How do you know you’ve finally arrived after being a member of a marginalized minority?
You’re treated like a white guy.
Welcome to the privileged world of white power, Rep. Diego Hernandez. How do you like it?
Hernandez (D-East Portland) is facing expulsion from the Oregon House of Representatives after a Conduct Committee recommended he be removed for sexual harassment and creating a hostile work environment. If two-thirds of House members agree, Hernandez will be the first Oregon legislator to be expelled.
Members of the committee have said it’s unfortunate it would be a “man of color.”
What’s really unfortunate is that anyone – whatever their skin color – would be subjected to proceedings resembling a star chamber where the accused is not permitted to defend himself.
Hernandez filed an unsuccessful lawsuit to stop the vote and sought $1 million in damages. But the lawsuit did allow him to publicly offer evidence that was not permitted in the Conduct Committee hearing.
It is a politically sordid affair. There are no heroes or heroines. Despite efforts to cast the women involved as helpless, the power differential is in their favor. Women now run the show.
When House Speaker Rep. Tina Kotek (D-Portland) and state Sen. Sara Gelser (D-Corvallis) each received a complaint about Hernandez, they acted as “mandatory reporters” and referred the information to interim Legislative Equity Officer Jackie Sandmeyer (who describes herself as a queer woman of color and prefers gender neutral pronouns). She is married to a former aide to Kotek, who demanded Hernandez resign before an investigation was complete.
Sandmeyer hired two women – Sarah J. Ryan and Kira Johal of the Portland law firm Jackson Lewis – to investigate. After soliciting other complaints on Hernandez, they winnowed the investigation down to five women – referred to as Subjects One, Two, Three, Four and Five when the case came before the Conduct Committee (three female state representatives, one male state representative).
So extreme were the precautions regarding anonymity that Committee Co-Chair Julie Fahey (D-Eugene) told investigators to take all the time they needed to carefully answer any questions so as not to reveal any identifying information about the women involved.
Hernandez was not present during the public hearings. His attorney Kevin Lafky was, but he could not cross-examine the women.
The case focused on Subjects One, Two and Four who acknowledged having consensual intimate relationships with Hernandez. After listening to the committee’s public hearings, reading the investigators’ 33-page report (with some portions redacted) and reviewing Hernandez’s lawsuit (with some portions redacted), it’s hard to keep track of who is screwing whom.
Subject Two is Andrea Valderrama, and Subject Four is her sister Ana del Rocio (also known as Rosa Valderrama). They have held elected office themselves as David Douglas School District board members. Both had a proxy read their testimony at the Conduct Committee – Andrea on Feb. 1, del Rocio on Feb. 3.
In her prepared statement, Valderrama said she and Hernandez went to college together and were best friends for about 10 years. They didn’t become intimate until after he was elected to the legislature. She said he became abusive and violent. The impact of his actions, she said, has affected her emotional well-being.
“Our Latinx community is watching…,” she said. “Expel him.”
Valderrama and Hernandez could not agree on who ended the relationship or when. In his lawsuit, he said she tried to rekindle the relationship, sending him an email that said, “I miss you like crazy. I miss hearing how you’re continuing to fight for our gente through all the bullshit of that building … I miss seeing you and cuddling you and watching you kill it at your video games … I’m sorry I’ve been distant.”
When that didn’t reignite the relationship, Valderrama sent Hernandez’s then-girlfriend an email with the subject “Things You Should Know” stating, “I didn’t know you existed, which makes me think you didn’t know I existed either… .”
She listed the things that were occurring between her and Hernandez – “(S)leeping together, weekly, multiple times a week … Met each other’s families (went to Mexico with him to meet his family). He bought me a 50-inch TV for Christmas. He told me he loves me and he wants me in his life… .”
In his lawsuit, Hernandez said when that effort also failed, Valderrama took out a restraining order on him, which was widely reported in the media. Among other things, she accused him of throwing a phone at her in July 2019 and losing his temper when he was drinking and using drugs.
Valderrama previously worked for Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler and ran for Portland City Council. She now works for the ACLU of Oregon and is still on the David Douglas School Board.
