Portland will not be outdone by its bigger, richer but never woker neighbor to the north. Inspired by the so-called Capital Hill Autonomous Zone, graffiti is appearing here now calling for an “autonomous zone” called “Cascadia”. The fact is there really is no point in it, when the city is essentially theirs.
City Council meetings now appear to be run by black radical Jo Ann Hardesty, who is in high spirits.
She’s stopping short of constituent demands for cutting 50 million from the police, satisfied for the moment with the 15 million the city immediately coughed up in response to the ongoing occupation of the city. Her fellow radical, Chloe Eudaly, knowing the measure will pass without her vote, 3 to 4, is grandstanding by voting no, and probably raising the ire of the now dominant Hardesty as she appears to be trying to outflank her on the left.
On its second attempt in as many weeks, the Portland City Council passed a budget Wednesday that will reroute more than $15 million from the police bureau to other city programs and initiatives. The cuts include disbanding police units that work in schools, investigate gun violence and patrol the regional public transit system.
The Council voted 3-1 to adopt the $5.6 billion spending plan that kicks in July 1. Commissioner Chloe Eudaly for the second time voted against the budget, noting how many in the community have called for as much as $50 million to be removed from the police budget.
Since it’s Hardesty’s city for the moment, she’s wisely trimming her sails and settling in for the longer duration, at the same time protests are shifting tactics from riotous confrontation to an occupy-style encampment, and these things are likely related.
Of course it’s white radicals pushing hardest now, and Hardesty, who promised to “end white Portland” is in the role of moderating them, wary of overdoing it too soon and, probably, understanding there is no real war on blacks and no real, non-political urgency to the cause, just the long project of transferring power now suddenly rushing to a possible climax.
But she’s surrounded by LARPers and lunatics, of course.
The Council voted 3-1 to adopt the $5.6 billion spending plan that kicks in July 1. Commissioner Chloe Eudaly for the second time voted against the budget, noting how many in the community have called for as much as $50 million to be removed from the police budget.
Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty, before voting yes, said she believed the $50 million tally was “based on nothing” and hadn’t seen any analysis of how that amount correlated with what the police bureau does and the direction the city wants to move in.
She urged the public to instead “celebrate this incredible moment that we’re in.”
A former state lawmaker, former head of Portland’s NAACP chapter and the first Black woman elected to the Portland City Council, Hardesty was a key architect of the reform package approved Wednesday.
“Never in my life would I have imagined that we or any government would be able to cut that much significant resources out of a police budget,” she said.
The goal is not so much to eliminate the police but to usurp their authority and functions, as part of the national effort to eliminate the police as the last bastion of conservative resistance (as someone pointed out, as they’ve done with the military–note the brass is throwing in with the coup as I write).
Eudaly has said one goal is to prevent police from interacting with the mentally ill at all–to take that “off their plate”; how it would work in practice–how social workers would engage a man swinging a bat–or defecating–in the middle of a crowded Starbucks, for instance, I don’t know. The procedure would have to be that you called social workers. Maybe the police could come in and secure the area, but be barred from “interacting”; it hasn’t yet been stated outright, but all indications are their vision for law enforcement is to likewise eliminate police contact with blacks.
Hardesty is unfortunately capable enough to appreciate this windfall, and is not going to mismanage it by going too fast.
Hardesty asked the “new young white people who all of a sudden are demanding equality for black folks in the community,” where their voices were when Portland police officers killed Kendra James in 2003, Aaron Campbell in 2010 and other Black residents. She said they weren’t with her advocating for changes then.
“I want you to know that it is not appropriate for you to say to me that I have not gone far enough,” she said. “You don’t know the shoes that I’ve walked in over the 30 years that I’ve lived in Portland, and I am honored to have a seat on the City Council in this time where we are making transformational changes. There’s nowhere else in the world I would want to be.”
Indeed. I’m not sure everyone feels that way.
untethered 