This will be one of two posts on this subject, I will be finishing up my paperwork for the district 4 City Council position election this week and that will mean a couple things. The only other post that will talk about the election specifically or my efforts in it is going to be the reveal of my campaign page and after that this will just be my thoughts and my blog. It may deal with some topics like before but it will not talk about the campaign or my efforts on it.
Now, there are a lot of political questions. I am not going to answer them. What I will answer is something that people may ask who know me, and those who may have never heard of me be wondering.
Why do something like this?
Over the years it took me to learn how I work in the world and it is something where I can be loud but I am more of a get your work done and look towards the next goal. This is something that I will be putting myself in the spotlight to some degree due to the position involved. Honestly, it’s a big move for someone who six years ago was just getting off the street trying to make by with everything they got.
Six years have taken me from the state capitol to the nation’s capitol and from the federal court in Portland to the federal reserve and the bipartisan policy center. I have written books, and I have gotten in better shape despite still being built like Thwomp from Super Mario. We need people to listen and work on getting things done, and this week part of my work was using the time my building had lost its power to see the issues that someone disabled may have if they had to get out of a building quickly.
I banged my shins up hard doing that.
Why do something like this?
There is a way I do it, that makes me the best choice, in my very skewed opinion, and even more so I made a promise once and this may be how I intend to keep it. Also, you can tell I am nervous when I forget to schedule the posts and leave it just waiting for me to hit publish.
[argle bargle]
If this is the worst mistake, forgetting to hit publish on a blog post during the start of a campaign then I think we can be happy with that.
In my volunteer work, I have been keeping track for the university because you get an award if you do so many hours in a twelve-month period. Last year I got 148 hours getting me to the second highest level and 150 is the minimum to get into the highest level. The count is from May 14 to May 14 every year and so far, this year after tabbing it all up I was at around 30 hours last year
I am at 72 hours this year, and the trip is volunteer service (anything I don’t collect an hourly wage on is something that can be counted) and that is including camps and trainings as well. This includes all my meetings and generally I do not claim any reading or studying resources I could almost double that if I did.
Getting that award would be nice because as a disabled person it is something that feeds the chip on my shoulder because every so often people think disabled means you can’t do something. I try to look at it that I will need to do it a different way, and it is a different way because my goodness my legs feel like iron most days and I will say my thighs are so big I can actually crush a melon pretty easily. My size allows me to do that pretty easily, but someone who can walk miles with a frame like mine is something that usually scares some people.
Another thing is the jokes, lots of jokes with me classifying as a heavy armor unit if you give me a slingshot. I have gotten used to them and some of the better ones still make me chuckle about it.
At my size I am the volunteer version of Roadblock(seen above), although I think he looks better then I do. Cannot complain for what I have though, I am making what I can work, I just need to make sure I rest well.
I do not like wasting time, it is one of those things that just drives at me because no matter what is done that time cannot be gotten back.
Seeing people from the state government try to prop Portland as some no problem paradise just pisses me off. We have crime problems, we have job problems, we have money problems and the most people want to talk about it is saying if you talk bad about Portland you are an evil MAGA.
I am a registered democrat and there are others who see this and look at the lies over the years and for those thinking Antifa is getting cleaner, they did this in 2020 with their free milkshakes and walk with families, they then poisoned a milkshake and turned it into a chemical weapon against Andy Ngo. How do I know?
I was at those protests five years ago, hell, you scour the video you will find me in a white and blue jacket. I was there and have seen the down fall and the same people who say there are no problems are now trying to show nothing is wrong when everything in their paperwork says otherwise. I have seen them try to barricade front doors since 23, the bags of rocks or the hap hazard stacks of bricks during the 2020 riots, the fireworks and items thrown at police, the hiding behind mothers who believed with them. The only thing I say what was wrong was this was something I tried to understand, I tried talking to them, and everything they said was utter trash.
Portland state had their library trashed causing more than a million dollars’ worth of damage in a series of years where they had their budget shrink and had to make those cuts during more years of budgets shrinking. It is a lot harder to cut a shrinking budget then a growing one. We cannot as a school,(Portland state) as a city (Portland) or as a state (Oregon) be so foolish that we simply not look at out problems, and seeing that so many people want to brush them under the rug is absolutely infuriating because it means that all the good done is essentially wasted.
