Blue wave or red wave – somebody’s headed for an ass-kicking in Portland, Ore. on Election Night.
Will it be the dark-skinned black Jo Ann Hardesty, a community organizer who won’t be satisfied with police reform until a cop is killed?
Or will it be the light-skinned black Loretta Smith, a county commissioner whose skin is so thin you’d better treat her like a queen?
When Portland’s Willamette Week put Hardesty on its cover this past spring, endorsing her in the primary race for City Council, the news weekly called her the angry black woman that Portland needs.
Had Smith not entered the race, Hardesty might have won the primary outright. With a low voter turnout and a get-out-the-black-vote effort, Hardesty took 42 percent to Smith’s 22 percent. The remaining votes were split among four non-black candidates.
So two black women are facing off in the November election, and the Portland media are beside themselves. History is going to be made! Portland will have its first black female City Council member! Portland will have its first female-majority City Council!
As if more melanin and another vagina are going to automatically make Portland a better city.
All of this is playing out while the City Council establishes still another citizen watchdog group to monitor Portland police (the previous group fell apart after agitators representing “the community” hijacked the meetings). Meanwhile the national media recently shined a spotlight on Portland as a city where thugs take over the streets, and cops are ordered not to intervene.
One widely-distributed video showed 74-year-old Kent Houser trying to drive in downtown Portland with a mob surrounding his car, bashing his windows. What were the protesters protesting?
Many of them were members of Black Lives Matter and Don’t Shoot Portland who were upset that Portland police shot and killed a black man, who was a suspect in the shooting and wounding of two other black men.
Patrick Kimmons, 27, affiliated with the Crips gang, had prior felony convictions for witness tampering and possessing a firearm. He was wounded in a suspected gang-related shooting two years ago.
This is the man protesters were defending when they took over the streets. As Portland resident Andy Ngo pointed out in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, when the mob went after Houser no police were in sight – “even though the central precinct was blocks away.”
And the two black women running for City Council? They were dealing with a spat involving a dance partner.
At an arts forum, with Smith looking on, Hardesty danced the Electric Slide with Baruti Artharee, who was an advisor to former Mayor Charlie Hales. Artharee, who is black, resigned five years ago under fire from Smith. She pushed for his dismissal after he introduced her at a public event and said, “Here’s our beautiful Commissioner Loretta Smith. Mmm, mmm, mmm, she looks good tonight” and swayed his hips suggestively.
Smith said the comment made her uncomfortable.
“It was inappropriate what I was subjected to,” she told The Oregonian at the time. “The damage is done.”
Seeing Hardesty dancing with Artharee traumatized her all over again, she told reporters.
A revealing footnote to this City Hall caper: At the time Artharee resigned, Mayor Hales had put him in charge of police reform.
The current mayor, Ted Wheeler, hired a black police chief, Danielle Outlaw with great expectations, hoping for an improved relationship with “the community.” Where was she when protesters ruled the streets? In an official statement, she called it a tenuous situation.
Ngo, in his Wall Street Journal op-ed, said the police bureau told him it feared intervening would “change the demeanor of the crowd for the worse.”
Neither of the black women set to make history on the Portland City Council will likely be able to influence that demeanor. It isn’t the police who need reforming; it’s the community. Although Smith can’t handle a sexist compliment, Hardesty – had she not been running for City Council – might have taken charge of that street protest. Not to quiet things down, though.
On one occasion while sitting in the audience of council chambers, Hardesty got into an argument with Teressa Raiford, a black activist with Don’t Shoot Portland. Hardesty threatened to kick her ass. That kind of brutal honesty from a Portland politician is almost refreshing.
But Hardesty is steadfastly anti-cop. She has been a long-time fixture at police protests. She still rails against the death of Keaton Otis in 2010, who was killed while shooting at officers (wounding one of them) who pulled him over during a traffic stop.
The Portland City Council race reminds me of that Spike Lee movie, “School Daze.”
At Lee’s fictitious black college, the motto is “Uplift the Race.” The college is split into two factions: light-skinned black sorority girls with artificially smooth hair who are called “Wannabees” and dark-skinned, poorer girls with natural hair called “Jigaboos.”
Lee himself plays the character, “Half-Pint,” desperate to pledge with a fraternity run by a character called “Big Brother Almighty.” The latter demands that “Half-Pint” lose his virginity if he wants to pledge.
Half-Pint’s older cousin, Dap, also attends this college, but his interests lie in divesting the school of business interests in South Africa. His classmates are more interested in Homecoming. Half-Pint loses his virginity when Big Brother Almighty orders his girlfriend (a Wannabee) to have sex with him. Then Big Brother Almighty dumps her.
This is one of Lee’s earliest movies, and it’s a messy conglomeration of song and dance numbers, comedy, drama and politics. It’s also courageous. Dap condemns Half-Pint for allowing Big Brother Almighty to pimp out his girlfriend. The movie ends with Dap awakening the campus by ringing the school bell. As the students stumble out of their dorms, Big Brother Almighty joins Dap to urge the assembled crowd: “Wake up!”
The movie came out in 1988, yet it seems little has changed in America.
It’s going to take more than a black woman on City Council for Portland to get woke.