Her sister, del Rocio, also served on the David Douglas School Board and previously worked for then-State Rep. Jessica Vega Pederson (whose seat Hernandez now holds; Pederson moved on to the Multnomah County Commission).
In his lawsuit, with text evidence provided, Hernandez states that “Subject Four” – del Rocio – asked him out on a date in May 2017. He admitted he was “a little thrown off by it” because he didn’t think she liked him like that. Hernandez described their association as a brief “consensual intimate interaction,” while del Rocio maintains they had a relationship, which she ended later in 2017 but felt “pressured to resume” in mid-2018.
Del Rocio was arrested in March 2018 by Transit Police on TriMet for providing false information when asked to prove she had purchased fare. After her arrest for fare evasion, del Rocio called Hernandez. Later, after telling her story to the media of how she felt racially profiled by Transit Police, del Rocio asked Hernandez for legislation related to her case. In explaining why he was introducing the legislation to take away fare enforcement from police, he said it was on behalf of “a constituent.” (HB 3337 never made it out of committee.)
Del Rocio is now executive director of Oregon Futures Lab, an organization dedicated to passing legislation and “building a new wave of leadership in the Pacific Northwest. … We are disruptive, effective, and authentic,” says its website.
Subject One, the only woman to testify in person at the Conduct Committee hearing but who did not give her name, said her relationship with Hernandez began in January 2017 shortly after he was sworn into the House of Representatives. She worked as a lobbyist and did business at the Capitol. She told investigators she ended the relationship in February; he said it ended in April.
She maintained that after she ended the relationship he continued to stay in touch – sending her gift boxes from Singles Swag and leaving flowers on her car. In his lawsuit, Hernandez said he meant no harm in sending her the gift boxes and flowers and even got the idea from an email she sent him about the company (he included the email in his lawsuit).
Subject One told investigators Hernandez came by her apartment and knocked on her door forcing her to hide in a closet so he couldn’t look through her window and see she was home. Hernandez denied he ever visited her home and was not let it. He said she lived in an apartment complex where visitors had to be buzzed in before they could knock on the door of a unit.
Subject One said Hernandez became critical of her work and accused her of being inebriated. She believed he was retaliating and was using his position to jeopardize her professional standing. Hernandez told investigators he had tried to introduce her to a potential “candidate of color,” and she was rude. She told investigators she wasn’t rude; she had to catch a bus.
Such is the nitpicking tenor of Subject One’s sexual harassment investigation. The investigator’s report on her concludes with: “To the present, she remains uncomfortable at the Capitol due to Rep. Hernandez’s conduct as outlined above.”
That’s a problem since Subject One looks like Jenn Baker, who now works as a labor adviser to Gov. Kate Brown. Baker’s career in Salem has included lobbying for the Oregon Nurses Association and working for Service Employees International Union Local 49 and Future PAC, the campaign arm of the Oregon House Democrats.
It’s hard to make the case that Hernandez has more power than his alleged victims. As a legislator, he is one of 60 votes. Depending on how a legislator’s salary is calculated, Hernandez might make a base salary of $2,600 every month, plus $149 per diem when the Legislature is in session (and monthly allowances of at least $450 for routine expenses when it is not). He also receives medical and retirement benefits.
It wouldn’t be surprising if a couple of the women accusing him of using his power to sexually harass them, make more than he does.
Back when Hernandez was a teacher-mentor at Parkrose Middle and High School, would Subjects One, Two and Four have sought an intimate relationship with him?
Unlike many legislators, Hernandez does not have another job. He did some consulting work, but that disappeared with the accusations of sexual harassment.
Almost lost in the footnotes of the Hernandez investigation are Subjects Three and Five – two black women who did not have sex with him. The investigators and the Conduct Committee dismissed their complaints as unsubstantiated. Including them reveals how much investigators wanted to build a case against Hernandez.
