We are in the midst of one of the largest public‑private negotiations in Portland’s history: a $600 million package of public funding is being proposed to renovate the Moda Center, a city-owned asset and home to the Trail Blazers. This moment is a major test of Portland’s newly overhauled government: our expanded 12‑member City Council […]
Opinion
Posted inTransportation Issue 2026
Street View: Lightning Round
[What follows is one of the many articles in the Mercury‘s 2026 Transportation issue. Find a print copy here, subscribe to get a copy mailed to you here, and if you’re feeling generous and want to keep these types of articles coming, support us here.—eds.] Welcome to Street View, the Mercury‘s somewhat-regular column on all things local transportation. Here’s […]
Posted inOpinion
THE BLACK BYLINE: Kamala Harris, and Why the History of “First Blacks” Is Complicated
[What follows is one of the many articles in the Mercury‘s Black Innovators & Changemakers issue. Find a print copy here, subscribe to get a copy mailed to you here, and if you’re feeling generous and want to keep these types of articles coming, support us here.—eds.] Domino. Domino. Only spot a few Blacks the higher […]
Posted inOpinion
Remembering Judith Arcana
Portland’s own underground abortionist-turned-poet was a legend. She was also my friend.
In 2017, Judith Arcana sent a postcard to the old Mercury offices in Old Town/Chinatown. I was the arts editor at the time—it was my first real journalism job—and after many stories covering local theater (I still think about the plays I saw at Shaking the Tree) and books (a reading at Powell’s followed by […]
Posted inOpinion
Wm. Steven Humphrey’s Adventures in Newspapering
Welcome to “Team Portland.”
[What follows is one of the many merry articles in the Mercury’s Winter Guide 2025. Find a print copy here, subscribe to get a copy mailed to you here, and if you’re feeling generous this holiday season, support us here.—eds.] This just in: 2025 has been a real shit show. Trump’s reign of incompetent terror […]
Posted inOpinion
An Amphibian Resistance
There’s a movement leaping into action through Portland’s inflatable frog protest mascots. Their real-life amphibian counterparts are resisters, too, but they need our help.
Earlier this month, the image of a courageous inflatable frog standing alone before militarized law enforcement during a protest at Portland’s ICE facility filled the newsfeeds of folks in Oregon (and around the world). Bright green and wide-eyed, the peaceful demonstrator embraced the power of contrast, cartoonishly innocent in the face of weaponized government overreach. […]
Posted inStreet View
Street View: Sundays Are For Open Streets
Inspired by similar events in Latin America, Portland hosted its first Sunday Parkways event in 2008. Nearly 20 years later, the city has yet to fully commit to the open streets concept.
In the early 1970s, bike activists in Bogotá, Colombia convinced their city leaders to close two major thoroughfares to car traffic, giving the space to people riding bikes and walking for one day. Thus began the tradition of Bogotá’s world-renowned Ciclovía (cycleway) events, which now occur every Sunday and on most holidays, transforming more than […]
Posted inStreet View
Street View: The Band-Aid Bill
Nobody really likes the Democrats’ transportation funding package. But Republicans are wrong when they say it’s not a compromise.
The Oregon House of Representatives managed to squeak through the latest version of a long-awaited transportation funding package earlier this week. But nobody’s popping champagne yet—and they probably won’t be anytime soon. That’s partially because momentum on the transportation bill, which Governor Tina Kotek and Democratic leaders introduced ahead of the special legislative session, is once […]
Posted inOpinion
Normandale Survivors Asked Police For An Explanation. What Portland Got Was a Partial Apology and More Excuses.
Three years after the Normandale Park shooting, I have the uneasy feeling that my city has moved on, failing to absorb important lessons about its most expensive bureau.
[This opinion piece is being published to coincide with the one-year anniversary of the death of Deg, one of the victims of the 2022 Normandale Park shooting that left two people dead and another three injured. The mass shooting was carried out by a man who was angry about a peaceful protest happening in his […]
Posted inOpinion
We Have a Dictator
Don’t doubt it and don’t get used to it.
If you believe we are somehow still living in the same US that conducted elections in November 2024, you are living in a dream. That America is gone. The one we are in now is not run by someone acting like a dictator—or, as Rachel Maddow claimed, “too incompetent” to be a dictator—but is, without […]
Posted inStreet View
Street View: For Transportation in Portland, “Dreaming Big” Might Mean Starting Small
We can’t have it all.
Earlier this week, to the dismay of local freeway fighters, Metro Council moved to allow the Oregon Department of Transportation to get started on the initial phases of its I-5 Rose Quarter project. Given the controversy surrounding the freeway project, the councilors apparently felt they had to justify their decision, responding in part to the […]
Posted inOpinion
“Dear Elon Musk: Here’s What I Accomplished Last Week”
Mercury Editor Wm. Steven Humphrey answers Elon Musk’s threatening weekend email to federal employees.
[Editor’s Note: On Saturday evening, February 22, billionaire White House advisor Elon Musk sent an email (from OPM, the Office of Personnel Management) to 2.3 million US federal employees, telling them to send “approx. 5 bullets” describing what they accomplished at work last week, and to respond by midnight, Monday, February 24. Musk later said […]