No program can last without funding, and no funds can be collected without people with jobs, and those jobs do not exist without businesses. Also these failed fact checks like the Oregonian is just a show of stupidity they claim no explosives have ever been used meanwhile there are videos in 2020 and 2021 of explosives being used. Hell, I saw them from a park trying to figure out why people would do this in the city.
I would have no problem if it had some point, but after five years of this, it clearly does not have one, it has been a waste of time and money for everyone in the city and the worst part is it does not even help their own case.
Gaslighting and picking the best times to show video just as a gotcha is the equivalent of someone hiding a broken plate behind their back because they know if caught it will mean they will be punished. Honestly I think we just need a better level of politician not more one way liberal or conservative, just more honest about the situation…
Maybe I need to think about doing something about it.
One of the projects I have been working on is a civics calendar so people can get more involved, this is the current meetings for Portland next week, neighborhood associations and district coalitions in red, and city council and city advisory boards in green. It is not perfect but week to week it should tell you what everything is going to be. There will be more added so if you want to know more you can always look. I would say just on default if you are looking for your neighborhood association meeting then you will need to look with the time closer to 9 pm. A lot of them are between the 6 to 9 pm. This has been something I will keep working on when I get the time. If you are interested about civics in portland hope this helps.
There are videos currently debating about something called the insurrection act, for those who do not know of it. It is a piece of legal doctrine that has been in the country in some form or function since the times of Jefferson.
“Whenever the President considers that unlawful obstructions, combinations, or assemblages, or rebellion against the authority of the United States, make it impracticable to enforce the laws of the United States in any State by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings, he may call into Federal service such of the militia of any State, and use such of the armed forces, as he considers necessary to enforce those laws or to suppress the rebellion.”
Now the bar for this is rather high, generally you need either a city or state completely over run or unwilling to enforce the law, the last time this was used was in the LA Riots in the early nineties.
Looking in the issues in the city let me go over something that no one in the city wants to deal with.
Due to the actions of our city council, mayor and, governor is why Trump can do this.
Let me explain, the president cannot use this because he does not like the city because if it were the case the penalties after the actions had been finished would mean the president could be under severe penalty.
Currently we have at minimum two investigations against the Portland Police Department, one for regular federal and another for civil rights violations. The city has allowed a group to take over a block of a street including a road allowing them to dictate traffic and enforcement without so much as a parade route request filed.
Antifa has here gotten the benefit of multiple mayors and city councils back since I started this blog six years ago. I sat through multiple riots as a homeless person saw other homeless people be attacked but the press wanted to force it on the proud boys, they couldn’t and despite the crimes of the proud boys beating the homeless was not one of them. Now it seems Portland is allowing this so I am going to let the secret go they don’t want anyone to realize.
Trump would not be here without them, these politicians from the mayor to the council to even the governor made moves to strengthen the capabilities of the federal government to handle business. The worst part is there is not a thing they can do about it. In case law Portland has declared the road in front of the facility to be theirs to take care of, and not enforcing there would be enough, however this is where they have liaison officers stand by when the city has a 20 minute average on calls where seconds mean the difference between life and death. We have city councilors asking soldiers to abandon post and to show how to hide phone records using burner phones. We have a mayor and governor who instead of solving problems will happily walk down in marches where no one is going to change their opinion just so they can be seen.
There are a hundred problems in the city but the sheer mockery of their jobs for the sake of being seen as a rising star in local politics is not going to allow them to do anything. Downtown Portland has a business vacancy rate going past 35%. One in three now.
One thing is that Portland wanted to pick this fight, these politicians wanted to have a rebel complex and instead of doing their jobs this is what they deemed important. That is the biggest problem, these politicians would rather take brownie points from their own circles instead of doing their jobs like the rest of us have to deal with. That is not a quality of a good politician or of a good person for the city and the angering thing is that no matter what your view in politics, it is just broadway, an act to make people feel better, and it sucks but it has to be said because with those actions the only thing it does is strengthen trumps position.
We need people to work, to do their jobs and not try to invite problems, and right now I do not see a lot in local government I would say is doing that.
It means because of those who want to provoke instead of problem solve we have a disaster only getting worse. That has left me personally with more questions than answers.
Stay strong.
Also, I had to sleep a lot due to health so I’m counting this as my post for yesterday.
BigTAnderson in Portland 