The Bitchtucci Voter Guide: General Election 2020

Portland, Oregon

life’s rather tough. um. please enjoy this painting of some goldfish

As a teenager, I was drawn to politics, I think, because of the way things felt so large: cycles of struggle, virtues and ideals on the line, defeat or victory, and repeat. For a kid with anxious, over-analytical energy seeking to explain why things felt unfair to my friends or my family, it was almost addictive to follow the rise and fall of political campaigns. That repetitive, emotional crescendo while material realities remain stagnant or even suffocating is what makes politics exhausting to follow for those whose lives are most impacted by being overlooked or negatively targeted. This feels particularly resonant when we zoom out and confront — every day, in some way or another, I hope — that these capitalist and white supremacist superstructures rarely allow for virtues or victories to seed.

As I have gotten older and learned from brilliant community organizers, workers, mothers, teachers, counselors, students, friends, partners, and more, I have grown to see politics less and less as a zero-sum game. It’s true that we have some agency and a responsibility to take care of one another by pulling against the most insidious forces of greed, but it’s also true that we don’t have to fight every single fight in the political arena as presented to us. These fights will be here for us. They are multi-generational fights and they are fought differently, in different spaces, in different ways, every day. If you don’t have the space to get soulsucked into every candidate or ballot measure, you are well within your rights to leave lines blank. We can pick and choose where we put our attention and energy. Not all causes are created equal and if campaigns have not convinced you of their worth, this is often a flaw with the campaign, not with you.

You don’t need me to tell you this, but here’s what I gnaw on when there’s nothing else to eat. If you are able to stay engaged with being honest and kind to those in your community, with being in solidarity with one another in ways that express real, felt love, with being flexible enough to apologize when you get things wrong, with noticing shimmering ordinary beauty when it crosses your path, with safeguarding your finite energy if you are a person whose identities mean you are routinely targeted for mistreatment in the world, with extending your capacity beyond what you thought possible if you are a person whose identities have protected you from struggle, this is what matters most.

If you have it in you to weigh in on this election, to extend your care with the goal of bending these corrupt structures closer to the ground where they might even inadvertently cast shade upon our weariest, welcome. I’m nobody, but I want to tell you what I’ve learned.

On to business:

• The ballot is long, and ya girl is verbose. If you’re low on time or energy, I have ⭐️STARRED⭐️ the races that I believe deserve your extra special attention. Starred races represent where, in my opinion, every vote will matter and stakes are the highest for our community members who repeatedly get looked over by policy, like people of color, especially Black folks, people with disabilities, people who are housing insecure, etc.
• You can mail your ballot for free until October 27th, or pop it in any dropbox until 8pm on election day, which is Tuesday, November 3rd. Don’t forget to sign the back.
  I talked to a Portland postal worker pal and they said that they expect local post office capacity to be fine if ballots are mailed by October 27th, so don’t fret too much about that aspect! There’s so much other shit to fret about. Be judicious with your fretting!
• If something unfortunate has happened to your ballot, you can pick up a replacement at the MultCo elections office until the end of election day. If you want, you can let them know when to expect you at 503–988–3720/ 800–735–2900 or elections@multco.us. It’s even possible to get a replacement ballot mailed to you. Just contact them and see if there’s still time.
• For my babes with mobility barriers like transportation or illness or disability, if you are willing to share your voice, we need you, and some of the issues presented in this election affect you very much. Most counties still have some ballot pickup capacity through County Voting Assistance Teams, so please call or email your local elections office to see if they can assist you. That assistance team can even help you fill out the ballot. If they can’t, truly DM me and I will work with you to figure out a pickup. I would literally love to hear from you. OOOOooOOOo I LOVE YA
• For my babes with access to transportation, time, and a gut-feeling sense that you can handle some ballot porch pickups, I urge you always and forever to cast a wide net among your neighbors, friends, and family members who might be running into access issues. Simple, sweet solidarity. This is going to be a particularly valuable offer of labor in the days just before and on election day, when it’s too late to mail ballots for free. Your neighborhood Buy Nothing group, your social media, your best friend group chat: these are all great places to start. Thank you for taking care of each other.
• The best game in 2020 is tracking your ballot. Track it, and if it doesn’t show up in the system after several days, consider ordering a replacement ballot. I don’t want to foment fear, but there have been a few reports of mailboxes being vandalized.
• You might wanna have a plan on election day to be on a supportive group chat or hang with your germ pod. It’s gonna be a doozy. Speaking as someone who ended up crying on the street at 11pm in front of Straight From New York Pizza back in 2016, I recommend that you find a better place to be. Shoutout to the bouncer of Sweet Hereafter who brought me a slice of consolation pizza. It has sustained me for all four of these fucking years.
  KNOW ALSO that we are probably going to be getting election results for weeks because of 1) all the mail-in ballots, 2) all the voter suppression hijinks, 3) the manifestation of millions of conflicting ancestral curses, so we may not have a clear answer for many races on election night, particularly the presidential race. All I can really say is: lol we’ll see.
• This general election is large, my sweet little puff pastries. When those two thick voter pamphlets from the Secretary of State hit my dining room table, I regarded them with the respect and fear they deserve. Remember, we had the Democratic Party primaries back in May, so now we’re choosing between Republicans, Democrats, and Independents for national and statewide positions. I want to protect all of us against fatigue and overwhelmedness, so unless I found something worth noting beyond “We’re uhhhhhh…voting blue up and down the ballot,” I didn’t choose to go into detail and background for every single candidate or issue. I also didn’t list candidates running unopposed.

