PORTLAND, Ore. – Today, Multnomah County District Attorney Mike Schmidt announced that 64-year-old Paul Rivas is charged with murder in the second degree and other related charges for his alleged role in the vehicular homicide of 77-year-old Jean Gerich and the vehicular assault of at least six other people.
Rivas is charged with one count of murder in the second degree, seven counts of failure to perform the duties of a driver and six counts of assault in the second degree.
It is alleged that Rivas used his vehicle as a dangerous weapon to cause the death of Ms. Gerich and to cause physical injury to at least six other people.
This investigation started on January 25, 2021 when the Portland Police Bureau responded to multiple reports of a vehicle described as a Honda Element traveling at a high rate of speed and intentionally striking multiple people in the areas of Southeast Stark Street and Southeast Belmont Street between approximately Laurelhurst Park and Southeast 17th Avenue.
Law enforcement identified Rivas as the driver of the Honda Element.
During the investigation, law enforcement spoke with numerous witnesses and learned Rivas appeared to be deliberately attempting to strike nearby vehicles, bicyclists and pedestrians by swerving towards them while in the roadway and while on the sidewalk.
The Axis of Anarchy immediately began frantically calling the act political terrorism. Despite it dominating local news for the day, the bodies weren’t cleared from the street before the usual sources, their hope barely concealed, were off to the races (excuse the phrase) in characterizing the “white” male driver as a potential political terrorist, and the media as covering it up.
When the man with the Hispanic name was revealed to be just another crazy Portlander their interest snapped back like a rubber band. Watching the hysteria I was reminded of the chaos following 9/11, when Islamic terrorists were thought to be lurking everywhere; at its height someone called the police after he thought he saw Saddam Hussein in a diner.
One man was killed in a stabbing Sunday night in the 100 block of Northeast 120th Avenue, Portland police said.
Officers were called to the area about 5:30 p.m. and found the man dead at the scene.
Homicide detectives responded and are continuing to investigate.
Police did not say whether anyone has been arrested.
Turns out the victim was facing charges for bombing the federal courthouse and assaulting a marshal
A 19-year-old man, accused of tossing an explosive through a broken window of the downtown Portland federal courthouse in July and injuring a deputy U.S. marshal, was killed Sunday in Portland, according to a source with knowledge of the matter.
Isaiah Jason Maza Jr. was fatally stabbed in the 100 block of Northeast 120th Avenue, according to the source, who confirmed Maza’s identity but is not authorized to speak on behalf of the Portland Police Bureau.
Officers were called to the scene about 5:30 p.m. and found Maza dead.
In August, Maza appeared in the Mark O. Hatfield United States Courthouse on allegations of assault on a federal officer using a dangerous weapon and depredation of federal government property.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Gary Sussman described Maza as a “very dangerous man” who was caught on video tearing plywood off the window. He is then seenlighting the fuse, dropping the hand-sized explosive device inside the lobby of the courthouse “then watching with his cellphone for the explosion.”
At the time of the July 22 incident, Maza was on pretrial release from a state first-degree criminal mischief charge. That charge was still pending at the time of his death.
PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) — The Tigard Police Department announced the identity of a victim in a stabbing death as Leroy Xavier Wass-Morill.
The law enforcement agency launched a homicide investigation after a stabbing victim died at a hospital Friday night.
Around 9:45 p.m., officers received a 911 call from a man living in the 11500 block of SW Hall Boulevard saying he had been stabbed.
First responders soon arrived to the Silver Creek Apartments and attended to the stab wounds of the 22-year-old man. Despite life-saving efforts, the man was later pronounced dead at a nearby hospital.
This happened in the normally sleepy south west of Portland, near me. South West in da crazy house yo!
SALEM, Ore. (AP) — Police in Oregon can no longer arrest someone for possession of small amounts of heroin, methamphetamine, LSD, oxycodone and other drugs as a ballot measure that decriminalized them took effect on Monday.
Instead, those found in possession would face a $100 fine or a health assessment that could lead to addiction counseling. Backers of the ballot measure, which Oregon voters passed by a wide margin in November, hailed it as a revolutionary move for the United States.
“Today, the first domino of our cruel and inhumane war on drugs has fallen, setting off what we expect to be a cascade of other efforts centering health over criminalization,” said Kassandra Frederique, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, which spearheaded the ballot initiative.
