to respond and only one person actually jumped down to help her. Having witnessed many instances of this social disease and having been a victim of it myself, I have finally encountered a name for it: Genovese syndrome or "the bystander effect."


To put it simply, Genovese syndrome is the socio-psychological phenomenon when bystanders offer no help to people in a crisis situation. This is mostly exhibited by ignoring victims and according to the National Crime Victimization Survey, over 68% of violent physical assaults are witnessed by bystanders who take no action.


How hard is it to at least call 911? It was too hard for THIRTY-EIGHT of Kitty Genovese's (for the phenomenon was named) neighbors to call the police or offer assistance to the young woman who was sexually assaulted, stabbed and killed on the street in front of her apartment complex in 1964.


I remember two summers ago, I was taking the streetcar home from work. I was distracted, talking on my cellphone, in Spanish (I only mention this because it is relevant to what happened next), when I bumped into a man as I was trying to press the stop request button. The next thing I know is this man has me by the neck, with my back up to the wall of the vehicle and he is snarling all sorts of racist (anti-Latino) and homophobic remarks at me, lecturing me that I need to learn some "respect". To my horror, no one did anything. People just stared. Not even the streetcar operator had the stones to do anything. I had been assaulted and humiliated in public. I think the worst part of the whole incident was when the police department told me later on that there was nothing they could do.


Now I have a personal vendetta on public indifference. I think it is disgusting that people will not step in for their fellow citizens when something obviously illegal, life-threatening or offensive is occurring. It should be our duty as members of society to help those in immediate need.