July 18, 2018 at the Yaden
These notes are not verbatim but close enough that the editor is not interested in carping. Complaints that they are Fake News may be filed with Sean Hannity.
David: inspiration for “whither Portland” as a bookgroup topic was Tuck, with his note to Nick fish about agenda for
the City. Your submissions are a rich record of our lives in Portland and our hopes, and how
things have changed. I start with Lincoln: ” If we could but know where we are and whither we are
tending, we would better know what to do.” As you talk tonight I will be interested in “are we at a
new inflection point?” If we just keep truckin’ on the way we are, with good leadership things will
be fine, or, do we need to do what we did in the 1970s and say “no, we need to change direction.”
And, are you optimistic or not.
What struck me from reading submissions? Sense of unease, disquiet. If that is broader than our book group, it is a very big deal. In the submissions, a sense of uncertainty. Some passion around quality of life issues,transportation, mostly around homeless. Sense from the group that there is in fact a degree of ambivalence about the received doxology that pedestrian, bikes and transit will be adequate. People frustrated about
parking issues. Secondly, there is declining citizen engagement broadly and trust in government.
The tools for creating community and agreement, whether politics or media, have been eroded.
When combined with the impatience of the younger generation and of people historically
excluded, communities of color, it makes for a very fraught moment for whether our basic civic
infrastructure for coming together around a vision or direction is up to it. Almost everybody talked
about leadership. Question is what leadership in today’s context actually means. More than a
person on a white horse. My view is that the first job of leadership is to create followership.
Leonard: all of us have been very lucky. Are we giving more people what we had? We have
been very privileged. Pamela worked very hard to get diversity at the law firm but largely failed.
African-Americans simply do not believe Portland or Oregon is a comfortable place for them. Part
of the challenge is to get to a critical mass of people of color. I’m pessimistic. We are losing the
African-American community.
Muriel: many people brought up homelessness. I wrote about loss of good architecture. Struck me
about the issue of homelessness coming up so much. Nothing to contribute except observation
that housing prices are out of reach. (Optimistic?) Fear we may be moving into a major recession.
Sue: I wrote about media, loss of good reporting. No central place to find information. I’m
pessimistic but have some hope that youngsters may get it together. I liked Elsa’s model from
Ireland. Portland 2.0 is positive in trying to pull people together. There has been a lack of foresight,
doesn’t need to be great big leaders. Can work together to bring about change.
Jerri: education is the most fundamental. Whether we invest in kids, get bond measures
passed, see who is on the school board, dropout rates – do something about it. Portland and
Oregon should not be 47th in the nation. A disgrace. I find optimism in suggestion that these
pieces be published in some way. Maybe a course at Portland State. Somewhat optimistic about
possibility to form alliances and use social media but disappointed at what is happening to
Portland now.
Pam: relatively pessimistic, put education at the top of concerns. Happy to see emphasis in
submissions on process and leadership. John Russell convinced me we do need to look at big
projects that capture public imagination while trying to deal with the most difficult social
problems. In Portland we have many immigrants who do not know the history of the city. They like
the way the city is but do not understand they need to do something to preserve it. Important to be
optimistic. get younger generation to take ownership. Need to address this question of building a
sense of community.
Fred: we may be the last generation with an option to do something about climate change. I
have seen estimates of 400,000 new climate change refugees in the Willamette Valley in the next
decade. Where will he put them, what will they do, how do we get them to adopt our unique
Cascadian culture. I see Bull Run being threatened by climate change. Plutonium waste at Hanford
leaching into the Columbia’s. Social media: people walking around absorbing stuff that may not
even be real. People walking around ignoring the human beings around them. Don’t see a real
community of people who know each other and interact with each other. Of course, I don’t go
downtown Portland much anymore. Did end my essay with some resolve to be kind to each other,
be civil, communicate, share. We have a homeless person near us, we are her mailing address. She
gets water out of our tap.
Anne Kelly Feeney: homeless situation needs federal dollars for mental health and housing.
That won’t happen until we see another administration. It is solvable. It was wonderful to be
reminded that in 1974 it was young people working on all the issues. We need that again. I believe
they are. Loved that somebody said that transit was iconic. Also noted McCall’s quote about not
having livabiity if we allow true suffering.