I especially want to highlight the following organizations and their voting guidance. Whereas I am merely a scrub, these organizations are conduits between people and policy change every day of the year:

PCUN’s statewide endorsements on their social media in English and Spanish. Really great considerations for SALEM, HILLSBORO, and other parts of Oregon!

APANO’s guide is beautifully illustrated and comes in English, Chinese, Korean, Tagalog, and Spanish, and highlights inspiring candidates and issues all across the state of Oregon. Jackie Leung for House District 19!!!

Street Roots’ election coverage always rules.

Washington County Ignite’s voter guide. Nafisa Fai, y’all!!! WashCo Commission, let’s gooooo!

Next Up Oregon’s endorsements.

East County Rising’s endorsements. Shoutout to Eddy Morales for Mayor of Gresham!!!

I also consulted:

• So many friends and community members. You’re hot and smart and I love you! Thank you for every phone call, snarky text thread, Instagram DM and poll response, and corybantic walk-and-talk.
• The State and MultCo Voters Pamphlets, available here in large font, audio format, and Spanish. A simplified version exists here.
• I pay very close attention to endorsements listed in the ol’ voter pamphlets, especially preferring labor unions, education unions, NARAL/Planned Parenthood, and BIPOC community members or BIPOC-led organizations.
• OPB’s thorough and thoughtful election coverage. I’m also going to lean on OPB for election results.
• Vote411 forever rules. Use it to plug in your address and look at side-by-side comparisons of candidates.
• VoteSaveAmerica’s plan page also gives you a rundown of what’s on your ballot. Their “VOTE AND U CAN SAVE AMERICA!!!” rhetoric is rather a lot, but you have to respect their database. If you have a lot of nervous energy, you can also go through VSA to pester voters in swing states.
• B.I.T.C.H. politics on insta is not here to play respectability politics with us. We love to see it!
• I don’t work in politics. I work in education and mental health, and I don’t write this guide acting from any official capacity. I am just a nerd. I compile this info in the spirit of being ✿ A Difficult Person, A Thorn In The Side of Capitalist Goons, and Extremely Nosy About Politics *:･ﾟ✧(ꈍᴗꈍ)✧･ﾟ:*. I’m just one resource for you to choose from. I bring my perspective as a cis woman, a mixed-white Asian American born into US citizenship, a queer femme, generally able-bodied, from a working-class Korean immigrant parent background with privileged access in my adulthood to education and a middle-class profession. There are huge limits in my perspective and imagination. I tried to solicit other points of view from the community, and I am open to hearing from you if you think I missed something or caused harm. Because I publish this every election season, I know I have a responsibility to not be absolute trash and accept accountability and critique. My DMs are open to you, and I may periodically edit this guide to reflect broader perspectives and accountability. I’m always figuring out how to decenter myself while acknowledging that the Bitchtucci Guide is essentially a personal diary entry about how I feel about politics. It’s not meant to be ~journalism~ or to speak on behalf of anyone else. If this isn’t what you’re looking for, I hope you find something that works better for you. ❤️
• This season’s ballot jams include:
  “Ella Fue (She Was the One)” by Fania All Stars for Monday morning when your house is cold but you’re wearing warm socks so you’re basically invincible. You shuffle to the kitchen to make coffee and you’re surprised to see a cut of bright sunlight shining upon your little kitchen sink. You catch your tousled reflection in the window and think, referring to yourSELF, “Bitch!!!! She was the one!!!!!”
  “Thirteen,” by Bedouine, Waxahatchee, and Hurray for the Riff Raff. There’s this little line in the last verse that goes, “Would you be an outlaw for my love?” with somehow so much hope and so much resignation that I am bowled over by its complexity and frequently find myself rewinding to listen for a second and third time in a row. In 2020, we are only asking questions exactly this honest and only accepting love of this caliber.
  The “Green & Gold” interlude by Lianne La Havas is 35 seconds of pure heaven. Listen to every place where she pauses or inhales. What intelligence. What yearning. A voice like a daffodil or a silver bell. Phew!
• Do you have your favorite pen? Are you wearing your lucky underwear? I love you. Let’s get to work.