Ballot Measure 110’s backers said treatment needs to be the priority and that criminalizing drug possession was not working. Besides facing the prospect of being locked up, having a criminal record makes it difficult to find housing and jobs and can haunt a person for a lifetime.
Two dozen district attorneys had opposed the measure, saying it was reckless and would lead to an increase in the acceptability of dangerous drugs.
Instead of facing arrest, those found by law enforcement with personal-use amounts of drugs would face a civil citation, “like a traffic ticket,” and not a criminal citation, said Matt Sutton, spokesman for the Drug Policy Alliance.
Under the new system, addiction recovery centers will be tasked with “triaging the acute needs of people who use drugs and assessing and addressing any on-going needs thorough intensive case management and linkage to care and services.”
The law will transfer a bounty of public funds to groups associated with the Drug Policy Alliance in creating their regime of “recovery centers”.
The addiction recovery centers will be funded by millions of dollars of tax revenue from Oregon’s legalized marijuana industry. That diverts some funds from other programs and entities that already receive it, like schools.
The ballot measure capped the amount of pot tax revenue that schools; mental health alcoholism and drug services; the state police; and cities and counties receive at $45 million annually, with the rest going to a “Drug Treatment and Recovery Services Fund.”
The fund will be awash in money if the sales trend for marijuana continues as expected.
In the 2020 fiscal year, marijuana tax revenues peaked at $133 million, a 30% increase over the previous year, and a 545% increase over 2016, when pot taxes began being collected from legal, registered recreational marijuana enterprises around the state.
I wondered if people were shorting Gamestop as it reached new highs, and it appears they have been.
Short Interest is Still High
GameStop short interest is 39% as of the open this morning. While this is much lower than the 120% levels we saw last week, there are still a decent amount of shorts who would need to cover if the price shoots up again.
Also, remember that short interest was artificially driven down by the massive volume from last week. Short interest equals shares short divided by the float, meaning short interest would decrease if float increases, even if no one covered. This could mean that there are still a large amount of shorts who need to cover.
New Shorts Created This Week
Plenty of traders entered short positions over the last two days thinking that the short squeeze is over. If they end up being wrong and GME spikes again, they may have to cover, which would cause the price to spike again.
A counterattack of short sellers looking to take advantage of the price rise has stepped in. If the redditor camp holds the line, they could trounce a whole new set of shorties.
LONDON (Reuters) – Shorting shares in GameStop, the video game retailer at the centre of the ongoing retail trading frenzy, cost hedge funds a total $12.5 billion over January, data from financial analytics firm Ortex showed on Monday.
The losses were inflicted by small-time investors who piled into GameStop, pushing up the shares and forcing many hedge funds to buy them back to cover losses. GameStop shares are up 1600% year-to-date.
Ortex data showed $5.9 billion worth of GameStop shares were out on loan as of Friday or 49% of the total freefloat.
Something similar is happening in Europe to Cineworld, which appears to be an AMC-type play
In Europe, short-sellers booked $28 million loss on their bets against Cineworld. Almost 24% of its freefloat is on loan.
In Olympia Washington a newly organized Soros subsidiary calling itself Oly Housing Now, which appears to be an offshoot of Tacoma Housing Now, another brand new outfit, took over a Red Lion motel and was forcibly removed by police
Police in Washington state on Sunday night were evicting homeless people and activists from a hotel in downtown Olympia, after a group moved into the site and refused to leave until they were given shelter.
Police received multiple 911 calls from employees at the Red Lion around 11am on Sunday saying numerous individuals were entering their lobby armed with batons, knives and axes, King 5 News reported.
One employee was assaulted as they tried to close the doors and the rest fled to the basement, according to an Olympia police spokesperson.
The city has already conceded somewhat
Deitz said her group wants Thurston County to apply for funding that’s being offered by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to pay for ‘non-congregate’ shelter for people who are aged over 65, and vulnerable to COVID-19.
Oly Housing Now also released a list of demands for the city of Olympia that include providing sanitation, restrooms, and other ‘resources to meet the COVID-19 CDC hygiene recommendations.’
The city currently supplies several encampments with port-a-potties and dumpsters.
They also want additional ‘impact fees’ on luxury and commercial properties in the city, to fund the homeless programs.
Keylee Marineau, the Homeless Coordinator for Thurston County, told the paper she went to the hotel on Sunday and talked with organizers.
She said the county is looking into the federal funding program.
‘We’re actively pursuing avenues to understand how the homeless-specific funds for FEMA work,’ she said.
