Hamburger Mary Against Hate
Here's an interesting detail I picked up while reporting on the assault of two gay men and resulting 4,000-person rally on the Hawthorne Bridge last week: reports of hate crimes in Portland are way down.

That's weird, because the police, attorney general, and LGBT-advocacy groups have been pushing people since last spring to report all bias-motivated attacks, so you would think reports of those attacks would jump. In reality, the percent of hate crimes reported by LGBT folks did increase, but the overall number of reported hate crimes went down. Here are the stats, which I also included in this week's print edition: In 2010, only 38 hate crimes were reported in Portland, compared to an average of 66 in the previous three years. Hate crimes are down even more in 2011; only eight as of April 2011, compared to 15 through April 2010.

But hate crimes motivated by sexual orientation made up 44 percent of those 2010 reports in Portland, compared to an average of 32 percent of crimes reported since 2007.

The stats either show that we're living in a much safer city than we were four years ago, where LGBT people are increasingly likely to report bias-motivated crimes against them, or that people feel less comfortable reporting crimes to the police altogether.

In related news, ProgressiveOregon.com has started a petition against the Oregonian for apparently not covering the rally in any way. The petition already has over 500 signatures.