Candidates

• ⭐️ Secretary of State: Shemia Fagan
  If you lost some kind of bet where you are only allowed to cast one vote in this election, let it be for Shemia Fagan as Secretary of State. First of all: why did you make such a weird bet?
  Second: it’s 2020. A census year. You have seen the ads on bus stops, on social media, and inshallah, you and your loved ones filled out your census to more accurately reflect the population of our state. We will begin redistricting in 2021. We have a democratic majority in the state legislature here in Oregon, so ideally, a redistricting plan will be drafted in a way that expands voting power proportionally and fairly. If shit hits the fan, standard procedure is that the final word on redistricting gets bounced to the Secretary of State.
  Understand also that Republicans see the Secretary of State in Oregon as basically the only major state office vulnerable to being flipped red. So they are pouring money into campaign ads all over the state to convince voters outside of the Portland metro area to elect none other than Kim Thatcher aka QAnon Barbie. Thatcher would love to put her creepy hands into the redistricting conversation and gerrymander districts to disenfranchise communities of color, working-class communities, and blue-leaning neighborhoods, with consequences potentially lasting decades. I watched a few of her campaign videos and found them both dull and terrifying. Delivered in strained monotone with very little facial expression, she talks about how, as Secretary of State, she would use her office to…stop lawless rioting…? Like…what? Thatcher was a Trump delegate, one of the Republicans who opposed climate change legislation here in Oregon, a featured participant in the bizarre logging truck rally in Salem. She announced her candidacy for Secretary of State at this rally, joined in the crowd by anti-vaxxers and QAnon conspiracy theorists. This is all very bad. I don’t want to see a future in which our vote-by-mail system is gutted of dropboxes in neighborhoods of color.
  Fortunately, Shemia Fagan also does not want this to happen. I trust Fagan to continue expanding voter access, to conduct audits in such a way that will not penalize or slash public education or social services when issues are found, and to frankly engage in conversations concerning civil rights and racial equity in our state. A longer list of Fagan’s endorsements is on her website, including the Confederated Tribes of Grande Ronde, the Oregon Education Association (the statewide teacher’s union), a ton of labor unions like SEIU and AFL-CIO, Planned Parenthood, and the Firefighters Union.
  We want a victory for Shemia to be a landslide. The stakes are extremely high. Call your grandma in Klamath and your ex-girlfriend in Eugene to make sure they’re voting on this race.
• President of the United States: Joe Biden
  Lol. I have nothing more to add about this candidate than what Tik Tok and Instagram teens spearheading the Settle for Biden movement have already put forth.
  Here’s what I’ll say about the act of voting for Biden in a state like Oregon, where all electoral college votes will certainly go blue.
  You’re CORRECT, it IS bonkers that we are having actual discourse about what to do in the event that Trump loses the election and refuses a peaceful transfer of power. In fact, some say that too much Trump coup talk reinforces the idea that he is an all-powerful authoritarian despot, which is dangerous because it makes undecided voters feel defeated and even less inclined to turn in their ballots (instead, many advise focusing rhetoric on the idea that Trump is weak, spiraling out, and incompetent). To be clear, y’all, I don’t think there will be a full-blown coup heralding the end of American elections henceforth and hitherto. I do think that a close election will make things take longer, and in a worst-case scenario world may result in a second term of Trump.
  Though Oregon’s electoral college votes will go to Biden whether I vote for him or not, I’m filling out the bubble to rack up popular vote numbers too. Of course, Trump could lose the popular vote and still win the election. He did it in 2016. But who knows which data points will be useful if we get to the point of a contested election! It’s like my boy Tolstoy always says, “All happy families are alike; each coup is a coup in its own way.”
  And also here’s some food for thought about racially-targeted voter suppression tactics. I share this not to preen sentimentally over the idea that we should all vote. I simply dream of a world in which folks who decide not to vote are coming to that decision without being manipulated or discouraged by bitch-ass fascists.
  I learned in an interview with Andre Banks, co-founder of Win Black/Pa’lante that Black voters were the #1 target for misinformation/disinformation in the 2016 election (according to the Senate Intelligence Committee). In response, Win Black sifts through social media to flag these sorts of posts created by bots. They also create materials designed to counter voter suppression attempts. Banks contends that in this election season, Black and Latinx voters are still #1 for being disproportionately targeted for online misinformation/disinformation/interference BY LITERAL RUSSIAN BOTS (among others) designed to make them feel discouraged, hopeless, and therefore less likely to vote. These agents of suppression are also sharing misinformation about important dates and polling locations. This is kind of a wild con job because it’s based in fact, right? Black and Brown voters in this country have always experienced voter suppression, so these responses are rooted in very legit awareness of historical patterns. This is why it’s so important to focus voter turnout efforts on materially reducing barriers against voting instead of holier-than-thou shaming tactics against people who don’t feel moved to vote because they rightfully understand that our current system of electoral politics does not have their best interests at heart.
  So when you know that manipulative trolls and bots are stoking feelings of disempowerment, and you learn that these trolls and bots are racially targeting Black and Latinx voters, it makes me think: if folks are choosing not to vote for their own reasons, that’s one thing. It’s a whole other insidious thing if folks aren’t voting because some bots have buried them beneath a deluge of bummer fake news designed to provoke withdrawal from the political process. Digital suppression strategies are concrete access issues, just like limiting ballot dropboxes to one per county in Texas is an access issue. If folks don’t vote because their access has been impeded without their knowledge or consent, that’s what we in the biz call fascism. If folks have complete access but aren’t voting because they don’t want to, particularly if their identities have been made the target of oppression and marginalization, that’s what we in the biz call their bizness. As you talk to your friends and family in swing states (are you doing this???), make sure you’re sensitive to the difference, and let’s keep our focus on increasing accessibility and validating concerns.
• US Senator: Jeff Merkley
  Reliable establishment Democrat. Remember when he traveled to border camps to decry poor treatment of detainees? That was good. Please don’t forget that people are still in these camps suffering every day. RAICES is one of many organizations still working on the ground to offer legal aid and bonds to detainees.
• US Representative, 3rd District: Earl Blumenauer
  Reliable establishment Democrat. We want him to keep pushing for the Green New Deal, and we still use his office’s COVID-19 resource spreadsheet to figure out aid here in the Portland metro area.
