One of Portland’s most-visible tenants’ rights activists is stepping down, a week after another well-known activist accused her organization of having a “serious race problem.”
While disputing many of the claims, Margot Black, a founder of the group Portland Tenants United (PTU), announced this afternoon on Facebook she’s stepping down from leadership of the group, effective immediately.
“I have always come to the work with positive intentions, but in reality the impacts of some of my actions have had very negative impacts on valued members of our community, and created harm,” Black wrote on the social media site. “Effective immediately I am resigning from PTU Leadership, including the Organizing Committee.”
The announcement is a direct result of a lengthy January 3 post on the site Medium by local activist Cameron Whitten, a former PTU ally. Citing a long series of events from last year, Whitten accused group of entrenched racism and wrote that the organization had been resistant to his attempts to rectify the matter.
Among Whitten’s allegations are derogatory comments he says one PTU member made about Katrina Holland, the executive director of the group Community Alliance of Tenants (CAT), which PTU has at times clashed with. Holland is Black. Whitten also says PTU attempted to bring him on as a token black member, and recounts the singing of “This Land as Your Land” at a retreat, over the objections of a native PTU ally in attendance.
“By the end of the month, Portland Tenants United should prepare and post a public apology for all of its racial hostilities to Portland activists of color over the past year,” Whitten said toward the end of his post, which focused lots of attention on Black. “This public apology should include a detailed recognition of all major harassment incidents, being careful to respect the privacy of their victims.”
The post has reverberated around Portland’s activist community, causing some former allies to question one another’s actions. Holland, the director of the CAT, responded to it on Sunday.
In the wake of Whitten’s post, PTU has lost three members, according to Black, but the larger backlash on social media prompted her to step down.
“I’m so clearly this lighting rod that was starting to become a liability for PTU even if it wasn’t fair,” Black tells the Mercury of her decision, first reported by Willamette Week. She disputes much of Whitten’s account and believes he overstated other details.
Whitten’s post—and Black’s departure—raise questions about the future of PTU, which along with CAT has been a central voice for tenants as Portland’s housing crisis deepens. In particular, the group saw a major victory last year when it helped convince Portland city council to enact new relocation payments for tenants who are given no-cause evictions or have their rents raised by 10 percent or more.
More frequently, it’s been a rabble-rousing force that disrupts local landlord shindigs and has hounded state Sen. Rod Monroe—a landlord who helped nix rent control during last year’s legislative session—outside of his church.
In a phone conversation today, Black said she’d been looking for an opportunity to step back from PTU for some time. “I’m burned out. I look forward to the 40 hours of work I put in a week being spread around,” she said, noting: “I hate how it happened.” She says she’s confident the group will continue on without her involvement.
Meanwhile, Whitten, in a Facebook post this afternoon, continued to criticize PTU’s response to his allegations.
“Even if PTU posts an apology, I am unconvinced that they or Margot are apologetic,” he wrote. “While myself and my supporters have been focused on accountability, the response from PTU representatives has overwhelmingly been of self-interest.”
https://www.facebook.com/cameronwhittenpdx/posts/10208998150991424
Is anyone surprised by this? Margot Black has consistently been a bully who does not care for any opinion that isn’t her own. Now she gets a taste of her own shitty medicine. Suck it down, Margot, hope it tastes bitter.
So, what exactly are all these mysterious allegations? i’d really like to judge for myself. Are we just supposed to take someone’s word for it, really? I have my doubts. Come on Merc, don’t you know how to get the real dope?
… or maybe, just wildly imagine whatever we happen to have in our head about what the “racism” could be?