– Pamela Fitzsimmons
Related:
Occupy ICE: A Portland Cesspool
From the Archives:
“As if more melanin and another vagina will make Portland better. “ LOL. What a choice. Smith is weak and stupid. Hardest is a ghetto racist. The only good cop is a dead cop or a dirty cop that can be bought.
Smith exaggerated Arthuree’s comment. She’s the one who blew it up and publicized it. If you’ve got to vote for one of them, hold your nose and vote Smith. At least she wants to open Wapato to the homeless.
If you think Portland cops don’t enforce quality of life laws now, wait until Hardesty is elected and there is a three vote anti-police block in place. The People will have spoken, and it will have been against police. The cops will take their calls, take their paychecks, and take their commutes all the way back home to Clackamas and Clark Counties while they do nothing other than the bare minimum.
Meanwhile the crazy guy setting up camp, shooting meth, and urinating on my front yard will be ignored with a shrug and a, “I’m pretty sure that’s legal now.”
I regret moving into the city.
As someone who has been attending meetings of the police watchdog groups for the past few years, and is now following the latest iteration — the Portland Committee for Community-Engaged Policing — I find this city’s obsession with police reform mystifying. Portland police are not a bunch of cowboy cops.
Out of a city of 600,000-plus residents, the same 15-20 individuals show up at public hearings to complain about the police. Some of them have criminal histories and an axe to grind; others have taken police reform on as a cause. If you were to stand on a street corner and ask the first 100 people who walked by what they were most concerned about, it would probably be the homeless who are trashing the city or the growing number of potholes.
Newspaper staffs have been cut so badly that I’m inclined to attribute the endorsements of Hardesty to editors who don’t know any better. They are listening to the same handful of malcontents. The media forget that the only reason the U.S. Dept. of Justice came to Portland to investigate the police bureau’s treatment of the mentally ill was because then-Mayor Sam Adams invited them as a parting shot before leaving office.
If Hardesty wins, her three-vote, anti-police bloc might crumble if it’s actually put to the test. Every time Portland Police Association President Daryl Turner speaks out against what is happening in this city, he’s greeted with far more praise than anyone on the City Council. The other two votes in Hardesty’s anti-police bloc will likely consider that as they face re-election in a couple of years.
I remember the cover of the angry black woman and couldn’t understand why we need more aangry people. My wife has met both these ladies. Like the other guy said, one of them is anti-police and wants to cut the number of cops.The other woman wants to do something about the homeless so that’s in her favor. I don’t understand the poor choices in Portland. Really they ought to look at what’s happened in Calif.
I spoke with an officer last night. He said exactly what Matt’s first para. declares. NO supervisory support. It’s why I find myself up to my knees if dope fiends and the mentally ill.
Additionally, the emphasis is hiring social worker cops, not law enforcers.
In the future, Larry, we will all be required to act like social workers.
The progressive way is to roll over and accommodate the dope fiends and mental cases. Last year, the Oregon legislature voted to decriminalize small amounts of meth and heroin. It also enabled drug users who commit property crimes to use their addiction as a way to avoid prosecution and jail. Meanwhile various public entities (Multnomah County for one) have sued pharmaceutical companies, blaming them for the opioid epidemic, as if all meth and heroin addicts started with a doctor’s prescription.) It’s everybody’s fault but the dope fiend’s.
What about the rest of us? I saw a glimpse of the future recently. A couple of weeks ago, I had the worst toothache of my life. It started when I had a filling replaced at a hygienist’s suggestion. The tooth wasn’t giving me any trouble, but I had insurance so … why not be proactive?
Something went wrong. The tooth settled into a dull ache. Then a couple of weeks ago, the pain went ballistic. Take Ibuprofen, I was told. Take Advil. Take Extra Strength Tylenol.
I finally found some amoxicillin and etodolac left over from when I had oral surgery a decade ago. That quelled the pain.
If my last name were Obama or Trump, I doubt if I would’ve had to go through this. Or, if I were a meth or heroin addict and willing to turn to a drug dealer.
Our politicians feel sorry for the wrong people. In trying to save the dope fiends on the street, they are creating misery for the rest if us.
It’s everywhere, societal progression:
“The Metro Madison School District has no budget for the next school year because the Board of Education was not allowed to get to its agenda.”
“This Monday night (10-29-18) about 60 cop-hating, race-obsessed social justice warriors shut down the school board meeting,” writes David Blaska.
Freedom Inc., International Socialists, and Progressive Dane flooded the zone with speaker after speaker F-bombing the school board, cops, Racist America, and white people in general. They mocked board president Mary Burke for mispronouncing difficult Hmong names scrawled on the speaker slips…
Mary Burke. You remember Mary Burke. 4 years ago she was the Democratic Party’s nominee for Wisconsin governor.
The school board recessed in a futile attempt to restore order but after reconvening the Far-Left mob accelerated its tactics, marching down to the proscenium at the seven members (the eighth, a non-voting student rep), its superintendent and district counsel. They unfurled their banners, shouted their chants, and pounded their fists.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFCC2bsPmw4&feature=youtu.be
Thanks for the link. I hadn’t heard about that.
I was talking to someone at the Portland Police Bureau about a month ago, and I mentioned the much-anticipated blue wave that some Portlanders are counting on. It’s been my experience that poor losers also make ungracious winners. So however it goes on Election Night there could be reason to protest.
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