“I read all the revolutionary shit you read. But I am alive because of what my Grandmama did with her understanding of Christ.”—Kiese Laymon, 2026
“As a culture worker who belongs to an oppressed people my job is to make revolution irresistible.”—Toni Cade Bambarra, 1982
Sigh…
If the culture wars within Portland city council weren’t evident to you before—last week’s budget vote put them front and center after an off-hand remark by Councilor Angelita Morillo spawned a whirlwind of local controversy which may be best described as Portland’s “Daddy-gate”
In the first-ever tiebreaking vote cast by Mayor Keith Wilson—in which he voted against her spending package—Morillo lambasted some of the more moderate councilors for calling in the body’s “daddy” to settle the situation, rather than find compromise.
Well that didn’t bode well.
The vote in question was between two competing funding packages designed to save a number of jobs and services across city bureaus during a contentious budget season. And while there’s an abundance of other technical details underpinning this vote, as the Mercury’s Courtney Vaughn reported (including potential funding threats to the Office of Community-based Police Accountability), my focus is more on the cultural divide that this widely-reported “Daddy-gate” has revealed.
After Councilor Loretta Smith, a 60-year-old Black woman, attempted to interrupt 29-year-old Paraguayan councilor Morillo (for the second time), calling into question the “daddy” comment, Morillo declared, “Well, he’s your daddy—not mine.”
Unpleasantries were briefly lobbed across the dais, before ending with Councilor Candace Avalos reaching over to Smith’s desk, turning off her microphone and telling her fellow District 1 colleague, “stop talking when another councilor is talking!”
Have we no home training, y’all?
Now there’s a lot to untangle here, so I’m going to hit you with the topline reflections first, so we can get into the finer points of these shenanigans quickly.
- Can I imagine a world where my 34-year-old Black ass would be telling any elder Black woman that a White man… or any man for that matter is her “daddy”? Naaaah.
- Similarly, I can’t see a world in which I’m telling them to “stop talking,” like they were one of my little friends—that’s just me though.
- Has Councilor Smith also had a history of interrupting folks on the dais (including that day), while pushing to increase certain corporate and law enforcement interests as an East County representative—the most disenfranchised district in town—all while advocating throughout the year to bring in the mayor as a tie-breaking vote against progressive policies? Well, is 162nd Avenue hot after 11 pm?
Now that that is out of the way, let’s get to it.
A lot of showdowns on council today get cast as The Moderates vs The Progressives, often leading to a number of 6-6 voting standoffs. The truth is, outside of these labels, this spat revealed a public divide over what or who represents “The Culture.” What Councilor Smith understands is that, while many in her base want public safety, not a single one of them are saying “ACAB.” Reductionist as this may sound to some left-leaning ideologues, many Black folks do not feel that the progressive “vibe” represents them, whether that’s fair or not. For some Black Portlanders—no matter their belief systems—“progressives” are just a stone’s-throw away from the “Keep Portland Weird” lifestyle we believe helped erode our neighborhoods.
Moments like this certainly do not help to bridge that notion, even if all three women involved in this incident are women of color.
Smith, a mainstay in Portland politics, has been a fixture with the aunties, uncles, grannies, and grandpas that you may not see at the next protest, but you will encounter at the MLK senior center, or Sunday service.
While I applaud the growth of progressive power on council, there’s a gap in connecting certain dots. That gap is evidenced by crowds who are most drawn to the upcoming Hasan Piker show at Keller Auditorium, and say, those turning out for Good in the Hood year-after-year. Meanwhile, I saw Safer Portland canvassers pounding the pavement quite hard to gather signatures to siphon Portland Clean Energy Fund money for hiring 400 more cops at the latter event (under false pretenses?). And if you don’t think these gaps are an issue, you’re not paying attention.
Herein lies the issue.
Oftentimes, people’s politics cannot be snugged neatly into “left and right” boxes. Conversely, it is precisely progressive and radical politics that come out of the Black freedom traditions which provide the very soil for representational politics to take root—however obscured the radical elements of that tend to become in the collective consciousness.
Ta-Nehisi Coates just explored this paradox in his new Vanity Fair article “Did Kamala Harris’ Silence on Gaza Cost Her the White House?” naming the inherent contradiction of the 2024 Democratic National Convention in which they paraded Fannie Lou Hamer as the “patron saint” of the convention—while party leadership simultaneously refused to let a Palestinian even speak on stage. This, despite Hamer’s fundamental commitment to grassroots multicultural organizing and anti-war stances.
But as Hamer famously declared, “nobody’s free until we’re all free.”
It is that very notion that implores me to disagree with Councilor Smith vehemently on certain approaches to policy. For example, it is hard for me to believe that ancestors like Malcolm X, Huey Newton, Assata Shakur, or even Jesse Jackson would say the road to freedom travels through endless dollars flung towards police trainings, hiring quotas, or hosting a monthly community “Coffee with a Cop” as Smith does.
Nonetheless the fact remains: You can’t just be talking to Black women in public any way, especially an elder—even if you have an issue with them.
As a capable Black woman with decades of experience in politics, who has championed various cultural programs and services in Portland’s Black community, Ms. Smith has undeniably encountered her share of headline-worthy slights and undermining that have gone unreported throughout the years—incidents that Black women like her call “just another Monday.” Tiffany Cross, who I recently interviewed, outlines the universality of such truths with excruciating detail in her new book, Love, Me: A Letter to Black Women Navigating a Toxic Country, Career, and Relationship. So with or without context, a lot of folks are going to hear that “daddy” clip, see an older Black woman being chastised or mocked by a younger person, and feel some type of way.
Believe me, there’s an elder or two that I don’t see eye-to-eye with around town. But there’s a level of respect that is not rooted in “respectability politics” that exists within our community and should still be upheld, even in the face of such splinters.
Our progressiveness cannot be confined to “politics” alone. It’s manifested in our interpersonal exchanges, just as much as it is in our policy frameworks. I have an uncle that, if I needed help right now, would try to figure out how to support me—he probably doesn’t know a single council member’s name. But is this not the “community care and safety” we speak of so strongly in progressive spaces?
Black Portland is a world all unto itself. We are all a sibling, play cousin, ex, or cookout away from running into each other. This doesn’t mean that folks don’t talk crazy sometimes, but it does mean we tend to understand there are ways you should and shouldn’t talk to certain folk.
It also doesn’t mean we let anybody with an AARP card talk crazy to us, nor does it mean we have to let our officials push bad policy in the name of Representation™. All it means is simply come correct.
In my view, all three councilors were wrong for different reasons. This “daddy” debacle looked like a bunch of people trying to “keep it real” and ended up looking more like Dave Chapelle’s “When Keeping it Real Goes Wrong” skit than a win for anything but the Culture Wars™—not The Culture™.
Some rules of engagement simply can’t be enforced by whoever Robert was and his “rules of order.” While our electeds don’t need to play Portland Nice just to get along, they should all recognize that sometimes they alienate the very folks they could reach when only playing to their base.
Follow Donovan Scribes on Instagram @donovanscribes. Want to keep the conversation going? Email him at donovanscribes@gmail.com.