Subject Three is Portland activist Teressa Raiford, founder of Don’t Shoot Portland, who testified by phone and was the only woman to volunteer her name. She told investigators that when she testified at a February 2018 hearing before a legislative committee that included Hernandez, she believed he smirked at her while she was giving emotional testimony.
A month later, Raiford said she encountered Hernandez at an event and he yelled at her, appeared angry and invaded her personal space. She advised him that he was making her uncomfortable and asked him to step back. He did not do so.
According to the investigators, Hernandez said it was Raiford who was angry and yelling and that he remained composed. Investigators talked to other people at the event. One supported Hernandez’s version, but another person who saw the interaction sided with Raiford.
“Based on those competing observations by two different witnesses, we’re not able to substantiate what happened,” the investigators said.
Subject Five, whose allegations were not substantiated either, could be a precursor to what life in the state Capitol building could become.
The woman, who said she is in her 40’s, served for several months as Hernandez’s chief of staff during his first term. She had legal skills and hoped to guide him as a new lawmaker. Instead, it appeared she spent much of her time monitoring his body language as he interacted with people.
She suspected a budding romantic interest between Hernandez and an intern. Subject Five said she was called “transphobic” because she forgot to use a preferred pronoun, and Hernandez verbally threatened her in front of the staff.
The woman told investigators many of the staff members were Latino and said their culture is “huggy.” There was a rule that anytime somebody joined the staff they would be asked if they were comfortable with that. If not, there would be no hugs. If yes, there would be hugs.
The investigators said Hernandez credibly denied a romantic relationship with the intern. Subject Five said she was afraid of being accused of trying to smear a man of color and never applied for another legislative position at the Capitol.
It’s a strange turn-about for a legislator who was hailed in 2016 as being the youngest lawmaker at age 29, a “man of color” and a community organizer dedicated to developing the next generation of intersectional social justice leaders.
Now he has become another face on The Creep Sheet, an online encyclopedia of public figures accused of sexual assault and harassment. Among the names: Bill Clinton, Joe Biden, Al Gore, Andrew Cuomo, Donald Trump, George H.W. Bush and even Ronald Reagan. All white men.
The website notes “in most cases, the allegations listed here have not been proved or disproved in court proceedings.”
Makes no difference when all that is required is an allegation, and the accused can’t challenge the accuser. None of these women claimed to have been raped by Hernandez. But they were treated with the sensitivity that we now try to provide rape victims. Why so much caution?
Because these women’s careers might be jeopardized and because, as investigators Ryan and Kohal put it in their report, “(I)dentifying witnesses by name in this process would likely have a chilling effect on individuals who are asked to participate in future investigations.”
Future investigations?
That statement should be chilling to anyone who works in the state Capitol building. Anything you do that makes certain people “uncomfortable” could be used against you.
Ryan and Kohal’s law firm could be kept very busy.
– Pamela Fitzsimmons
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From the Archives:
This guy Hernandez was getting it on with two sisters. Are we talking threesome? Following politics will leave your mind in the gutter.
I remember when del Rocio, or whatever name she’s going by today tried to ride TriMet for free and screamed racism when cops asked her for proof. You know, if you look at photos of these characters, most of them aren’t darker than white commoners.
Based on their own turns in the spotlight, it appears that Andrea Valderrama and her sister Ana del Rocio (aka Rosa Valderrama) have a complicated and competitive sibling relationship.
Andrea has known Hernandez a lot longer, and del Rocio met him through her sister. Del Rocio’s two children referred to Hernandez as “Uncle Diego.” Andrea was the first “person of color” to be elected to the David Douglas School District Board. Del Rocio was the second.
As you’ve probably heard, Hernandez resigned last night.
One thing he tried to point out — but has been ignored by many media reports — is that his encounters with Valderrama and del Rocio were never at the state Capitol building. Reports refer to Hernandez creating a “hostile work place.” Of the three women whose complaints were substantiated, only one of them — the former lobbyist — was someone Hernandez dealt with inside the Capitol.
This could turn out to be a crucial detail in future investigations if the definition of work place is so broad that it includes anybody who ever has business related to the state legislature. All Oregon residents are impacted by the business conducted inside the Capitol.