The activists, or the organizations behind them, have done their homework, and the city hasn’t. It will be a huge win and precedent if activists force this strategy on the city. It isn’t beyond the realm of possibility this is all kabuki coordinated with state and/or local politicians. In either case even partial victory for the anarchists here makes them a player.
The group released a statement
Two-month old Tacoma Housing Now couples its homeless advocacy with police abolition. The Red Lion action is part of a coordinated national movement to pivot away from Black Lives Matter advocacy into homeless advocacy with the vague but all-encompassing “Land Back” theme on behalf of the “Indigenous” overlaid over everything now, an invocation they see as negating all opposition.
The city has shelter beds, and as everywhere long-term housing comes with sensible strings attached regarding drug use and criminal behavior. Oly Housing Now et al reject these options as insufficient and overly restrictive.
Their long game appears to be to make themselves the responsible party for housing an endless stream of homeless, building a power base around that. Perhaps they envision eventually being responsible for free housing for a broad section of the population; a power-base that would make them formidable.
Meanwhile in Portland anarchists are organizing to prevent the clearing out of a 5 year-old tiny-house homeless encampment known as Hazelnut Grove. The city says the site is unsafe and wants to move them to a new tiny house village in St Johns (the site was vandalized recently). As with the Red Lion siege, homeless “advocates” won’t accept any city authority or action short of their own demands. Their aim is to wrestle this function away from the city and to expand it, along with their power. Activists demand housing on demand without restrictions. Upon the creation of camps like Hazelnut Grove, which the city has been trying to close for over two years, anarchists then step in to demand their preservation as such. The city isn’t outfitted to move entire camps about, and establishing that as a precedent would make it impossible to clear the streets of homeless campers, which of course is fine with our Axis of Anarchy–either the city capitulates and turns over its homeless policies to the anarchists or it’s forever framed as brutally clearing the streets of whole “communites”.
During the evening and overnight hours, Portland Police officers responded to multiple shootings throughout the city of Portland.
On Wednesday…Northeast Fremont Street. Officers confirmed that an occupied vehicle was hit with gunfire. At least one occupied apartment was also struck by bullets (21-24790). No one was hurt.
At 9:34p.m., East Precinct officers were dispatched to a report of shots fired near Southeast 122nd Avenue and Southeast Salmon Street. Witnesses described two vehicles driving northbound where occupants appeared to be shooting at each other. Some evidence was recovered. No known injuries.
At 11:37p.m., North Precinct officers were dispatched to a report of someone shot at a house in the 1800 block of Northeast Marine Drive. They arrived and located a victim with serious injuries, who was transported to a hospital. Assault Detectives are investigating (21-25047).
On Thursday, January 28, 2021 at 12:30a.m., North Precinct officers were dispatched to a report of a shooting in the 9100 block of North Mohawk Avenue. They discovered that a suspect fired one round at someone from a vehicle and drove away (21-25118). No injuries reported.
At 3:20a.m., East Precinct officers were dispatched to a report of shots heard in the 100 block of Northeast 129th Avenue. When the arrived they located evidence of gunfire. They checked area homes and found at least one hit by bullets that was occupied by a mom and her two kids. No one was injured. Several parked cars were struck. A gun was also found at the scene (photos, 21-25144). No known injuries.
At 4:38a.m., North Precinct officers responded to a shooting in the 9500 block of North Buchanan Avenue that resulted in the death of a victim (see previous press release).
At 8:00a.m., officers from Central Precinct responded to the 3100 block of Southeast McLoughlin Boulevard on a report of a shot fired through a window. It was not confirmed whether it was a bullet or some other kind of projectile.
With these events, there have been over 80 shooting incidents so far this year.
A victim is in the hospital with a serious injury after an assault in the Laurelhurst Neighborhood.
On Thursday, January 28, 2021 at 2:25a.m., Central Precinct officers were dispatched to a report of an assault near Southeast 37th Avenue and Southeast Oak Street. When they arrived they located a victim with a serious injury. The victim, an adult male, was transported to a hospital by ambulance. His injuries are believed to be life-threatening. The nature of the injuries is still under investigation.
A shooting call in the St. Johns Neighborhood has become a homicide investigation after a woman was found deceased.
On Thursday, January 28, 2021 at 4:38a.m., North Precinct officers were called to a report of shots fired in the 9500 block of North Buchanan Avenue. Officers arrived and found an adult female with a possible gunshot wound. Paramedics confirmed the woman was deceased.
