DEAR DAN

RE: “Savage Love” [Savage Love, Jan 11]. “I recently stopped reading your advice column due to its current focus on homosexuality,” wrote “Bored Reading Endlessly Experimental Deviants Exploring Rectums,” adding, “Just letting you know that heterosexuals are still alive and doing well.”

I think BREEDER really meant to say, “I recently stopped reading your advice column due to its acknowledgement, acceptance, and possibly even approval of homosexuality.”

eprophet

Not to mention even if it was a majority gay write-in column, it is authored by a gay columnist. So this writer should fuck off twice and then go back to reading Dear Abby.

Aurelius141


PEE

RE: “Trump Gave a Press Conference About Pee Gate. He Probably Thought He Was Tremendous” [Blogtown, Jan 11]. “In short,” wrote Tricia Romano, “Trump’s first press conference since the election was a tremendous bullshit word salad that asked IN ALL SERIOUSNESS, the question: if ‘Hillary would be tougher on Putin than Donald Trump?’ He also claimed that the only people who cared about his tax returns are reporters. Then, people applauded.... Does anyone else feel insane?”

So now we should ask how great and excited all the Trump voters will feel once they finally figure out that they’ve been peed on too!

inContempt

Maybe the inaugural committee could invite the Russian prostitutes to perform golden showers on the Rockettes at Trump’s inauguration.

NYourDreamz


SO, SPEAKING OF HITLER...

RE: “Well, That Escalated Quickly” [News, Jan 11], News Editor Dirk VanderHart’s story about the reverberations of Portland cop Scott Groshong’s harassment of Portlander Robert West. “Documents obtained by the Mercury show that the six-second confrontation ultimately grew into a months-long battle between a notorious police captain and the city’s head police watchdog,” wrote VanderHart. “The battle included formal human resource complaints of ‘bullying’ filed by police Captain Mark Kruger—who’s head of the PPB’s drugs and vice enforcement, but is probably best known for once erecting a memorial to Nazi soldiers in a public park roughly 15 years ago.”

I’d like to see the police chief strip Kruger of his power and stick him in an evidence warehouse! This guy is obviously petty, unhinged, and off his rocker.

K. Millan


RENT STRIKE

RE: “Eviction Wars” [News, Jan 11]. “When the legislative session opens three weeks from now in Salem, it will be just the second time in more than three decades the state legislature will meet to discuss changes to landlord-tenant law that were not first proposed by the Landlord-Tenant Coalition,” wrote News Reporter Doug Brown. “The loose assembly of landlord groups and tenant advocates—that’s existed since the early 1980s to compromise on proposed rental housing law—broke up in the second half of 2016.”

Your excellent article highlights the upcoming fight in Salem over abolishing no-cause eviction and legalizing rent control in Oregon. In light of the death of Karen Batts, 52—a tenant who paid her rent for 10 years before being evicted by her “nonprofit” landlord, and then froze to death in a downtown parking garage this month—the time for half-measures is over. We need to legalize rent control in Portland and throughout Oregon. Do we need a citywide rent strike to force the issue? Do we think, as seniors and tenants, that Trump the landlord and Ben Carson, the apparent new national housing honcho, will fix the housing crisis? As an organizer, I trust our new mayor Ted Wheeler, Chloe Eudaly on city council, and state reps Alisa Keny-Guyer and Tina Kotek to fix our housing problem locally. However, while Mayor Ted seems to be supporting Portland being a sanctuary city, he is hesitating about city council legalizing rent control for Portland. Some immigrants are also tenants, and deportation (or freezing to death outdoors in the winter) is worth protesting. We may need direct action and a citywide rent strike to encourage the powers that be to protect tenants and immigrants alike.

Lew Church
Organizer, Portland Gray Panthers

LEW, for your reminder that 2017 is a year of action rather than talk (see this week’s Trump Resistance Playbook, starting on pg. 9!), we’re giving you the Mercury ’s letter of the week, plus two tickets to the Laurelhurst Theater.


Letters and comments may be edited for space. Email us at lovenotes@portlandmercury.com.