His resignation leaves too many unanswered questions. I do some work in that building. I know he had some support because of the way Kotek handled things.
I watched the first two hearings and couldn’t take anymore. Diego was toast. The committee was going to recommend expulsion not censure.
Diego’s biggest problem was the night he first got elected to office, the Democrats decided he was an up-and-comer. Before he was sworn in there was talk about him being Oregon’s first Latino governor. Everybody’s got an ego. He responded the way many people would.
He didn’t understand how power hungry some of people in that building are. Not just the ones who are elected. People like Jackie Sandmyer. He/she got an ego stroke out of those hearings.
Diego at least had three elections to his credit, including the one in November when it was known he was under investigation. East Portlanders still elected him. He did play the Latino card.
Thanks for naming names. Rumors are flying about who’s next up for investigation. Anonymity will guanrantee accusations. Politics is about interactions and relationships. Pre-COVID a lot of business was done at social events and conferences. Will everybody need a permission slip from Tina to conduct business inside/outside the building?
Sorry to ramble. This has been a big distraction. The state of Oregon can’t get COVID vaccine distributed and can’t handle a moderate snow storm without thousands of people losing power for a week.
Diego could have handled himself better, but he isn’t why the state has deteriorated over the last decade. Kotek and Brown have wielded more power than Diego ever will.
Another reason there is likely to be other distractions (besides the protection of anonymity) is if you have a Legislative Equity Office, they will need something to keep them busy to justify their existence. Before it’s over with, even the janitors in the Capitol building will be “mandatory reporters.”
In the first hearing, when Jackie Sandmeyer was laying out the rules of the game, she called herself a “process counselor.” If you’re ever called into her office for process counseling, take a witness.
Salem reader is distressingly correct.
Managed to bungle COVID vaccine distribution on an ALL-STATE level and also managed to bring back the Same Witch Trials married to the McCarthy Hearings on Internal Security!
“Let us both go to law: I will prosecute you – Come, I’ll take no denial; We must have a trial: For really this morning I’ve nothing to do.’ Said the mouse to the cur, ‘Such a trial, dear Sir, with no jury or judge, would be wasting our breath.’ ‘I’ll be judge, I’ll be jury,’ Said cunning old Tina: ‘I’ll try the whole cause, and condemn you to death.'”
It’s revealing that life at the state Capitol sounds like something out of “Alice in Wonderland.”
Yours is a model of clear, concise explicative writing. And, anchored in objective (racist) reporting. I mean how to briefly convey that byzantine nuthouse and its shabby grubby masters and players.
Do you think these people Kotek, Valderrama(s), Fahey, Brown, and their ilk are going to understand why we live in ashes and how they played a critical role in getting us here.
The increasingly intense attack on dissenting voices that has been legitimized during the Biden ascension (granted it started much earlier) and has nearly reached a critical level.
Just as we voted in that low bunch in Salem and Washington we are allowing educators, the unions, and the moguls to frame and guide our future.
Below I extract perhaps too much from a Taibbi column:
I described Fox as the clear progenitor of the division-for-profit model of modern commercial media.
Circumstances have come all the way around. Incredibly, Fox News may soon be the last line of defense against an all-out assault on the heterogenous free press as an institution, and people like me, who’ve despised the channel their whole lives, now find themselves in the unenviable position of having to defend the “Fair and Balanced” channel as a matter of self-preservation.
The local and alternative presses are already dying, and tech platforms have already successfully asserted their rights to censor. All that remains is to topple a behemoth like Fox as a show of strength, leaving an untouchable Soviet-style club of Chuck Todds and Jennifer Rubins and Max Boots in charge of disseminating an approved™ top-down version of reality. Are you excited yet?
Imagine the reaction! Do the Eshoos of the world think Fox viewers would just shrug off the L, and find ways to warm up to Rachel Maddow, Chris Hayes, and Joy Reid? To the many Fox-haters out there: imagine a world in which you’re told, by an unelected bund of cable distributors, that you have to get used to watching Tucker and Sean. Would you take that lying down? Or would you lose your mind with rage, and reach for something sharp? How does anyone think this is going to end well?
