“Here’s a statistic that hits closer to home: As of now, Oregon spends
3.4 times as much per prisoner as per public school pupil. Combine
this with the fact that only 57 percent of Portland city students
complete high school. This means a 43 percent drop-out rate. The
number is even more staggering for students of color. We cannot talk
about being a sustainable city and a sustainable economy if we
continue to allow this kind of failure on our part.”
-Sam Adams, Portland Oregon Mayor

*Outer Space Links*
-A meteor crashes into Oregon! I saw one of these meteors. Plus a great video of a meteor in Canada.
-What’s your age on other planets? Go here to find out!!!
-The Day The Earth Stood Still will be broadcast in outerspace so as to avoid an alien invasion. No joke!

*Beer Links*
-Gift ideas for your fellow beer snobs.
-A book – Christmas Beer: The Cheeriest, Tastiest, and Most Unusual Holiday Brews
-Portland’s Belmont Station now carries over 1100 different beers.
-Will Twitter replace the pub?

I have posted a video below from MTV, I originally found it on the Dave Knows Portland blog. But MTV has found young, musically-inclined Portlanders to talk all about Portland. Remember Seattle and the grunge explosion of the 90’s? Could we become the next Seattle?

I know this is a utopic statement, but I think maybe what we need to consider is what we have going for us in Portland and cultivate it. Continue to take care of the things we need to take care of and stop swearing that there’s nothing wrong with us.

Well, the video isn’t working on my site for some reason, so here’s a link.

I’ve written more about these topics here and here.

One of the street-dwelling characters, UpWes, is a day away from giving a presentation to the city leaders when he is ransacked by the authorities and his notes are taken from him. These notes detailed plans for a green space where the homeless could live month by month, work in the community garden, and receive training on adapting to technologies.

Wait! Turns out this is not a science fiction dystopian movie at all, it’s a true story and it’s happening in Portland, Oregon right now. See below for further reading material.

I was recently disturbed by a comment I saw in a blog about the homeless protest. One commenter said that the homeless protesters were pathetic because they were just trying to be a hero by being arrested. I happen to know at least one of the people who were arrested that day at the protest. Even after all the other protesters had gone away and scattered, he has continued to work with a group called the United Poor People and they continue to protest at Portland’s City Hall. They meet daily to discuss their plans about obtaining a green space and to update each other on what is happening around the city. And they sit in every Wednesday at City Hall and give public addresses to Mayor Potter about what is happening to them, what they want, and what they need. They currently want a repeal of the sit and lie ordinance, which makes it illegal to sit and lie in public places downtown, and they are trying to lift camping laws. These are not thrill-seeking kids, these are committed and intelligent humans.

I have written more about this subject here, as it pertains to an art show that is installed at City Hall during the month of July, 2008. The art work is a series of posters that explain what the United Poor People want, and what they are up to. It’s directly outside the office of Sam Adam’s, who currently supports the sit and lie ordinance. The project was part of a show called Municipal Maneuvers and was put on by the Portland State University Art and Social Practice students.

*
Further reading about the protests and the sit and lie ordinance can be found here:

Willamette Week – Protestors Dissatisfied After a Meeting with Mayor Potter
Portland Mercury – Sit and Lie Ordinance is a Terrible Idea and Unconstitutional
Ericmsteen blog – The United Poor People at City Hall during July
Willamette Week – Park Exclusions Laws Need Changing say City Hall Protestors
Willamette Week – Homeless Protestors Not Swept From City Hall as Expected
Portland Mercury – Police Arrest Protestors
Portland Independent Media Center
Portland Tribune

A member there told us about how Sisters in Action raise women leaders in the community through social and political action. We discussed briefly the state of middle schools and how many have been shut down but they are still needed. They want to make sure the schools aren’t just sold to private investors so more condos can be put in. The issue of gentrification came up when we asked about one of their window signs that exhorted participants of Last Thursday – a monthly event that fills the streets of Alberta. The sign read “Last Thursday, What Is It You Are Celbrating?” and another sign read “Last Thursday is an Example of Gentrification.” From what I’ve heard, Last Thursday started as mostly a bunch of artist-type people having fun and doing little street performances and has now turned into a night that not only fuels local businesses but also causes police action because of the large amount of people drunk in public. The problem is that many new businesses have moved into the neighborhood solely because it is now a reasonably profitable neighborhood. This in turn is driving out lower income residents who have lived there all their life. We all know the story, this happens all over the place. What the Sisters in Action group told us is that many of the new business don’t have in mind the interests of the community but rather their own monetary intersts.

This predicament was interesting for us, being that we were a bunch of art students and thereby contributing to gentrification by erecting our own little program. But we are also “art and social practice” students and we concern ourselves with the social elements located in a given site. How could we balance this? The situation became more tense for us when the New York Times released an article about how Portland applauds itself for being so environmental and progressive, yet the people here turn their heads when it comes to the displacement of one of it’s own communities. Ouch!

After watching this movie with the group I felt more empowered to do these community-based art projects out in the neighborhood. We had been given the opportunity to work in that neighborhood, to get off of the boring PSU campus, and to really try out some public art. I was an outsider to the neighborhood and should not attempt to solve “problems,” but rather to move forward with the community’s interest in mind.

Sandy Sampson and I decided to collaborate on a project. We began what we called the “Neighborhood Resource Exchange” where people could identify their needs as well as tools/resources they could offer other community members. When we had enough information we were able to put people in contact with each other. For example, if a couple people grew to much food in their garden, and another person knew how to can food, we connected them. We launched this project with a neighborhood Meet & Greet BBQ where neighbors showed up, ate some good food, and met each other if they did not already know each other. Here are a couple images from that event:
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Our next event was scheduled to be a Swap Meet as a continuation of the Neighborhood Resource Exchange. Due to some unforseen circumstances, however, we needed to cancel all events on the lot and we would no longer use the space. It seemed almost fateful that this happened, many of us felt relieved, given our concerns about us contributing to gentrification.

I would like to end with a quote from an art theorist, Miwon Kwon, in her book One Place After Another: Site Specific Art and Locational Identity:
“Homi Bhabha has said, ‘the globe shrinks for thos who own it; for the displaced or the dispossessed, the migrant or refugee, no distance is more awesome than the few feet across borders or frontiers.’ Today’s site-oriented practices inherit the task of demarcating the relational specificity that can hold in tension the distant poles of spatial experienced described by Bhabha. This means addressing the differences of adjancies and distances between one thing, one person, one place, one thought, one fragment next to another, rather than invoking equivalencies via one thing after another.