LINDSEY WALKER doesn’t talk to “corporate media.” But as she looked over a bright expanse of Colonel Summers Park on Monday evening, July 8, anger betrayed principle.
Walker first offered only a terse comment on Food Not Bombs, the group she works with serving free meals at the park on Mondays and Fridays. And she grudgingly showed off the red brick pavilion where the organization’s volunteers set up shop in inclement weather. The city’s parks bureau is talking about fencing the shelter off.
Soon, Walker wasn’t even trying to stop herself.
“We’ve been fucking oppressed in this fucking park for a year and half,” she said, voice echoing out from the pavilion to the grass where people were finishing their food. “They’re full of shit. They’re lying.”
Perhaps more than any other city park, Southeast Portland’s Colonel Summers has for years been a magnet for the city’s many subcultures. On this Monday, two men fenced with plastic swords near the tennis courts, and a group practiced hula-hoop routines nearby. There was kickball, of course, and bo staffs in evidence.
This year, Colonel Summers is also shaping up as something of a battleground.
The city’s parks bureau says the 5.9-acre plot has become a problem area, replete with underage drinking, drug use, and occasionally serious vandalism—three portable toilets have been set on fire, as has a bench.
But the bureau’s strategy for combating those problems is drawing backlash. Portland Parks and Recreation (PP&R) has stepped up ranger patrols at Colonel Summers this year, pleasing neighbors but spurring claims of unfair treatment from Food Not Bombs organizers and patrons.
“Thousands of people use Colonel Summers Park every year, and the vast majority of them use it appropriately and positively,” parks spokesman Mark Ross wrote in an email. “Our goals are to ensure that the park is safe, accessible, and welcoming for all park users.”
He added: “Regarding the Food Not Bombs folks, our staff has stressed to them that their work is one of the activities that PP&R and the community welcome and support in the park.”
Parks has held two meetings with neighbors about Colonel Summers. At another meeting set for Monday, July 15, staffers will take the public’s temperature on more possible changes, such as trimming back the park’s large bushes to increase visibility and removing a set of stairs. Most controversially, the parks bureau has also floated fencing off the pavilion, giving access only to permitted parties.
“Parks and rec wants bars not food!” Walker announced to around 25 people gathered near the pavilion on Monday, sampling the night’s fare (tofu pad thai, bean salad, greens, and fruit salad). “Spread the word. Let everybody know.”
Across the street, Chris Boothby was watering the garden in front of his brown-and-white, two-story home. Asked how he likes living near Colonel Summers, Boothby said: “It sucks sometimes.”
Ever since he moved in nine years ago, he said, noise has been an issue at the park. He’s got no problems with what goes on there during the day—he sees Food Not Bombs, for instance, as a boon—it’s just he needs his sleep. Until recently, Boothby, 61, said he called the police roughly once a week about people in the park after its 10 pm closing. “It’s been a whole lot better this summer, because the police have actually done their job for a change.”
Boothby says he opposes closing off the pavilion. Other neighbors, meanwhile, wonder whether the increased ranger and police enforcement isn’t enough, whether the city might be overreaching on suggestions to physically alter Colonel Summers.
“I’ve been very skeptical of this plan, and confused,” said Susan Lindsay, chairwoman of the Buckman Community Association. “Most of all confused. I guess I feel like they’re going this way because it’s just easier to fence it off.”
Fuck This Shit! The blocking off of a public space that’s out of the rain should be criminal in a place with weather like this. The Pavilion, and all the parks belongs to all of us -including the homeless! On a selfish note, having a sunny park to drink in is fucking rad. Why’s the city gotta’ be dicks?
Fuck this shit, indeed… or rather fuck THAT shit! Meaning the shit and urine that is constantly being deposited in the Col Summers Pavillion. Maybe some of the neighbors burned the outhouses down because no one appeared to be using them anyway and they figured, why pay for a service that is not being used?
Fencing off the pavilion seems very lazy on PP&R’s behalf. Why hasn’t a volunteer neighborhood/park watch after 10pm; been brought up at the two meetings they’ve had? Or perhaps, PP&R could be useful for once and hire some people to security up the park after 10pm? They could fire some mid level administrative people that do pretty much nothing to pay for it.
Disrespectful, self-indulgent, entitled twenty year olds ruining public spaces and events for everyone else? Not in Portland! No way!
Crazy uninformed hyperbole from so-called activists? Color me surprised.
PP&R clearly states that they want Food Not Bombs to keep doing what they’re doing; so obviously Food Not Bombs interprets that as oppression. After all, what good is radical activism if the state apparatus supports you?
What Lindsay Walker could do is serve food to the homeless from inside her own home, but she won’t. Lots of people in this town willing to campaign for the homeless but I don’t hear about a single goddamn one of them offering a couch or even a tent in their backyards.
Hey Lindsay, want to do something productive at Col. Summers park? You can start by picking up the broken pieces of glass I always find in the grass.
Its buckman’s living room if buckman is a bi polar cross dressing HIV ridden ultimate frisbee professional.
WaaaaaaaaaH!!!!! WE are Portland ACTIVISTS and WE want to do WHATEVER WE want and EVERYONE who DOESN’T want what WE want is MEAN. BOOOOOOOO-HOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!! (Collapses in sobs and wails like a tattooed toddler).
Actually, Lindsey does cook and serve food out of her own home. In fact she spent Christmas day feeding houseless folks so maybe instead of posting hateful comments you should get off the internet and actually do something productive. I pay taxes and live in the neighborhood and I absolutely support what Food Not Bombs does in the park. They are a huge asset to the park and often deal with difficult situations that arise there. We live in a country that doesn’t care for it’s elderly and mentally ill so often they have no place to turn. You can wall up the pavilion and kick them out of the park but where do you think they will go?