Progressive activists have created a Political Action Committee (PAC) to recall Mayor Ted Wheeler and City Commissioner Dan Ryan.
The “Total Recall PAC” hopes to unseat both recently elected politicians because of their perceived resistance to police reform efforts within City Hall. In a Tuesday press release, the PAC accused Ryan of misleading voters who supported him in the August special election for pledging to support police accountability—but then voting against a proposal to shrink the Portland Police Bureau’s $230 million budget by $18 million.
The PAC was founded on November 5 by two Portland transparency advocates: Lawyer Alan Kessler, known for challenging the city on public records requests, and Seth Woolley, a former city council candidate and campaign finance reform proponent.
“I voted for Dan Ryan because he led me to believe he was a staunch advocate for police reform,” said Kessler, in the press release. “After his refusal to vote for Commissioner Hardesty’s budget reduction amendment, I feel betrayed. I want my vote back. I want an apology.”
The press release also noted that in the November 3 election, Wheeler was re-elected with only 46 percent of the vote—meaning more Portlanders voted against Wheeler than for him.
“Wheeler ran a dirty campaign, violating multiple campaign-finance laws that nearly all of us voted for, and he still couldn’t convince a majority of the city he should be mayor,” said Athul Acharya, a local civil rights attorney, who is also quoted in the press release.
The group says they’ll start collecting signatures next summer.
According to the state’s guidelines, a recall election can only take place after a candidate has been in office for at least six months. Petitioners must first collect at least 35,925 signatures from registered Portland voters to force a recall election.
The PAC says it will start collecting signatures for the recall campaign next summer.
Your money they’ll collect now.
New commissioner Dan Ryan voted against Jo Ann Hardesty’s bill to gouge another 18 million from police and instantly became persona non grata with the “community”, by which progressives mean not the whole community of Portland but the minority community of black and brown and black Portlanders. Yes, I said “black” twice. Though, bad as it would be if they were actually running the city on behalf of its least productive, they frankly don’t represent the average black or brown Portlander, who, despite (or because) of all the lunatic gaslighting of the last year, doesn’t share their radical ideas about defunding the police.
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — A lawyer who Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler hit with pepper spray after the man aggressively confronted him on Sunday has released a statement expressing remorse.
“I am remorseful for my decision to confront Mayor Wheeler on Sunday, Jan. 24, and I am sorry he felt the need to use pepper spray,” Cary Cadonau, 48, said in the statement.
According to police, Wheeler pepper-sprayed Cadonau after the lawyer videotaped him and a former mayor leaving a restaurant.
Ted Wheeler comes from timber money. His opponent has a share of the Alpenrose Dairy fortune. Yes, he’s a dairy heir. Antifa and progressive Portland are enjoying that aspect of it and posting memes.
The majority of downtown Portland businesses owners believe that the city’s core is no longer safe, according to a survey conducted by Downtown Portland Clean & Safe, a nonprofit and affiliate partner of the Portland Business Alliance.
In a survey conducted between Nov. 15 and Dec. 31, 2020, 62% of downtown businesses owners said that the central city was no longer safe, a nearly threefold increase from when the survey was last conducted in 2018.
The merchants surveyed also expressed increased concerns about vandalism and graffiti, a lack of cleanliness and rising homelessness in downtown…
The pandemic has kept tourists and office workers away from the city’s core, contributing to a sharp decline in foot traffic. The number of homeless people camping downtown has risen dramatically during the pandemic as well and Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler’s plan to move them into shelters hasn’t panned out.
Moving homeless into shelters involves sweeps of larger camps. Antifa turns out in opposition and has managed to turn the cops away in some cases, most notoriously in the case of the Red House autonomous zone, which, despite antifa casting it as an “eviction defense”, was a failed homeless sweep, with the police being chased out of the neighborhood.
Downtown Portland business owners have been complaining for months about a sharp uptick in vandalism and other crime, often committed by people who have used protests for racial justice as a cover. Protests that consumed downtown nearly every night last summer dwindled in the fall, but there have been several direct-action demonstrations in the last several months where downtown businesses have been damaged.
A third of businesses said they planned to relocate in the next two years, with only 6% saying they would relocate to another space downtown. That compares to 17% that said they planned to relocate within two years when the survey was last conducted in 2018. However, 50% of those planning to relocate at that time were planning to remain downtown.