I thought Commissioner Chloe Eudaly and her mini-me staffer Jamey Duhamel were Margot and PTU’s biggest fans and friends, so why is Eudaly not standing up for her racist friend and organization? Eudaly and Jamey were founding members of PTU. They organized with them right up until Chloe took office. They used to march together, Lobby with each other, talk glowingly about each other in media interviews, create new City ordinances together, met like 100x together at City Hall last year to talk about stuff, yakity chat chat almost everyday together on Facebook, take selfies together at events, and even eat avocado toast at dive bars together. Heck Margot and PTU even helped Chloe get elected. And Margot, gurl, you been PLAYED by Eudaly but hard. Eudaly threw PTU under a bus! Although if I was Eudaly I’d run and hide too…it’s a bad idea politically that people figure out your guilt by not just association, but by avid embrace of racist people and organizations. And lord know Eudaly doesn’t need anymore bad publicity right now at all..3..2..1…
after reading cameron’s hit piece, wow. he seems way too young and very one sided, self centered, has zero understanding of others. One who wants everything to be about him and his particular group of skin color people. well, fyi, others also get hurt a lot, one of them even killed himself. possibly about the overwhelming feelings of artificial white guilt constantly heaped on him for … being white? You know, things can go too far. You expressed NO kind of empathy for that possibility. Please grow up first Cameron, become a little more inclusive of other races yourself, as humans, then try taking on some form of “organizing” of others. That’s what we all are , fyi, is humans, and i know people whose experience of harm and victimization has probably whipped yours ten times over, but they aren’t people of color, they are battered women and abused kids.. Some of whom were abused and threatened by blacks, because they were white children. So Cameron, your one-sidedness has blinded you to the victimization of others. You seem to think You have no accountability yourself , as to how you treat others. Grow up. Until then, you are a hypocrite wannabe with a lot of aggression, hostility, and little ability but a lot of destructiveness, and boy do you know how to hatefully and harmfully weaponize against innocent people. Why should anyone work with you? plenty will avoid you, as they should, for their own safety, peace, self respect and wellbeing.
I read Cameron’s piece in Medium, too, and I came to a conclusion different from N1’s. The Mercury should re-print Cameron’s article and seek comment from principal figures. PTU and others have monopolized city council meetings, preventing other citizens from speaking and perverting public discourse according to their whim. If PTU’s own house is that filthy, some other band of brethren should take over the cause of Portland housing. It is unacceptable to create a caste system of home-dwellers and sidewalk sleepers in PDX. We need more than a mean grrls’ crusade; we need to accomplish some remedies for this sickness.
“PTU and others have monopolized city council meetings, preventing other citizens from speaking and perverting public discourse according to their whim”
Yes! Thank you, cassie mae. And this prevention includes Chloe Eudaly, who used a falsified sob story about her drunk dad killing two people to shut down testimony by small time landlords about how her proposed ordinance would negatively affect them. The housing conversation has, unfortunately, been dominated by the loudest whiniest babies who throw tantrums if they don’t get their way, and the problem is that their way is full of crappy failed ideas.
Cameron’s use of the word survivor to describe people who have interacted with PTU seems way over the top unless Margot has committed some crimes that haven’t come to light yet. I am not a big fan of hers but lets get real here she didn’t do anything to anyone to deserve the kind of language being thrown around here. Cameron seems pretty excited to have taken down PTU and seems to want to further damage the organization going forward. It would be nice to see him focus on doing something productive instead of just destructive. At this point I think any group would be wise to be cautious before trying to work with him.
A long time ago, maybe a year ago, I was watching city council meetings on youtube and I recall watching some tenant protesters talk/complain at city council hearing (as is everyones right in theory) on housing- tenant – rental issues. I distinctly remember watching this one tenant activist speak among several other people. She was a somewhat young, white woman, under 40, who said she was a math teacher. She spoke about the rental housing crisis in Portland and then made some awful, hateful, sneering comment about a Latino tenant contacting her for help on a rental tenant issue. She made it sound as if they had been set up in some cruel joke or prank. In her mind she must have believed she was saying the “right thing” but anyone could tell by her sneering condescending manner she thought that this Latino tenant was beyond dumb for reaching out to her for help. It was such a jarring display of hatred I remember it to this day. Because of course I didn’t want to be part of “the joke” by making the mistake of believing white activist give a damn about anyone who was Latino. I believe she said her name was Margaret Black.
LatinaActivist – there’s actually a comment on an old WWeek article profiling Margot Black where a woman claims that Margot left her high and dry two days before an eviction hearing because Margot “didn’t like someone she was friends with” or something. I wonder if they are the same person.
Margot Black doesn’t actually care about anyone besides Margot Black. She has ripped off taxpayers by filing for bankruptcy, tries to rip off her friends and the community by crowdsourcing a van (seriously, she is a fully employed professor at PSU or something and is asking *other* people to buy a car for herself and her unemployed loser of a husband), and is trying to grift her way into free housing by pushing all these crazy housing laws that will hurt the general renter population more than they will help.
Now that dozens of people have spoken out about having been on the receiving end of abusive treatment and/or racism from Margot Black and the other Portland Tenants United, including her racist husband Sammy Black, we need to immediately call for the removal of Margot & PTU from the city’s Relo Housing Advisory Committee. There shouldn’t even be a question about that at this point. There is no place for their kinds of beliefs and behavior to have any influence in City policy.