Clyde: cannot make change on the margins. Many cities face the same problems Portland
does. Only make change through very large social events. In the 1970s, we were able to take
advantage of large amounts of federal money. We won’t see that again. County was able to force
East Portland on to sewers. That mde East County very attractive to Portland to annex. Hillsboro
used land-use process to create industrial land. Look what happened. All those jobs came from the
land use process. Now, as near as I can tell, it is all bogged down. Portland grasped the
opportunity to create a vital downtown. 40 years later, I don’t see those big events. City needs to
do something revolutionary, maybe take over the schools. For the homeless, it is a joke. We have
all these little token programs that don’t really address the issue. To really solve the problem we are
talking a couple billion dollars. Optimistic? We are on the verge of a major change, hopefully it
will be for the better. Will be driven by computers.
Janice: I’m always optimistic because I have lived in crappy countries. And I believe the will to
survive is strong. It will be different. Digital nomads, new phenomenon, creating backlash in
Portugal. People will figure it out. Portland is not immune. It will look different. Don’t know how
you tap into the digital nomads to get them to sit still long enough to create a community. Don’t
know where it goes. I am optimistic, do believe problems can be solved. Homeless situation can
be solved, but who wants to solve it. People trying to solve it get blamed by advocates. Not using
Wapato was a sin. Could have been a mental health or drug addiction facility.
Christi: total pessimist. Wheeler says “future of city is bright,” that is Donald Trump. John’s
paper spoke to me as reminder that we can do things—I have been so focused on homeless
situation.
Elsa: I am an optimist because my grandkids are optimistic. They speak a different language
from us, they speak with Facebook and Twitter, and with hope. But, they are not educated in civic
life and civic responsibility. I would like to see an effort to engage young people and our citizens
in a civic conversation about what it means to be a citizen. For example, in Oregon, we can’t fix
education until we fix our tax laws. People need to understand their responsibility to provide for
schools and safety. Shocking about citizens who are moving from country to country without any
sense of responsibility. Should mount a huge effort to get citizens educated. Irish have created a
method of civic assembly around big issues, abortion, climate change. A way to have a deep civic
conversation about issues. Needs to involve universities, the press, civic organizations. I am
optimistic.
Mark: Cost of living, cost of housing has gotten so it will discourage people from moving here.
Prevent a younger, diverse crowd from moving in. Will end up a rich man’s ghetto like San
Francisco. I’m pessimistic.
Sally: what caused the last inflection was Vietnam. Protesting against Vietnam we all
discovered one another. Then we looked around and said “we have our own Vietnam here,” the
state being run by a bunch of old farts. We are now the old farts. We need to figure out how to get
people in their 30s 40s, up to 50, coalesced around some sort of cause. Unite them enough so that
they will then discover citizenship, discover a way to go out and solve problems, to knock out of
office those not worthy, and get things started again. Requires a statewide coalition like Dorchester
or Demoforum. We coalesced around some ideas. Needs to be young people, optimistic if that can
happen.
Kim: I think I’m pessimistic. We have created in Oregon and Portland some extraordinary
public processes that are unique to the way we make decisions. Effective as that has been for 25
years, with new population and more adamant stakeholders, slows the process down. Can’t do
anything here without touching base with everyone, everyone thinks they have an equal voice. A
fundamentally democratic process has become overrun by our side. We are incapacitated because
of our decision-making process. Has produced stasis and leaders unwilling to step forward.
Leaders keep getting yanked back by the special interest or that special-interest. Pessimistic
because state and nation seem overcome by the political price of making decisions. Leaders don’t
have the guts to plant a flag.
Bob: optimistic. I’m a process person. Post Vietnam we got a peace dividend, an immense
amount of money for a variety of projects and purposes. We capitalized on that. We took on
projects that were doable, had optimistic newspapers. Then federal money began to go down and
the state drove itself into a cul-de-sac with Measure 5. Legislature put money into school buses
rather than education program. Then 2001 and we have been at war ever since. Revenue
partnership with the federal government has been pinched and disappearing. As a state, we have
closed off many choices with our PERS misadventures. I see us as strained, pinched with few
options. We need to find a way out that. Need to pick one or two priorities that are doable in order
to regain public trust by accomplishing something. We need leaders who know what they want to
do, not just what they want to be. When was the last time someone came forward and took a
major risk with an idea, said I’m going to invest all my political capital in this. Have to pick an
idea or two, drive for it, get a generation of leaders willing to take great risk, not careerists. Leader
willing to take on something big and then go back to their plow. Have to find a narrative that
virtually everyone can accept in order to get out of this Measure 5 quandary. Pick one major thing
and go for it, accomplish something. I am optimistic.