Black Apple Update
Portland’s downtown Apple store has been boarded up since rioters tried breaking through the store’s thick glass walls on the first night of 2020’s Black Lives Matter campaign. Graffiti art soon covered the black plywood used to encase the store and was left there for months–like much of the riot art around downtown.
Businesses may fear repercussions for taking the art down now; Apple is delicately removing theirs.
The first of the now familiar totemic George Floyd heads that loom like Big Brother here and there was drawn below the Apple logo the day after the company boarded up their glass walls with black plywood that provided an ideal canvas, probably by design.
It was also desecrated, when someone gave George ruby red lips, a pencil-thin handlebar moustache and red eyes. Someone wrote “criminal” over another; later someone wrote “fentanyl” across George’s broad nose. The original George head has since been removed and is missing from the video below.
Oh the inanity
Note here and there other acts of desecration still visible. That likely influenced Apple’s decision of a few weeks ago to encase the precious art in another layer of black plywood, which, miraculously remained blank for a few days; the company announced they’d donated the art to local activist group Don’t Shoot PDX. Apple’s announcement:
“Artists in the Portland community reimagined the blank canvas surrounding our Pioneer Place Apple Store and created a monumental art piece honoring the ongoing fight for justice and the lives of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery. Apple stands in support of the artists and all who are fighting for social and racial justice”
Yesterday I returned to the scene to find the store has now erected the chain-link and traffic barrier around the store while they dismantle the boards. A lonely security guard shadowed me from within while I took these pictures.
Meanwhile the battle between Wheeler’s technocratic neoliberal class and the Axis of Anarchy goes on. The mayor, determined to bring antifa under control and restore the city’s rapidly deteriorating economy and downtown, brought in fellow moderate (such as that is in this context) former mayor Sam Adams to help out. For some reason, perhaps due to Adams’ not being popular with the Axis, Wheeler isn’t making him chief of staff (despite the job recently opening and Adams’ having served in that role for Bolshevik*-descended former mayor Vera Katz).
Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler today announced the addition of two new staff members to his office: Dr. Markisha Smith, who will serve as the Mayor’s special advisor on racial justice and equity while continuing to lead the City’s Office of Equity and Human Rights, and Sam Adams, who will serve as director of strategic innovations and lead work on key second-term policy priorities.
Dr. Smith has served as Director of the City’s Office and Equity and Human Rights since February 2019. She previously served as Director for the Office of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion at the Oregon Department of Education. She worked as a high school and college educator prior to joining the department. Smith has a doctorate in education from Texas Southern University.
“Adding Dr. Smith to my team ensures her work will be given the platform it needs. She will provide valuable expertise to my office and will help us center equity as we implement my second term agenda,” Mayor Wheeler said.
“Over the years, the Office of Equity team has helped build the foundation of racial justice in the City. With this new role, I look forward to helping Mayor Wheeler and City Council further institutionalize equity in the City’s policies and culture to better serve our currently and historically systemically oppressed communities,” Dr. Smith said.
Sam Adams served as Portland’s mayor from 2009 to 2012. Previously, Adams served one term as a Portland city commissioner and served as Portland Mayor Vera Katz’s chief of staff for 11 years.
Following his time as mayor, Adams served as the executive director of the City Club of Portland and the United States Director for the World Resources Institute, a global nonprofit climate action think tank based in Washington, D.C.
“Sam’s knowledge of Portland City Hall and his track record of action and getting things done is much welcomed,” Mayor Wheeler said. “He’s innovative, smart and energetic. He will play an important role in advancing my second term priorities.”
Mayor Wheeler’s second term priorities include reducing homelessness and the impacts of street camping, cleaning up garbage and graffiti, improving public safety and responding to the COVID-19 pandemic and the recession it has caused.
Dr. Smith will assume her role as advisor effective February 8. Sam Adams will begin work on Monday, February 1.
*correction: Menshevik descended; Katz’ forebears fled the Bolsheviks
In April, GameStop was a struggling video game and electronics retailer trying to sort out its future as the pandemic worsened consumer trends that were already working against it. The chain was losing money and staring down a long-underway shift in the gaming industry that pushed business away from GameStop’s brick-and-mortar model. (It turns out people don’t like walking into stores during a pandemic to buy games they could just download from home.) The company had posted $470 million in losses in 2019, eight years after reporting a $340 million profit. Right as the pandemic hit, it announced it would close 300 locations permanently. GameStop’s stock price on April 1 was $3.25…
GameStop has not, as far as anyone knows, completed the greatest comeback story in the history of free enterprise. But it has had one of the most memorable runs on the stock market ever. It’s a story that encapsulates quite a lot about life in 2021: the democratization of financial markets, the mobilization of a giant online community, and the ability of obsessed amateurs to alter reality when they put their minds to it, especially when there isn’t much else to do.The tale of GameStop’s stock price will be taught in business schools one day, no matter how it ends.
