Credit: DOUG BROWN

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DOUG BROWN

Good morning, Portland! Could you use a laugh? Oh, it’s 2019—of course you could use a laugh! Check out the Mercury’s picks for this week’s All Jane Comedy Festival.

Here are the headlines.

Workin’ Overtime: According to a new city audit released today, the Portland Police Bureau has a major overtime problem. Beyond being costly and inconvenient, asking officers to consistently work 20 or more hours of overtime a week could result in exhaustion and short tempers, leaving the door open for poorer police-community relations.

Escalation: Hong Kong residents have been protesting mainland China’s harsh policies for months now. Today, as Beijing celebrated 70 years of Communist control, a Hong Kong police officer shot a teenage protestor. It is the protests’ first police shooting.

Reporters Revolt: The staff of the Vancouver, Washington daily newspaper The Columbian announced yesterday that they are unionizing, hoping to gain better wages, regular raises, and increased newsroom diversity. “We’re going to win this fight,” one reporter told the Mercury. “We’re ready for it.”

Yikes: An Oregon Department of Transportation staffer went on a real Twitter tear last weekend, picking fights with random Twitter users complaining about Portland’s increasingly dangerous streets. “No matter how much we engineer our streets, some idiot, like you, will still find a way die on them,” she told one person. Read the full, very “yikes!”, story from BikePortland.

[Extremely Dr. Evil Voice] One Billion Dollars: The United Auto Workers union has been on strike against General Motors since September 16. According to one estimate, they’ve since cost GM $1 billion—I wonder how much more cash GM will need to bleed before it’s ready to work with the union?

The Wokening (Sorry): Polling shows that in recent years, white Democrats have become much more likely to support affirmative action, admit the Confederate flag is pretty racist, and support progressive immigration policies. Per NPR, “there’s something about being white in America that white liberals are trying to distance themselves from—something that could be accelerated by the rhetoric and tone of Trump and some of his supporters.” Speaking as a white Democrat, that sounds about right to me!

Zucked:

Blair Stenvick is a former news reporter and culture writer for the Portland Mercury.