BLOGTOWN

K Marie

"There's a lack of creativity in City Hall leadership," says Woolley. "That's what I can offer.

Woolley, a Green Party member who currently works as a software engineer for Uber, says he wants to see a renewed emphasis on the environment in City Hall. He's interested in creating a free transit system. In the past, Woolley's worked with many Portland neighborhood associations to push City Hall to enact stronger air quality regulations, specifically regarding wood smoke and diesel emissions. It's Woolley's work with neighborhood associations that's make him critical of Eudaly's leadership.

"I think Commissioner Eudaly's attack on neighborhood associations has been irrational," says Woolley, referring to Eudaly's proposal to allow other community groups the same recognition by the city as Portland's long-standing neighborhood associations. "That's not how you run a city."

Eudaly, who joined City Council in 2017, has said she plans on running for re-election in 2020.

Gibson at a Seattle protest in 2018. Lester Black

Gibson has been charged with a felony for inciting a riot, according to an an afternoon interview with Gibson on Lars Larson's conservative talk radio show. Gibson told Larson he plans on turning himself in to the Multnomah County Sheriff's Office today. According to the county's inmate roster, Gibson has yet to turn himself in.

Gibson led Patriot Prayer to Cider Riot on May 1 after learning that members of Portland's anti-fascist (commonly known as "antifa") community were meeting there to celebrate a day of peaceful May Day rallies. After yelling insults at Cider Riot patrons from the adjacent sidewalk, the opposing groups engaged in a street fight. In one video, Gibson appears to be playing referee in an organized fist fight. One woman with antifa was knocked out cold by several Patriot Prayer agitators, and sent to the hospital with an alleged vertebrae fracture.

Scenes from a November 2018 protest in downtown Portland. Alex Zielinski

“In these politically-charged times, the stakes couldn’t be higher,” wrote Mayor Ted Wheeler in an August 7 statement about the coming rally organized by the Proud Boys, whose self-identified “Western chauvinist” viewpoints will be met by a group of local leftist counter-protesters.

Members of the Proud Boys—and other extremist militia groups with shared viewpoints—are coming from across the country to participate in the event, which is slated to begin at 11 am August 17 at Tom McCall Waterfront Park. Several of these alt-right visitors have made threats of violence towards counter-protesters online.

In his statement, Wheeler specifically discouraged any protesters who plan on committing violence from attending the protests. The Portland Police Bureau (PPB) has been less discerning.

In a Tuesday press release, PPB urged Portlanders to avoid the downtown protest, regardless of their intent.

“The demonstrations will be impacting a very small area of Portland,” writes PPB Chief Danielle Outlaw in the release, which includes a list of alternate events PPB suggests Portlanders should attend on the 17th. “I encourage everyone to enjoy what will likely be a beautiful day by engaging in fun activities at a number of community events."

FLETCHER WOLD

Fifteen years before he was elected mayor of Milwaukie, Oregon, Mark Gamba was bracing himself for a thwack in the head from a whale shark’s tail fin.

Gamba was working as a nature photographer for National Geographic, on assignment off the coast of Australia. The water was thick with plankton, so he didn’t see the school-bus-sized shark swimming toward him until it was mere feet away. He snapped a few photos, then realized it was too late to get out of the shark’s path—so he ducked down and rolled under the shark, bracing himself for the massive tail to smack against his head as it swam away.

But the slap never came.

“That shark was trying to not hurt me,” Gamba says. “People think of sharks as automatons: Eating and killing, that’s all they do. But this creature, whose biggest threat in the world is mankind—here is this creature who is causing the demise of your fellows, and it made an effort not to hurt me.”

Whale sharks were classified as endangered in 2016.

“We’re killing them,” Gamba says. “We’re killing them all, and that should matter to us, as a species that lives on this planet. We should care. It’s not just about nature—people are being treated no better than how we treat animals.”

The way Gamba talks about it, narrowly avoiding a blow from a whale shark’s tail isn’t just a story from his past life as a photojournalist. It’s a reminder of the progressive and environmentalist principles that inspired him to get involved in Milwaukie politics.

Those same politics are now driving him to mount a longshot primary campaign against the five-term incumbent Rep. Kurt Schrader in Oregon’s 5th Congressional District—a region that stretches from Mt. Hood National Forest to the Oregon coastal communities of Tillamook and Newport, scooping up Portland’s southern suburbs and Salem along the way.

Motoya Nakamura / Multnomah County

“We’ve come here together, united as one, putting aside any differences we may have to send a clear and unifying message,” said Mayor Ted Wheeler, who coordinated the morning event. “We stand in opposition to the rising national tide of hate, intolerance, bigotry, and white supremacy.”

Wheeler’s comments were followed by short speeches by a range of progressive politicians, activists, and business leaders. Some explicitly decried the Proud Boys—the alt-right group behind the weekend demonstration—and others condemned any protesters seeking a fight. But despite their varied phrasing, the group’s collective statement against hate was a rare sign of unity in a city that’s been splintered by divisive protests.

“We are here to use our words to help our community resist fascism strategically and intelligently,” said Avel Gordly, a civil rights leader and former Oregon state legislator. “We are here because our children need to see us in this act of standing together. Our children need to see us acting to protect them in a time of traumatizing fear in this nation.”

A Molotov cocktail was found outside a queer couple's home in Lents yesterday. COURTESY ERIN MAKUS

Last night PPB announced they have arrested Jesse David Bennett, 27, in connection with the case. Bennett lives in the same neighborhood as the victims. He has been charged with two counts of possession of a destructive device, and two counts of unlawful manufacture of a destructive device.

Bennett was previously arrested in 2014 for making violent threats. Those included sending Facebook messages to a Washington woman threatening to rape and kill her, and threatening mass shootings and bombings at several area high schools and colleges.

"We recognize that these incidents can generate fear in our community," said PPB Chief Danielle Outlaw in a press release. "These cases are taken seriously and I am proud of Detective Meredith Hopper's resolve and swift apprehension of the suspect."

Update, 5:15 pm Wednesday:

PPB has confirmed that they arrested a suspect in this case today. Makus said that she believes the suspect lives in her neighborhood. As of now, PPB is not releasing the suspect's name.

Original story:

Two unlit Molotov cocktails have been found in front of different Portland homes this week—and there’s reason to believe that the actions were motivated by anti-LGBTQ+ sentiment.

According to a press release sent Tuesday evening by the Portland Police Bureau (PPB), the unlit Molotov cocktails were found by two homes at the intersection of SE Powell and SE 104th, in the Lents neighborhood. The first was found on Monday, and the second on Tuesday. Both instances were reported to PPB.

Erin Makus, who lives in one of the targeted homes, told the Mercury that her wife discovered the Molotov cocktail on their front lawn on Tuesday morning. (She asked that we not use her wife’s name because of privacy concerns.) At first, the weapon looked like a random piece of litter.

“It’s not really unusual to find trash in our yard, so she didn’t think too much of it,” Makus said. “But as she came closer, she realized it had something coming out of the neck of it, a paper towel was shoved in there. So that scared her…. We were a little freaked out, but we didn’t want to think too much of it.”