The tale of GameStop’s stock price—and the central role of a subreddit called r/WallStreetBets—will be taught in business schools one day, no matter how it ends. The stock had been in steady decline since late in 2015, when the company reported disappointing earnings. GameStop, which was founded in 1984, had a simple business model: selling video games and equipment out of its physical locations. That became less lucrative as it became more common for gamers to buy games online, generally from non-GameStop sources, and download them directly to their consoles or PCs. The pandemic crash in March brought the stock to an all-time low, and a slight rebound over the spring and summer lagged behind the major indexes.
Hedge funds had been shorting the stock for a while when an investor bought a huge stake and took three seats on the board of directors with the intention of restructuring the company. Redditers using their 600 dollar stimulus checks colluded to buy the stock and drive the price up–squeezing the short sellers, now holding contracts to buy stock at many times the discount expected.
The top securities regulator in Massachusetts said the New York Stock Exchange should halt trading in GameStop stock for 30 days so it can “cool down.” Retail traders—often using options–have helped propel the stock more than 1,000% this year. On Wednesday alone, shares were up more than 100%.
“I really think at this point it calls upon the regulators, in this case, the New York Stock Exchange, to consider simply suspending it for a month and stop trading it,” William Galvin, the Secretary of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, told Barron’s. “These small and unsophisticated investors are probably going to get hurt by this.”
The idea of novices coming in late and getting wrecked never seems to bother them when they’re profiting from it.
White House Press Secretary Jean Psaki adjusted her red hair and said in press conference Joe “turn on the radio” Biden is monitoring the situation. We continue to do so as well.
The server has been on our Trust & Safety team’s radar for some time due to occasional content that violates our Community Guidelines, including hate speech, glorifying violence, and spreading misinformation. Over the past few months, we have issued multiple warnings to the server admin.
Today, we decided to remove the server and its owner from Discord for continuing to allow hateful and discriminatory content after repeated warnings.
To be clear, we did not ban this server due to financial fraud related to GameStop or other stocks. Discord welcomes a broad variety of personal finance discussions, from investment clubs and day traders to college students and professional financial advisors. We are monitoring this situation and in the event there are allegations of illegal activities, we will cooperate with authorities as appropriate.
One realizes there probably aren’t any platforms out there that couldn’t be shut down by citing a past of “occasional content” violating community guidelines. All must be virgins.
The chaos of Portland’s Trump years culminating in the Summer of Soros is taking its toll on real estate values, and the city has plummeted in national desirability rankings
At a Jan. 5 budget meeting for the city’s Bureau of Development Services, economists advising the bureau on the outlook for new construction presented dismal news: Portland has gone from one of the most desirable locations in the country just four years ago to near the bottom of an 80-city ranking.
That ranking was compiled by the Urban Land Institute in a report titled “Emerging Trends in Real Estate 2021.” It shows that a survey of more than 1,300 lenders, investors, developers and other national real estate experts found Portland the third-most desirable real estate market in the nation in 2017. For 2021, it now ranks 66th of 80 cities on the list…
In a Jan. 8 letter to the Portland City Council, eight local business organizations amplified that finding and the grim assessment of two economists who advise BDS. Tom Potiowsky, formerly the state economist and formerly chair of the economics department at Portland State University, said at a recent BDS meeting, according to the letter, that Portland was unique: He could not think of another example of “an area that has so quickly fallen into disfavor.”
The mayor told each of the four commissioners his top priorities: “livability, homelessness and safety.” Within that, he offered some specifics. He wants Ryan, the city’s point person on housing, to pursue options for reducing people sleeping on the streets, including “additional private sector partnerships, safe camp zones, and increased acquisition of facilities.”
Clearing the homeless from the streets will be tricky, giving antifa another emotional issue and vector of attack. They routinely turn out in numbers to oppose law enforcement “sweeps” of large encampments. In line with that goal Wheeler is asking for Jo Ann Hardesty to speed up her long-developing program to send social workers with and sometimes in place of cops to mental health and domestic calls.
