No offense to Commissioner Fish, but couldn't / shouldn't some of this "education" process have been conducted before he took office? Like, maybe while he was running for office, or even before that? This is not exactly a brand-new law.

"TWO "LISTENING SESSIONS" over the last week show the public is overwhelmingly against the city's controversial sidewalk-obstruction ordinance"

I really don't think that the people that showed up for the 'listening sessions' truly represent the opinion of the ENTIRE public of Portland. Any logical thinker would know that the majority of people to show up at meetings such as these are going to be against whatever topic is being discussed. Compare it to a forum on the internet where the majority of posters tend to be fanatics or people looking for a place to complain.

The first sentence of this article shows a clear bias and should make the 'journalists' of this paper ashamed.

Does anybody really know what the general populace of this city thinks?

I doubt it.

The panhandlers are a nuisance, there is no doubt about that.

That whole subject is a quandry.

Civil rights attorney may only mean a job title to Mr. Fish. Otherwise he would clearly see this ordinance as a civil rights problem. Shoveling the homeless from one side of town to another and then another and so on doesn't benefit anybody but the Portland Business Alliance. It is a discriminatory business practice being put forth by the business community. A lot of people talk to me about the sit-lie ordinance in my taxi. A lot of Portland people think its stupid, some say it has made downtown much nicer.

Almost every tourist comments on how many homeless people there are in Portland. Most just ask why, very few seem disturbed. Every tourist comments on how clean Portland is. Even the ones who inquire about the homeless. Seems like the sit-lie ordinance is... STUPID!

Last night, 08/15/08 @ 1:26AM, after leaving an evening at the Ohm, friends and I were walking back from the Ohm nightclub in old town. We rounded the corner of SW 2nd & SW Ash to find two Securitas bicycle rent-a-cops beating up a homeless man asleep on the sidewalk. They were laughing, kicking him very hard, and shouting profanities at him. They wanted him to move off the sidewalk. They were telling him it was illegal for him to be on the sidewalk and that THEY were going to arrest him - both statements false. Friends and I told them to back off and we were threatened with pepper spray if we didn't leave them alone. I was about to call 911 to report it when a patrol car passed by, gleefully waved at the two security guards (it had to be obvious what they were doing, the kicking was not hidden), and kept on driving. THIS my friends is the real Portland; the Portland the city does not want the rest of the world to see: abusive cops, security guards hired to take the place of beat patrols by police, and homeless people accosted in the streets.

Matthew:

Is your's a rhetorical question? Or are you showing a naive streak two feet wide?

Of course, PBA bought the vote. Members of PBA fund the successful campaigns of the candidates who become hizzoner de mayor and his council four.

Why do you think the city government required the police to push prostitution out to Lents and Montevilla from the newly gentrified (higher-income) central city neighborhoods? Given half a chance, they'll have the police push the homeless and panhandlers out there, too. Check out the exit ramps along 205 sometime.

Asking whose idea this is (actually, who ordered it) is especially naive. Of course members of PBA requested the city bosses at the Arlington Club to instruct the mayor, the council and the police to pass the ordinance and to initiate the push to the suburbs. The same way they tried to get rid of that odious quiki-mart on S.W. Morrison. (It is most definitely a pit, but it has a legal right to exist.)

What you don't appear to see is how all of these things are so tightly interconnected. These are not piece meal issues. Portland is gentrifying. The money in the city doesn't want street prostitution, panhandlers and the homeless in the city center. Best they should be pushed out to the outskirts of town and eventually into what will be the new ghettos of Beaverton and Gresham along with the working poor and welfare recipients.

NOTE: Of course, you recognize that street prostitutes service only the blue collar and lower middle class. The call girls used by the middle and upper middle class are safely hidden away in brothels in the west hills (yes, that is where they are) or are available from upscale escort services that do not advertise in the Mercury. If you're not making $100 K + you will never know about them.

It is that simple. And, it's always been that way in Portland since the days of Madam Fanshaw and her open brothel on what is now SW Broadway and the private brothel operated by Meier & Frank at S.W. Sixth & Oak, and it will always be that way.

Trying to get city government to "do the right thing" is pointless and a waste of time. They work for the people they work for.

Better that the issues be taken out of their hands by being publicized en toto and discussed in public forums such as the prostitution meeting tonight in Montavilla.

And discuss city wide solutions, not neighborhood solutions that just push problems around like peas on a plate.

I remain your obnoxious pest,

Jacomus

1. Q. What's the difference between a politician and a public servant? A. Campaign Contributions.

2. Selfishness marries Greed. Greed bears Homeless. Choosing not to Look at Them does not make Them Leave.