For something like the fifth time, local activist and city council candidate Sara Long interrupted a mayoral forum tonight, this one hosted by the National Association of Minority Contractors of Oregon.

At past events, Long has protested the exclusion of candidates beyond state Treasurer Ted Wheeler and Multnomah County Commissioner Jules Bailey. Tonight, Bailey was her target. She was mad he didn’t do or say more when activists poured into (and eventually shut down) a county commission hearing this morning.

As in the past, Long eventually left the stage, and was kicked out of New Song Community Church. But not before she taped an interesting interaction with Jo Ann Hardesty, a former state representative and current president of a local NAACP chapter.

While trying to calm Long’s anger over Bailey, Hardesty essentially guarantees a Wheeler win.

“Based on the $800,000 he has in the bank, nobody else comes even close,” Hardesty says. “I’m not saying I want him to win…”

Long last disrupted an AARP Oregon forum last weekend.

Here’s the video, which Long posted to Facebook.


Posted by Sara Long on Thursday, April 7, 2016

I'm a news reporter for the Mercury. I've spent a lot of the last decade in journalism — covering tragedy and chicanery in the hills of southwest Missouri, politics in Washington, D.C., and other matters...

4 replies on “A Local Activist Disrupted a Mayoral Forum Thursday… And Filmed the Whole Thing”

  2. “She was mad he didn’t do or say more” = She was actually mad he didn’t say or do anything at all. He stared at me flatly and with great boredom, raised his eyebrows a bit as if to say “not impressed yawn” and then they got up and walked out. Casually. We made no impression at all on any of them.

    Which means we need to step up our demand game considerably.

    “The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims have been born of earnest struggle. The conflict has been exciting, agitating, all-absorbing, and for the time being, putting all other tumults to silence. It must do this or it does nothing. If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing up the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress. – Frederick Douglass

    http://www.blackpast.org/1857-frederick-…

  3. “He stared at me flatly and with great boredom, raised his eyebrows a bit as if to say “not impressed yawn” and then they got up and walked out. Casually. We made no impression at all on any of them.”

    Rarely do I agree with Bailey, but Sarah Long is just a tedious nobody who seeks attention. Her tendency to disrupt recalls Hart Noecker. How many votes will she get for city council?
    Ten? Twenty? She has some major cognitive blind spots. For instance, she has a rule that she gets all the attention and can occupy any stage she wants. Obviously that is a terrible rule, because it empowers any individual to stop a discussion at anytime and bore people to death.
    I don’t necessarily like the current Mayor or City Council, but they were elected by my me and my neighbors. My candidates did not win, but that’s democracy for you. I can criticize Bailey, but barging into a meeting and interrupting him is wildly uncool. And not democratic.
    Dirk, I respect you as a journalist, but I am wondering if it is a good idea to encourage Ms. Long by giving her the attention she seeks by being Sarah Interruptus, shutter down of discourse.

    She is upping her demand game? Eject her or arrest her. She is selfish. We all have issues
    we care about. She just thinks that big grey hoodie somehow entitles her to shout everyone else down.

  4. The problem is the dearth of professional journalists reporting real news. Dirk is typical of editors who want a story handed to them. The reality is, that nobody will cover your cause, unless you make it public spectacle.

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