• Oregon State Treasurer: Tobias Read
  Every time I endorse Tobias Read, I think about Animorphs. Did you read Animorphs? Tobias was the best. Such heavy preteen sexual tension! Spoiler for Animorphs: he turns into a red-tailed hawk…forever. Anyway yeah we are definitely voting for a Democrat for State Treasurer. Jeff Gudman, the Republican nominee, is frustratingly vague about his plans, so I am left with no choice but to assume the worst. Bye, Jeff!
  Read snags endorsements from labor unions, pro-choice PACs, and PCUN migrant farmworkers union. We like that he’s helped Oregonians develop millions of dollars in sensible retirement plans, and he has a policy history of supporting early education and investment in young people.
• Attorney General: Ellen Rosenblum
  Rosenblum is the first woman to hold this office in the state of Oregon, and is running for re-election. She is actively defending the Affordable Care Act at the US Supreme Court. She has not been afraid of going after corporations for lying to consumers. She just brought home a $5.5 million settlement against Johnson & Johnson. They’d been misleading consumers about the safety of transvaginal surgical mesh devices, which had been used in surgeries to prop up organs that weren’t where they were supposed to be. She used her first term to develop more robust language and protections in HB 577, a hate and bias crime law. Rosenblum has all of the education, labor, climate, and reproductive justice endorsements.
  Her opponent, Cross, is essentially a cop, and tried to recall Kate Brown. LOL.
• Oregon House District 44: Tina Kotek
  Please re-elect Tina! Kotek serves as Speaker of the House and it would throw things into disarray to lose her. An establishment dem for sure, but also queer and actively engaging in the things community organizers have pushed for: climate change policy and limiting carbon emissions, funding for schools, increased protections for renters, and expunging records of small drug offenses.
• Oregon House District 47: Ashton Simpson
  In solidarity with survivors, I defer to PCUN’s statement about Diego Hernandez, and look forward to new leadership from Ashton Simpson of the Working Families Party. It is time for Black representation in East County and I am encouraged to see him specifically name criminal justice reform, climate change, and education as priorities. The Mercury’s statement on Ashton is helpful as well.
• Oregon House District 50: Ricki Ruiz
  Ruiz serves on the Reynolds School Board and is often the first Board member to stop the conversation and ask, “Where is the student voice?” He’s been supportive of education unions, rides hard for families out in Rockwood, and has earned wide support from local folks and establishment legislators. Opponent Amelia Salvador has truly amazing eyebrows and might be one of the more reasonable Republicans I’ve seen on the ballot this year, but I balk when I see Salvador use hyperbolic, colonialist language like “third world living conditions” in reference to houseless folks in East County. Distressing endorsements include the Timber PAC and pro-life Right to Life PAC.
  Ruiz’ community organizing and Eastside policy chops are too good to pass up. I believe he’ll get real results for East County.
• Oregon House District 51: Janelle Bynum
  Please re-elect Janelle Bynum. This is a qualified, experienced Black woman whose opponents in this race use rhetoric like “Law and Order” and want school choice and charter schools instead of supporting public education. Bynum has not been afraid to use her platform to ask for greater police accountability, and we all benefit from the ways she’s pushing forward. I am looking forward to seeing continued efforts from her in the realms of emergency COVID relief, climate change, and public education.
• Judge of the Circuit Court, 4th District, Position 12: Rima Ghandour
  When I lay back and picture a courtroom scene, as I so often do, I am usually picturing the kinds of cases that are heard before state circuit courts. According to the Oregon Department of Justice, all manner of shit can go to the circuit court, including “criminal, civil, domestic relations, traffic, juvenile, small claims, violations, abuse prevention act, probate, mental commitments, adoption, and guardianship cases.”
  So if we understand that judges are elected for six-year terms to preside over all kinds of shit, my question becomes: where are we missing representation or perspectives in our state’s judges, and which candidate can fill in those gaps with closest alignment to my values?
  The answer for me is Rima Ghandour, who would be the first Muslim woman to become a judge in Oregon. Ghandour, uniquely, places an emphasis on compassion and human relationship at the center of her judicial decision-making process. I think we have tons of judges who pride themselves on their objectivity and duty to the letter of the law, and contender Adrian Brown is a very smart and fair and qualified example of this style of judgeship. Brown also has valuable civil rights experience. I’m not gonna lie to you, it’s a rare treat that we have two very good choices for this position. Brown could earn your vote if you find you prefer more establishment democrat endorsements.
  Ghandour is special to me because she has deep experience in communities that don’t often get dignified treatment in so-called objective courts. She has taken the time to highlight her passion for serving survivors of abuse, DACA recipients, folks who are transgender and gender nonconforming, and more. Almost nothing is more important to me than trusting that a judge will have compassion and dignity in mind when presiding over cases affecting these communities.
• Mayor of Portland: Write-in Teressa Raiford
  Here’s what I think you might like to know as you make your decision for this race. As always, you will make the final call for your own vote. I trust ya and I love ya.
  I’m voting for Teressa Raiford because I believe it will mean something in the end. There’s a lot of nervous energy involved in splitting the harm reductionist hairs between Wheeler and Iannarone. Ultimately, Wheeler and Iannarone are two sides of the same coin: neither with a ton of promise for visionary leadership, both guilty of broad philosophical framework failures when it comes to heeding the concerns of our beloved communities of color, a coupla booksmart white people who have not used this campaign season to really show us great plans for the future, on the line-by-line or in the big picture.
  This leaves Raiford, herself a human being capable of making flawed decisions, not actively at the helm of her own campaign, but the recipient of adulation and attention by scads of community activists, bleeding hearts, young people, artists, and people of color. Raiford does not have a huge paid staff or a team working on broad policy proposals or plans for the multimillion-dollar city budget, but she has remained in the conversation because her priorities make sense to folks who feel frustrated by Ted and Sarah’s limitations.
  The most recent OPB poll showed that Raiford’s poll numbers look relatively unchanged from the primaries in the spring: 6% support right now. Still, tons of voters are undecided. Still still, a write-in campaign has not ever won a major race in Portland, and past campaigns that maxed out at 15% or 16% of votes took advantage of more conventional door-knocking campaign methods than ones employed by the tiny but mighty Raiford campaign in the middle of a pandemic. These facts are not daunting to me when the ethical questions crystallize in my mind.
