ATTENTION Portlanders hailing from the following states: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Missouri, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.
We like you, we really do. You totally fit in here in Portland, way better than you ever did back home. You come over to our houses, play with our kids. Our dogs play together at the dog park and we have shared many a beer. You even shoveled your sidewalks during the big snow of 2017. But now itâs time for you to go back home.
Here in Portland, we donât have the âFreezeâ that newbies complain about in Seattle so we made you feel right at home. Even when more and more of you arrived, we continued to welcome you, show you our favorite parts of the city, and then we watched you buy up those parts and turn them into condos. When you bought homes in our neighborhoods, we appreciated the increase in our property values, but now we canât afford to buy a three-bedroom home in parts of South East that used to be called âFelony Flatsâ. We sort of liked having you here, until we watched the states you came from vote for Trump.
We totally get it, we wouldnât want to live there either. The thing is, the people you left behind canât benefit from your energy if youâre here. This is worse than brain drain, this is vote drain, political progress drain. Go home and raise consciousness. Go home and start cool businesses where like-minded people can gather. Go home and vote for progressive local politicians who can make incremental changes in your communities. Go home and vote for progress.