Angus: leaders and followers find each other, followers are ready for leaders, and circumstance
must be right. Ironically, Vietnam turned out to be positive circumstance for uniting people. The
great recession is a negative circumstance. In reading submissions and writing my own I became
aware of how parochial we can sound, as though Portland can go its own way regardless of
external circumstances. Maybe that reflects that my career has been largely spent on regional and
national policy. There are always nascent leaders and nascent followers and they need to find them
selves within the circumstance of the moment. Like a surfer, you have to pick the right wave. To
move forward we have to be aware of external circumstances that can either enable us or frustrate
us. Circumstances aligned in the right way in the 70s, not in 2008 or 2010. I am institutionally
optimistic – have to be given my line of work.
Mary: pessimistic because I don’t believe we can solve this locally. Agree that loss of
newspapers is a problem, that education should be top priority. In terms of bringing the next
generation along, have to be willing to listen to them. Cannot try to tell them what to do. Have to
be willing to step slightly aside. On optimistic note, Shannon was impressed with all these essays,
said we should print them and give them to our children. Need to remember: either we are all in
this together or we are on our own. Citizenship matters, comes down to we are in this together.
John: my whole career is been about trying to make this a better place. I subscribe to view that
politics exists within a band of what is possible. In Portland 1.0, there was optimism based on John
Kennedy and energy of opposition to the war. Sense that we could make things better. In Portland,
two big issues were civil rights and neighborhoods. We succeeded, now there are great close-in
neighborhoods. In that sense I’m optimistic, because of where we are. Now the issue is equity.
Economic, racial, gender. Anger over inequity is the issue of our time. As a result our leaders are
focused on three insoluble and immeasurable problems: homelessness, housing and police. Hope
we can move beyond that because there is no sense of civic pride from working on those insoluble
problems. No sense of actually moving ahead. I do see signs of an active younger generation, a recognition of a sense that the city does feel adrift.
Elaine: noticed a few years ago that people were starting to go through stop signs. Always felt
that was a sign of something that we all accepted, that we all obeyed laws without having the
police tell us. Interview with Wheeler’s about homeless situation made me sick. We need a leader
to be a leader. He was whining. Do not teach civics at school anymore. Nobody seems to pay
attention anymore to things like littering, things that made living together work.
Feeney: I’m optimistic (but not because what we did will happen again.) This group has capacity to restate, define, clarify what the nature of the problem is. We can make it understandable outside this group. Number two, what makes a successful community? Ask that question, and as part of it, what makes a successful human being?
Number three, start a mentorship, a connection with a young person. Bring them into the project
of answering those questions. (David: we have been so deeply committed to transit and our growth
vision, have times changed? Are we at a different moment?) I think it is different. I asked young
people for one word that describes Portland. “Racist” came up. Also, “adolescent.” “Struggling.”
“sybaritic.” Interestingly, one actually used the word “inflection point.” We really do need to have
a dialogue with those coming after us. Political leadership today doesn’t focus where it should.
Should focus on what Clyde did. Leaders are not really listening to what people want because they
think a lot of the questions have been answered. They ask silly questions about transportation.
Should never ask about how to fix transportation without first asking about what we want to do
with our land. Don’t put good money after bad.
Jan: I came in 1976 and immediately met everybody who was the deputy of everything.
Everybody was in their 30s. What impressed me was there was this common viewpoint about what
should happen. Don Clark said people were on the same wavelength, that’s right. the people who
were engaged were on the same wavelength and others were just not engaged. Now many more
people engaged and not at all on the same wavelength. I believe it is the result of our economic
structure in which people at the bottom are increasingly making less, separated from the people
running the show. Just too many people whose incomes cannot sustain them. So, many people are
looking to their private interests. Many viewpoints that do not coalesce into a overall vision. I
believe the economic system needs to be wrung out, flattened out. Not sure that makes me
optimistic or pessimistic. In 1974 I was asked to write one paragraph for the downtown plan
without homelessness. I was told to write that it would be dispersed.
Donna: coming from the outside, I am optimistic because I see how much Portland has to be
proud of. We are not Detroit or East Coast city. We have a lot to work with. Some just
happenstance, like geography, some because people have really worked to make this a good
place. I am worried about the problems we have talked about. Agree that lack of civics education
is a problem. At University of New Hampshire we saw how little incoming freshman knew about
government and civics. Fine for young people to protest but at some point they need to do
something constructive. I’m an advocate for young people learning how to engage in liberty, civil
discourse and activity.
Tuck: many of us have talked about a catalyst, something that would galvanize many around a
big idea. Someone said it is better to try and fail than to fail to try. We did have failures. City
County consolidation. South North light rail. South North failed but became the yellow line. Came
to pass because people stayed with the compelling idea. In the wake of those persistent leaders
came others. We don’t know if the time is right, but if we don’t try we’ll never know.