  Here are my two guiding principles: 1) We’ll never know if Raiford could have won unless we actually vote for her, and 2) Even if she loses, we accomplish something tangibly good by voting for her.
  The requests from many members of Portland’s Black communities are clear: Write her in. Folks’ endorsements contain varying viewpoints and rationales, but it’s hard to ignore the sheer volume of support. Centering as many Black voices as possible in the mayoral race is key, especially when policing, houselessness, and COVID-19 response are central voting issues; after all, these crises disproportionately affect Black people in this city.
  My brilliant friend Israel Fin pointed out that it’s not about people needing to find themselves in 100% alignment with Raiford’s every point of view; rather, Raiford gets us so much closer to a candidate who is actually representative of the community’s interests, and so much closer to a candidate who will engage in discourse and policy change that improves material conditions and realities for Black Oregonians. They summarized, “I don’t see eye-to-eye with TR but at least we could have discourse on the actual issues instead of consistently withdrawing from the droning on of centering white tears and specifically Ted’s.”
  Another friend, Luc, sighed to me one evening this summer, “Man, I wish she would run for City Council or somewhere where she might actually win.” I trust that Raiford knew what she was doing by placing herself in the mayoral race, and also if Teressa wants to run for another position in the future, it would sure be nice to demonstrate that her ideas can gain momentum with voters in a significant way. She took 8.5% of the vote in the May primary election. What if we doubled that here in November?
  Raiford has asked to be considered in the political arena, so if we have faith that her work can move us closer to the world we want, then we should support her political viability. Even if she does not win, I am interested in voters demonstrating a commitment to abolitionist, Black woman leadership. Those votes may show policymakers that ideas much closer to police abolition and community responsiveness can gain traction, and maybe we can shift our city’s culture on many fronts.
  Here’s another way of thinking about this. If you look deeper at polling trends (with a huge grain of salt, because polls have limited scope, methodology, accuracy), we see that Wheeler’s supporters are more enthusiastically for Wheeler, meaning they are much likelier to get out the vote than Iannarone’s supporters, over half of whom just fuckin’ hate Ted Wheeler. I think a lot of smart voters, including some of you babes reading this voter guide, could very well decide to vote for Iannarone because they believe it’s our only shot at unseating Wheeler and hopefully pushing the needle closer to, like, police reform, for instance. While Iannarone isn’t exactly a paragon of race relations, at least she didn’t accept police money the way Wheeler has, and she likely will try to make this one of her signature issues if she takes office because it’s an easy point of contrast. Of course, she’ll run into the police union which is not going to budge on key elements of potential reform. But if a slightly less permissive mayor results in one less police violence fatality, I can understand why that’s worth taking a chance on.
  The reason I’m not personally super compelled by this logic is because I think that polling trends paired with all of the creepy new United for Portland PAC money will mean Wheeler probably wins anyway, even if the vote wasn’t “split” between Iannarone and Raiford. Further, I’m just not convinced that an Iannarone mayorship is going to be so much better for Portlanders, in a material way. If I did, perhaps my risk calculus would look really different and I would double down on the idea that we should vote for the lesser of two evils.
  But look. I assume that if you’re reading this guide, you already want Wheeler out. This dude has had his shot at inspiring the masses but has repeatedly slid toward weak judgment in the face of citywide demands for addressing houselessness and police reform. He seems to have contempt for public accountability and has been repeatedly spanked for foot-in-mouth gaffes (see: Teargas Teddy). Folks I know in City Hall say versions of this: “It seems really clear that Ted hates being mayor.” To spice things up even more, after violating campaign finance disclosure laws back in the spring, we are now seeing a last-minute hodgepodge super PAC called United for Portland scramble together tens of thousands of dollars for Wheeler, representing business and realtor interests, among many. Those funding sources should give us all pause.
  But then we have Iannarone, the so-called only viable option for getting rid of Wheeler. I see her as a classic white feminist who is very comfortable positioning herself as an underdog against Wheeler/the patriarchy/The Man, but in practice has repeatedly fumbled in addressing Teressa Raiford as a real contender, instead opting to dismiss or deride in extremely tone-insensitive ways, revealing the tip of a very worrisome ideological iceberg and deeply careless, messy campaign management. All this from a candidate who actually doesn’t have a strong proven record on policy minutia or budgets anywhere near as complex as the one she’d be walking into: a city being pulled in several painful directions, conjuring the image of a body stretched by a medieval torture rack — pandemic public health and economic response, a housing crisis, gentrification, addiction, houselessness, and so on.
  Y’all. It’s a disaster.
  I am hanging my vote on the hope that our city can demonstrate greater support for the representation and responsiveness that only Raiford brings to the table at this time. An element of that hope is about doing the bare minimum to help build political power and visibility in Portland’s Black communities for years to come. I don’t call that a throwaway vote.
  I discussed this race with and followed the perspectives of so many wonderful, smart people, including Lucas, Israel, Ryn, Stephen, Shilpa, Pesha, Emily, Beckett, Lynn, Bianca, Rachelle, Rose, Alex, Anjali, Desiree, Erin, Leila, Token, and a few babes who need to stay unnamed. Thank you.
• ⭐️ Metro Council, Position 5: Chris Smith
  This is a person who deeply, earnestly wants to do right by our community and has the policy research chops and community partnership experience to do so in a way that is sorely needed right now: with climate and people at the center of decision-making, not corporations or landlords. Smith has earned the support of the Sunrise Movement PDX who have created this solid art in his honor because he’s out here biking to the rally in the middle of a red sky wildfire climate emergency listening to youth climate activists. He’s out here biking to the listening session where he gathers broad BIPOC community feedback about why we shouldn’t be expanding freeways that would decimate historically Black neighborhoods. He’s out here biking home from the grocery store to sit at his desk and crack open the Urban League’s “State of Black Oregon.”
  Smith has a particularly long history with detail-oriented, backbreaking, fastidious understanding of transportation policy change, part of why electing him to Metro will feel so satisfying. In this charming and thoughtful hello here I am post, Chris Smith explains that he’s not trying to play it safe with the role’s power to allocate federal transportation funds. He says, “[It’s] an opportunity to make the transformative investments that we will need to address not only climate, but also to invest in ways that foster equitable development strategies — our own Green New Deal for regional transportation.”
