Portland isn't that bad of a town. Good people but terrible leadership. I think we've just been going through a rough patch for the past (gestures vaguely) and things will be coming up very soon. Let's hear some more Portland love!

I was recently taken off the schedule and forced to resign at a certain northwest restaurant because I complained to my chef (who was chilling in the back office) that I was being forced to work through my lunch break for the third time this week (a common practice). I was screamed at and informed that if I want my break I need to divvy up the work to the staff I was managing and infringe upon their 30 min rest period, rather than my ornery chef emerging from the office and actually working for 20 mins(god forbid) . When I refused to take away my fellow cooks breaks just to gain my own rest period I got my hours cut. To zero. Cooks deserve better than this. Portland is better than this. Don’t support restaurants with unjust policies.

Atlanta is a fine city. A fine city. But it has nothing on Portland. It's not even close. There's no comparison in my opinion whatever you think is cooler or happening about Atlanta, Portland has done it bigger and better. Sure, we'd love to have Stacy Abrams, we don't really have anyone to compare on that front. But come on, we have the Blazers and the Timbers and the Thorns, not to mention Salt and Straw. Let's be honest that the Braves and their fans are much more problematic in a number of ways. Take it from someone who's done the research, if they did it in Atlanta, they do it better in Portland.

https://make-the-shift.org/ This website gets us to the real picture of what's going on and to solutions. It's not just mentally challenged or those who are hooked on drugs. We must stop "othering" those that are houseless. We must realize that the Oregon problem is just the tiny picture. Remember all it takes is one big disaster and then you're a refugee with what we have in place at the moment. The world is experiencing the housing crisis and disasters are destroying where people live. We must become united. We must demand that everyone's needs be met and not wait until they sink to the bottom. There are solutions. But the first step is to realize, you too, can become houseless unless we change what is in place. Stay strong and fight for change. Stand together and not apart.

The newest craze among some motorcycle stud-muffins and button-boner truck jox is to blow through red lights and play dodge-em with pedestrians in crosswalks. I don't know what's worse — the fact that mouth-breathing, knuckle-dragging man-boys keep spawning, or that their bros in the PPB do jack-all to protect people while they tool around in their air-conditioned SUVs, drawing fat union wages.

You know what would solve homelessness, free health care, free education, and a monthly stipend. Perhaps additional financial incentives if you need medication and you actually take it. A we pay you to take your antipsychotics on a regular basis sort of deal. We can absolutely afford it. America has money, she just don’t wanna share it with her people. Unfortunately there’s people who have so much money they can afford to pay people with way less money to continue to convince a big enough portion of the people with way less money that they should hate the people with way way less money or no money at all because those people are really bringing us all down. Yep.

We say this because we love you. Girl, get it together. You are such a beautiful city with such great potential. It saddens us to see you miss out on so many golden opportunities because of fear and anxieties. We're not saying those fears and anxieties aren't valid. We're scared too. But if they are things that stop you from living your life and connecting with who you want to connect with, then they need to be addressed head on. I'll be the first to admit we've given you our own mixed signals about what we've wanted to happen, and we've most definitely told you to slow your horses at times, but we didn't expect you to just completely ignore your constituencies and shut us out completely. Let's work through this. We're not expecting a fairy tale here, but that doesn't mean we can't build something meaningful and memorable together with whatever time we have. Let's start a new dialogue together. It looks like you could use some new pen pals anyways.

The spate of political advertising to which we are being subjected makes clear what candidates who want to attract the votes of business owners and elites think of as chaos. To them, chaos isn't a father/brother/son being murdered on the street over the course of almost ten minutes while cops stand guard to prevent citizen intervention. To them, chaos is a term they only apply to the large crowds across the nation and here in Portland who gathered to protest longtime, well-documented police brutality. A bit of historical context: peaceful protests for progressive ideas have always been seeded with disrupters by the rightwing opposition, sometimes by the police themselves; genuine antifa, though, should note that hand to hand fighting between leftists and fascists in the streets in the 1930s led not to suppressing fascism, but to making it ascendant for a destructive ten years; finally, the right to do business-as-usual is secondary in a just society to the right to simply live without having one's rights (and body) trampled without reason.