I dunno. It is all hard to believe.
The outrages quietly pile up — quietly because the major news media move as a pack and don’t see what is happening.
I was talking to someone Wednesday about the echo chamber here in Portland. A synonym for the word “echo” is “imitate.” An antonym for the word “imitate” is “truth.” It’s hard to find truth in an echo chamber. Kotek, Brown, et al don’t see where their actions are leading.
You might have heard earlier this week that the Portland City Council is going to pay $2 million to settle a “wrongful death” suit of 17-year-old Quanice Hayes. Armed with a realistic-looking gun, he robbed one man, trashed a woman’s car and tried to break into two women’s homes. Of course, when confronted by police he did not cooperate.
I wrote about him at the time. (See “Get Out from Under the Past.”)
The Grand Jury rightfully found the shooting justified. The city should not have settled. They should have taken a chance on a jury, where there is more diversity of thought than in a newsroom. Instead the city believed the echo chamber.
No, I hadn’t known of the Hayes business. It does speak for itself.
I may be moved out in as soon as 90 days. Not that it will put me on dry land.
Today I watched this rather gruesome fellow talk to congress about childhood genital mutilation. He/she/it/the/zhey needed that august institution’s approval for a government job. A job with some pretty sweeping powers, I believe.
One would think it were impossible to land in such a place as we have.
I just re-read Walter Lord’s staid classic, A Night to Remember.
Of course as a conservative there are many facets of that ordered and well-defined time I wish still extant. No one could wish the class distinctions that prevailed to ever regain its vanished ground, although its recovery seems to be underway.
Interestingly to me, Scandinavians bound for the Pacific Northwest woods were prohibited from going to the boats. I had people coming from there to here at that time.
Imagine that if I had clomped up to a lifeboat and declared myself a woman and tried to board a lifeboat. A sucking chest wound from the smoking barrel of Second officer Lightoller’s revolver would occur.
No doubt the 57 points along the sexual continuum would have collapsed pretty fast, too. See that podgy fellow with the walking stick and hormone therapy beard who asserts that she is a man? He might well decide that his vagina counted for something in the scheme of things, lifeboat-wise.
I once listened on speakerphone to senior NPR staff argue priorities while interviewing my girlfriend for a position at their Madison radio station. Balkanized nitwits. I can see them at the davits now. Again, Lightoller’s revolver would have cleared things up snappily enough (What like a bullet can undeceive) during the abandon shipery.
So many of the serving mariners were such decent people who did the very best that they could to aid the largest number. What iron discipline and cultural clarity from the stokers, radiomen, lesser officers, and etc. They understood their role in the community and often stayed at their tasks long after having been given permission to save themselves.
They of that plump pigsty in Salem understand nothing of the elementary seriousness of life. A working society is actually contingent upon adult men and women recognizing their true duty and serving the common good.
Self-government is like sea duty in that is a hard service. And the familiar observation applies equally I suppose to ship sinking’s, bankruptcies, and societal collapse comes to mind: it happens gradually, then suddenly.
The Titanic would have remained afloat were it not for the ruling hubris of the professionals and so might have democracy in America.
Finally, thank heaven we’ve had a year of squalor to prepare the ground for the flourishing of Quanice green. Christ.
How beautiful is it that Andrea Valderrama accused a sitting rep and then filed to claim said same rep’s seat after he is gotten rid of? Honestly, the audacity demands admiration. Here is the test case for all other female challengers to political seats held by men. Accuse them of malfeasance and demand their seat as recompense. What an absurd world we live in.
Yes, Valderrama has gall if nothing else. She’s BIPOC, and Hernandez was a member of the BIPOC caucus so there will be pressure to appoint another from that self-created tribe. (Actually, we’re all BIPOC. But as George Orwell would say, some of us are more BIPOC than others.)
When Valderrama ran for Portland City Council a couple of years ago, I saw her at some candidates’ forums. The only thing that stood out about her in a field of all-progressive candidates is that she loved to roll the R’s in her name. She clearly enjoys hearing her own name.