  We have a rare opportunity here to elect a fresh, focused, new political perspective in a candidate who will be ready for the hardest parts of the job on day one.
  Mary Nolan is a solidly democratic leader and has certainly accomplished some good work as a career politician. But voting for her would include some compromises that are hard to swallow. For instance, right now we need some smart reimagining of Portland’s urban growth boundary: we are balancing a swelling population with a desire to make any expansion decisions carefully, in a way that protects the environment and the most vulnerable, avoiding a type of urban sprawl that benefits corporations and landlords more than people and wildlife. Nolan has accepted $19,000 from the Realtors Association this election season and is being shifty about whether or not she’ll expand the urban growth boundary. I just don’t think house prices are more important than the right to affordable housing, and these things are frequently in conflict.
• ⭐️ City of Portland, Commissioner, Position 4: Chloe Eudaly
  If you want to prioritize renters and working-class Portlanders and their fight for housing security, this would be a race to make absolutely sure you vote on even if you’re skipping other candidates and ballot measures. When Chloe was elected in 2016, she attracted a kind of attention to city council that I hadn’t seen before because of her creative attempts to tackle renters' rights issues. She possesses a kind of “okay, but why haven’t we just tried THIS yet?” spirit that is really encouraging to see in Portland’s political landscape, where shuffling feet and minor incrementalism drain massive amounts of political resources. She has not been perfect and has learned a lot on the job, but I am encouraged to watch her repeatedly attempt to transparently explain her decision-making processes and admit when she can do better next time. Eudaly is way more progressive and SPECIFIC than Mingus Mapps when it comes to renter protections, accountability for police, and transportation justice. This is why she’s snagged the endorsements of a laundry list of organizations and individuals, including a ton of housing advocates, education unions, civil rights and racial justice organizations, and policymakers.
  Mapps has charisma and intelligence in spades, but I’m not impressed by a fairly milquetoast platform that includes increasing policing of houseless communities without any creative solutions for root causes of houselessness. Even more troublingly, Mapps is endorsed by the police union, took $15k in police money back in May, and is weirdly protective over neighborhood associations, which often lean snooty and posh. I hope to see Mapps clarify his priorities and grow policy proposals in the progressive direction that the electorate in our city responds to. But for now, when I think about the kind of shrewd specificity our city needs in a financial, housing, and public health crisis, I am so much more compelled by Eudaly’s experience and no-fucks-given attitude than Mapps’ tepid, ruffle-no-feathers ideas.
• East Soil & Water, Director, At-Large 1: Rick Till
  First off, in order to run for this position, you have to own or manage at least 10 acres of land in a district, which limits the pool because, historically, who ends up owning or managing that much land? Why…white people!!! Shoutout to this list of Black-owned farms, highlighting Mudbone Grown here in Portland and Rainshadow Organics in Sisters.
  Soil & Water directors are meant to be hyper-local governing bodies who work to support sensible land use, ideally resulting in cleaner water, less erosion, better irrigation and drainage, and the ability to equip folks using the land with the resources they need to effectively and sustainably exist on the land. In the right hands, this means more access to sustainable practices and meaningful, local climate change policy and healthier habitats. In the wrong hands, this means exploitation of the land and policies that permit high profit margins, unsafe practices, creepy pesticides, and other bullshit. Particularly at risk for being the wrong stewards of this land are nursery owners, who have been the wooing target of despicable, obstructionist corporate lobbyists. My very smart friend Shilpa Joshi summarizes: “The fossil fuel industry has systematically been building relationships with the agricultural sector and using them as a more benevolent front group to oppose climate and chemical regulations all over the country. Nursery owners are being fed misinformation about how any action on climate is bad for their business.” Keep this framework in mind any time you vote on these positions, now and in the future.
  Moving on to this candidate. Mixed bag. I have heard of Rick Till making certain problematic missteps and being difficult to work with in this position. I have heard from others that Till has long been an effective partner for supporting sensible conservation laws. Ultimately, I look at his opponents and feel deeply suspicious of nursery owner Jim Carlson. If you’re swayed by knowing that Rick Till is not always a walk in the park, you could consider voting for Devin Portwood, whose statement in the state voters’ pamphlet is so earnest and sweet (“I want to help people see the practical side to going green. Green can mean independence.” I mean. Wow.), though without any real land management experience when we’re truly trying to stop the bleeding wounds of catastrophic climate change, I find myself drawn to Till, who at least has a proven record of supporting complex conservationist-leaning work. Rick Till, if you’re reading this, know that you have criticism from folks who want to see more cooperation, especially around equity, from you.
• East Soil & Water, Director, At-Large 2: Jasmine Zimmer-Stucky
  Mixed bag on JZS, y’all. If Jasmine or someone who knows her is reading this, please know that there is a conversation happening about how she has been microaggressive to employees of color in the past, notably questioning certain employees’ lived experiences. Do better.
  Still, in this race, Jasmine is running against Lars Granstrom, who is a part of the lumber industry that frequently winds up wildly exploiting and even killing farmworkers (most are Latinx migrant workers!) by helicopter airlifting noble fir Christmas trees out of the forest. I don’t want to act as if I know for sure that bad shit has happened on Granstrom’s nursery, but it gives me huge pause to vote for someone who uses those methods which tend to prioritize profit and speed at the expense of sustainability and safe working conditions.
  Jasmine does have a track record of effectiveness and collaboration in pursuit of sustainable farming practices.
• East Soil & Water, Director, Zone 2: Laura Masterson
  Masterson’s statement didn’t make it into the Oregon voters’ pamphlet, so I resorted to Facebook stalking. Masterson is frequently endorsed in the same breath as Rick Till and Jasmine Zimmer-Stucky, who are more guided by sustainability than by profit in these races than their opponents. Masterson already has Water & Soil experience and heads up 47th Avenue Farm. Masterson has a track record of participating actively in equity conversations with community partners. She wrote this post promising to make choices that mitigate climate change through local access to carefully grown food and solid sustainability practices rather than permitting all kinds of creepy pesticides. Also Martha Stewart noticed her back in 2011, and I’m no better than Martha.