Anyone (anyone) who takes video footage of someone in connection with a possible crime or criminal investigation is ethically bound to make that footage immediately and transparently available to the accused. The fact that this is somehow a point of debate among Portland cops and their shadowy union shows how far down the rabbit hole we've fallen. Civil and criminal justice is most easily killed, not by grand sweeping gestures, but by a thousand little cuts. When police organizations adopt performative approaches to community outreach and participation, while continuing to engage in closed-door policy, union, discipline, and budget decisions, you end up with two very different police bureaus — and the chasm widens between what cops say and what cops do. This is a long-standing Portland Police Bureau tradition that not only fails to reduce crime, but also costs the city millions in wasted dollars and places Portland residents directly at risk of abuse or worse.

What Merrick Garland is communicating could be clearer, political players and participants are not equal under the law when compared to us regular folks. Of course, we've all known about this for years, but what's painful is when it applies to under application of law enforcement against the 45th president and his co-conspirators as much as it applies to the over application of violence against countless community examples like Eric Garner, Elijah Mcclain, George Floyd, and others. - Of course, Garland could be experiencing a totally different problem unbeknownst to the public, one where our justice and law enforcement systems have become so corrupted that it simply can't act against terroristic organizations like the Proud Boys, Oath keepers, Patriot Prayer, 3 percenters, Trump/Pence 2020 or more, because in doing so they will expose how deep the rot is and place potentially hundreds if not thousands of current and past law enforcement cases and events into serious question and appeal. - I remain hopeful that he's just someone who fails to understand and communicate the seriousness and urgency of THE PEOPLE responding to a violent insurrection and coup attempt committed against our democracy. He's looking at things through the lens of history, and history will be asking "why the due administration of justice was potentially obstructed or impeded during Garland's tenure?"

I felt like I wanted to throw a tantrum as an adult like a 5 year old when they had no pulled pork at Winco today (only pulled chicken) because I didn't get to have my pulled pork soft tacos and I don't get them now. Noticing recently that major supermarkets are not keeping up with demand like it was communist Russia.

My parents were going to get a divorce when I was 9, 11, and 15 years old. My dad was always cheating on my mom. Mom found notes his secretary gave him with their numbers written on the paper. When my mother was out of town, my dad’s secretary would invite him to her home and he took me with him. There women at his job I saw him with at the wine taster, politician wives, and instructors he had affairs with. One night I pretended to be asleep my dad and my uncle girlfriend were in a room and he asked her to show her breast to him and she did. He dated the principal that was my mothers boss. He dated some of my mother’s friends at church and in her sorority.

“Many many homeless are mentally ill. If given a home, most would burn it down in a week. Compassion means getting people the medical help they need. Letting them rot in the street is unacceptable….hospitalize the many mentally ill, house those that remain.” Such a compassionate comment left about homelessness. In order to achieve your dream of institutionalizing ALL the mentally ill, you do realize this ENTIRE country has to overhaul the mental health system in this shithole country, right? Oregon rates the lowest according to mhnational.org But fuck their civil rights right? Lock them up. Lock ANYONE up you perceive as unacceptable. Have you ever looked at footage of the asylums from our not so distant past? Doubtful. The cruelties were unimaginable. Your comment reeks of stigma, and you’re an asshole. I hope no one you love gets committed against their will.

Why do rapacious land developers get to whine, blubber "foul!" and accuse local government of stalling construction of a few, measley "low income" housing units in a mostly posh, overpriced project because they, the developers got caught illegally trying to double-dip into public funds? Why do real estate investors get to tear down discussed but lovely old homes and buildings, put up cyclone fencing, and sit for years on a brown-field wasteland? Why do structures destroyed by fire sit for months as a charred, bombed-out rubbish pile, with no regard for neighbors or safety? Why are developers allowed to build huge, brutalist, inhumane, fugly, "affordable" housing boxes, with massive tax abatements, while rich hipsters and city mayors get to live in prestige, luxury townhomes? Capitalism is murder, and Portland's elites are the ultimate bag men.