Quillette.com has a convoluted and rather seriously idiotic piece by Portlander Michael Totten: Leaving Portland.
I have always thought well of him as a self-made journalist who did good work. All is now subject to review on the good work bit. Understanding the essence of that which you are witnessing is well …the sine qua non of that trade if you are to actually to be good at the work.
I read that last night — taking a break from studying the genesis of the phrase “nigger rich,” prompted by some of the recent, generous police brutality payouts. That expression, a pejorative, also has been directed at the spending habits of white trash.
Anyway, back to Totten. I started off reading with great anticipation. Things went south when I hit this graph:
“In the early days, thousands of people took to the streets and demanded police accountability and reform. Most of the protesters were my middle class neighbors, and the vast majority of them were peaceful. A minuscule percentage broke windows, looted stores, and set fires. But as time went on, the mainstream protesters were more or less satisfied that their point had been made, and they had excellent reasons to believe this: the Oregon legislature enacted a comprehensive reform package with blazing speed, and Portland police drove around saying ‘Portland, we hear you’ through loudspeakers. So nonviolent reform-minded protesters returned to their lives and to their jobs (if they still had jobs).”
I went to some of those protests at the federal courthouse, the Justice Center and ICE on Macadam. The protests that devolved into riots were helped along by the “peaceful” protesters who serve as protection for the looters, vandals and thugs. The police are so outnumbered, it is dangerous to dive into the mob and individually arrest the ones causing destruction.
But legislators, from the comfort of Zoom, try to dictate what officers on the ground should do. I watched many of the legislative hearings that led up to that “comprehensive reform package” Totten praised. If you only target cops and ignore the behavior of their clientele, public safety is compromised.
All of those bills began with “Whereas Black Lives Matter…” and then later invoked the names of George Floyd and various people who have been killed by Portland police — many of them armed and committing crimes. Badly written legislation. Wait and see the results before you praise it.
Last night a co-worker and I stepped the half-block over to Landsdale Square so that we might watch antifablm continue their attack against the Hatfield courthouse. We were dressed in all black with slight silver script lettering sewn on our coats identifying our security company. It’s just up the street from the Xxxxx building.
Some hairy asshole with a painter’s mask steps up and asks who we are. I tell him to fuck off. We continue watching but now our heads are on the swivel because it is increasingly apparent that we are being monitored by the other scroungy assholes on the park’s perimeter. They have radio communication. We stroll across the street by the bum camps for a better view then drift over to where we were to begin with.
It is darker now and from half-a-block away I see a man with an extraordinarily bright light walking in our direction. Sure enough he marches right up to me and starts snarling and swearing while shining his light directly into my eyes. The effect is similar to the constant blinding bright of an old fashioned photogs flash bulb. I know he won’t take it away so don’t demand that he does. He’s in a tactical vest, don’t know if it has sappy plates or not, does have a police style handheld radio and he is my size much younger and going nuts. Partially blind and squinting in the awful beam I hold my arm out because he wants to get chin to chin (I start swinging when you get that close). He snarls and launches into the “don’t you touch me routine.” I spin around just to see what’s closing in on me. My coworker is a nice kid about 6′ 2″ and 230 and thank god he doesn’t look too worried.
I insist bright light give me his mother’s telephone number because I’m going to call her right now. He starts shouting that I hit him and some black guy runs out and tries to chill the thing. I move away with my guy and we start walking the long way back to Xxxxxx . Don’t want to incite them to attack the building.
Two harassing film/photog guys follow us for several blocks before one pulls off to go back to the park, I guess. The second one continues being a nasty cat and we turn into a parking garage that occupies the entire block, heading into its basement. The single pic taking harasser doesn’t like the look of that and goes back to the park, too.