Ballot Measures
An umbrella consideration for you, apple of my eye, voter in my community. SO MANY BALLOT MEASURES HERE SHOULD TAX CORPORATIONS INSTEAD OF TAXPAYERS. But for YEAAAAAAAARS, the richest corporations in Oregon have killed bill after bill that would hold them to account through wildly misleading ads and elaborate lobbying strategies. The ratio of tax responsibilities in our state is all fucked up. This level of financial burden for basic services should not be dumped onto the laps of taxpayers. Our laps should be reserved only for cute puppies or cute girls. HELLO.
But once the problems get bad enough (On this ballot alone: Toxic ventilation in schools! Crumbling roads and wild traffic jams! Absolutely racist disproportionalities in access to preschool! People dying from tobacco-related health conditions! And so on!), weaker versions of legislation make it to the ballot, and because voters tend to agree that our communities need schools and libraries, we keep passing them and agreeing to higher taxes. I’m down to pay taxes for the common good, but I want all of us to understand the root cause of higher taxes in our state. It ain’t Democrats raising taxes. It’s Republicans and their corporate cronies sneaking out of paying basic tax responsibilities, and Democrats trying to stop the bleeding and keep roads paved. Dems also have a long way to go toward ridding themselves of corporate influence and fighting harder against weak-ankled bothsidesing, hemming and hawing and producing compromise way further to the right than constituents want. But our state is nearly at a breaking point with this corporate fairyland shit. Please take every opportunity to vote and pressure policymakers in such a way that cuts through misleading corporate-funded lies and lifts the financial tax burden away from the average Oregonian. I plan to restate this point ad-nauseam throughout this section of the guide because it APPLIES yet we seem to FORGET.