And he wants Hardesty to move aggressively on Portland Street Response, the pilot program aimed at a safer, more effective approach to 911 calls involving Portlanders experiencing homelessness or mental illness. As Oregon Public Broadcasting first reported, Wheeler asked Hardesty to “find ways to move more quickly toward implementation. In particular, I ask that you consider creative staffing models which may be more cost-effective and faster to establish.”
I suspect police have already withdrawn from engaging the homeless and mentally ill; meanwhile Hardesty’s dangerous-sounding idea has lagged behind schedule since before the summer–probably because sending defenseless social workers to dangerous mental health calls sounds great (to some) but proves tricky once you try to implement it.
Beyond those big-picture goals, Wheeler’s fixated on two small-bore goals important to the business interests that supported his reelection: reopening a troubled downtown park and bolstering food carts.
On Jan. 12, Wheeler wrote to his four City Council colleagues—two of whom, Commissioners Carmen Rubio and Mingus Mapps, took office this month while one, Commissioner Dan Ryan, assumed his post in September.
Wheeler has hired popular former mayor Sam Adams to help. The business-friendly aspirational faction, such as it is, now dominates Portland’s city council with three newcomers and Jo Ann Hardesty now the lone radical.
The sleek glass-cube Apple store in downtown Portland has been boarded up since it came under attack on the very first night of BLM rioting, May 29.
Rioters had no luck breaking the store’s remarkably sturdy glass on that first night.
The plywood went up the next day and soon was covered in graffiti. A tall, solemn George Floyd head was painted where the doors had been, the white Apple logo like a halo over his head. As if from this totemic focal point graffiti art spread over the city, following the spread of plywood going up so fast it had become scarce. Louis Vuitton and other high-end shops in the problematically named Pioneer Place across the street got the same treatment, and remain open but hidden in their once airy now cavernous space behind guarded heavy wooden doors, in a hair-shirt of BLM propaganda.
June 6
June 30
Long before and after Proud Boy Aaron Danielson was shot and killed by an antifa gunman downtown, graffiti calling for the murder of group members appeared (this is still there as of this writing):
Mission accomplished, but no one cares.
Small acts of defiance appeared here and there in the graffiti, sometimes dealt with comically. When someone wrote “criminal” over one of the many George Floyd visages that dot downtown (like the Easter Island heads they resemble) someone else came along and tried to make a halo of it. The desecration below lasted days before someone noticed.
Posters for white victims of black violence have appeared as well, but it’s not clear anyone notices.
When someone did this to the original George Floyd head I thought we might have rioting all over again:
It’s eight months now Apple has been unable or unwilling to reclaim its store. The company’s glass-walled showroom model is untenable post George Floyd when peaceful protests could happen on any given day; all that glass is irresistible.
Obviously Apple can afford the bleeding (the loss of the Apple store probably hits the city harder than it hits Apple). The embarrassment is probably nothing too–this is BLM Apple is caving to, mind you.
But in acquiescing to their BLM makeover by leaving it in place all these months Apple has acquired ownership of it–and dissidents and general riff raff were now desecrating it. I was heartened to see, right there on the former Apple store/George Floyd shrine, the familiar bathroom limerick about “…he who reads these words of wit…”
But just pulling these sanctified boards down now might prove tricky in and of itself. One might have to do it in the dead of night. A smaller business elsewhere solved the problem by donating the plywood they took down to an African American history museum.
Apple came up with a plan. Having once encased the store to preserve the store, Apple announced it would now encase it all again, to preserve the previous encasement, which had been made precious with its BLM iconography.
Again the store became a sleek black monolith, more in line with its aesthetic, branded: “Apple stands with you in the fight for racial and social justice because Black Lives Matter. The community artwork will be preserved for future display.”
Now the store is donating the art to a local BLM subsidiary, Don’t Shoot PDX, announcing:
“Artists in the Portland community reimagined the blank canvas surrounding our Pioneer Place Apple Store and created a monumental art piece honoring the ongoing fight for justice and the lives of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery. Apple stands in support of the artists and all who are fighting for social and racial justice”
Once we acquired enough of said community artwork I knew we’d have this problem, which is twofold: pulling down impromptu murals might bring antifa/BLM’s zombie wrath upon any given business, and the thus necessitated preservation of them means they’ll be turning up in schools and other public places, as art–bought with tax dollars from the grifters at such as Don’t Shoot PDX.
untethered 