Violent, stupid, belligerernt, and primed for group/gang mob action. That lovely park is destroyed. And, oddly Spanish American War figure atop a very high plinth is still there. Around its base are artillery shell shaped casings with the name of significant battles engraved into them. It is odd because it does commemorate our one straight up imperial conquest war. It is graffitied as high as they can reach. Park is trashed.
https://www.portland.gov/parks/lownsdale-square
Juniper, the ever companionable Juniper
https://www.losangelesblade.com/2020/08/05/federal-agents-target-nonbinary-portland-protester/
https://www.google.com/search?q=Juniper+Simonis,&tbm=isch&sxsrf=ALeKk02Jk5NuP3-Ecs9Kf5jV3qQKXvzQrQ:1615759827932&source=lnms&biw=1280&bih=923&dpr=1
Like the reader from Salem, I also had forgotten how Lownsdale Square once looked. Nice observation on the Spanish-American War figure.
Downtown will stay grungy for the foreseeable future — especially with a district attorney like Mike Schmidt. Thugs have nothing to fear, as the guys who accosted you have easily figured out. That business with the light is frightening. I wonder how Schmidt would’ve handled it. Apologized for his privilege as DA?
I haven’t been to any of this year’s protests/riots. I do walk around downtown regularly to see how it’s doing. When it was announced that the Apple store was going to reopen, it was presented as positive news. Then I saw what it now looks like.
If this year becomes a rerun of last year’s protests/riots, I will go occasionally to see for myself. The local media are unreliable. They can’t accept that antifa is a fascist movement. The media denounce white supremacists, but it’s antifa that behaves like the KKK — only without the cross burnings, and they hate everyone who doesn’t agree with them, whatever their skin color.
My first encounter with antifa was in spring 2017. Unlike you, I made the mistake of engaging one of them in conversation. I exchanged just enough information that later a woman called my boss and tried to dox me. I later learned that woman worked as a volunteer attorney for the ACLU.
Keep an eye on the ACLU observers at these events. They’re part of the problem.
Matt’s right. Valderrama’s Audacity would be admirable in other circumstances. I know at least one House member who wants to see a new face and a fresh start. She’ll arrive in Salem with a bag of dirty laundry.
Thanks Larry for the old picture of Lownsdale Park. I’d forgotten what it used to look like. Now it’s as messed up as Juniper Simonis. There’s your candidate for the legislature. Can’t you see Juniper and Tina Kotek going mano a mano.
I would say that grungy is coming to all of Portland if city council has its way, but what I really mean by this is that city council will condone the grungy that already exists in all of Portland as soon as they pass whatever they intend to pass.
@ Larry: I don’t have your job, but I would be very hesitant to take a stand against people who I know the local DA will support over me should push come to shove. This is an existential fight; to think otherwise is dangerous. I would like to think that all cops are savvy, but considering recent hiring priorities, I would not trust that all of PPB will write an appropriate report should push come to shove in your described alteration.
Two omissions from my hastily written observations about my contact with antifablm: the Mexican American War was pretty imperial, too. And, second, it was Juniper that pulled up short of following us into the basement of the parking garage. Otherwise, when in company of like ilk and on the street he was happy to badger and attempt to bully.
Odd that his battle cry when being arrested by the cops was “You’re misgendering me!”
Finally I haven’t faith in any societal institutions. The left has bled away that accumulated goodwill I had for my community and country.
I hasn’t that fellow in the park with a “Fuck off” because it intuitively felt the right thing to do. To reply otherwise to give him the ship hand from the outset.
Like a fool who had only read about this monstrousness downtown I had to see for myself. So, I stood and watched.
I note that to man they were filthy and demonstrated no signs of conspicuous intelligence or a pronounced ability with violence on an individual level.
Grubby cretins and they are masters of the city core.
California CLEAR Act – AB 655
You don’t need a weatherman…..at least I don’t.
And since it is a “rising issue of urgent significance” ain’t it Afro-Americans kicking the shit out of Asian-Americans as both a general and specific matter?
–
This is crazy. And now tDel Rocio (fare evader and provider of a false name to police) is running for Multnomah County Commissioner. You can’t make this stuff up.
Truth is more unbelievable than fiction in this town. She could even get elected. Don’t expect the mainstream media to dig too deeply on this one.