• ⭐️ Measure 107: Limits political campaign contributions and expenditures: GOD PLEASE VOTE YES
  Um. This is a weak metaphor, but have you seen The Truman Show? This was not the best thing that came out of 1998 (I think that honor goes to Elton John finally being knighted) (Ok but for real it was Lauryn Hill dropping The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill), however, please consider that the state of Oregon is Truman and unchecked corporations are the TV show. HEAR ME OUT. In the film, our protagonist Truman, played by Jim Carrey and his 934850 teeth, slowly starts to realize that he’s been trapped on a TV set his entire life, and everyone knows but him. “This seems sketch. I should be able to think for myself and make my own choices without being lied to,” Truman reasons. He finds a mysterious trapdoor and escapes.
  Measure 107 is not a full-blown trapdoor, but it’s a good start. We are stuck in an ugly cycle. We have no salient statewide caps on campaign donations, and we don’t require taglines or disclosures to reveal who is funding campaign ads. I keep hearing Oregon referred to as the lawless “Wild West” when it comes to campaign finance reform. Um, yikes! In this Wild West, corporate misinformation blatantly touts itself as widely-accepted truth. Corporations enjoy fabulously low tax responsibilities in our state — some of the lowest in the nation. And every time we try to tax corporations their fair share with common-sense legislation, they go full Hollywood glitz and glamour, crafting high-budget ads and mailers convincing Oregonians that taxing corporations isn’t the way. Usually what happens next is our infrastructure crumbles to the point of horrific disrepair and then weaker ballot measures appear in future election years, foisting the burden on taxpayers. That’s us!
  Measure 107 doesn’t totally eliminate the problem of corporations being largely free to spend gajillions of dollars lying their asses off to kill good legislation, but it does force them to admit that they are sponsoring the ads, and it does begin to impose much-needed limits. If you saw a shiny Instagram ad with some skinny white lady dancing in a field saying, “Cigarettes and tobacco are actually amazing for your lungs!” but read underneath, “Sponsored by Philip Morris Tobacco,” you could make a pretty quick decision to dismiss the validity of the ad. I think most of us like to think that we can spot misleading advertisements from a mile away, but when we’re just trying to mind our own business and watch a Youtube video about ancient calligraphy practices, we aren’t using our best critical thinking to dissect the 30-second ad that appears beforehand.
  Measures like this one have been extremely effective at curbing corporate influence in other states, like California. Don’t listen to counterarguments that try, once again, to equate money with free speech. How terribly boring.
• Measure 108: Increases cigarette, e-cigarette, and cigar taxes: Either way, bud
  This is a flat tax on a product, a model I tend not to prefer because it’s harder on lower-income folks, especially at a time when people are pretty stuck on their coping methods due to stress. There will likely be the political will to put this measure back on the ballot if it fails, and perhaps kicking it down the line can postpone the higher flat tax until after this extraordinarily difficult time.
  But it’s been nearly 20 years since our state increased tobacco taxes. I tend to believe it’s worth passing now because we don’t have an e-cigarette tax yet and West Coast tobacco taxing trends show Oregon’s proposed increases as comparable. Possibly corporate tobacco chilled out in their typical efforts to strangle this bill because they understood that a tax increase was inevitable. 90% of tax revenue will go toward the Oregon Health Authority, and the last 10% will specifically support tribes and communities of color in tobacco cessation support.
• Measure 109: Allows manufacture, delivery, and administration of psilocybin: Yes, but keep an eye on this puppy, will u?
  Did you read through the full ballot measure in your state voters’ pamphlet? It was dizzyingly long because it’s attempting to put scientific and medical regulations on the ballot. Not ideal! But because hallucinatory mushrooms are a drug, at some point they have to be voted on to be used medically in Oregon. That electoral inevitability is a key reason for my affirmation of this ballot measure. There are some holes and certainly great potential for pharmaceuticals and the medical industrial complex to wind up making a fortune on chic medical mushrooms, but medical legalization has been kicked around for years and it’s pretty amazing that it’s finally on the ballot. If we hope to continue research and meaningfully make treatments available to folks, I believe we are better off legalizing now and keeping our thumbs on oversight to curb spooky big pharma exploitation or whatever. It will take at least two years of development before we start seeing how psilocybin therapy will be rolled out to patients. It’s hard for me to reject a potential new way to address anxiety, depression, trauma, end of life care, addiction, and a wide range of other psychological and physical ailments. Complex suffering and self-discovery deserve a wide range of potential treatments and access points.
• Measure 110: Provides statewide addiction/recovery services; reclassifies possession/penalties: Yes
  Measure 110 would increase our state’s funding for addiction and recovery services by at least 15%, which is sorely needed.
  This ballot measure only decriminalizes and reclassifies drug possession and doesn’t touch manufacture or sale. This bill basically scales down the entire system of punishing drug possession offenses, scooting misdemeanor possession into what essentially amounts to a $100 ticket, and scooting felony possession down to misdemeanor possession. I don’t buy that reducing misdemeanor possession penalties will cause first-time usage rates to skyrocket — seems to me that drug use happens whether or not there are legal deterrents. The reclassification of felony drug possession to misdemeanor-level is absolutely huge and will open up access to jobs, housing, and myriad life choices for folks who would otherwise be significantly impeded by our ridiculous society that creates all the conditions for drug use and abuse and yet is obsessed with punishment, policing, and writing off felons forever. Some of y’all really love to eat Dave’s Killer Bread but won’t rent to a felon, huh? It is NOT A GOOD LOOK.
  OPB cites a study by the Oregon Criminal Justice Commission which projects that the measure would reduce drug possession convictions by nearly 90%. When we have a judicial system that so blatantly displays racial bias in drug convictions, this statistic should hit each of us hard. It is this persistent bias that is literally fucking up the lives of people of color every single day that causes me to support this measure right now, without waiting for a different election cycle, without risking that a decriminalization bill of similar scope could never gain the political traction to pass again. It’s easier to pass an imperfect measure and reform it than it is to head to the drawing board and haul out the political will again.
  There are those who say that this bill is well-intended but will not accomplish what it sets out to do. This Facebook post by Tony Vezina is making the rounds and is well worth a read. He correctly identifies that current drug and alcohol treatment and prevention programs will receive a hit in funding to pay for this new iteration, and that the plans are not specific enough to guarantee that culturally-specific resources and educational programs will be protected from cuts.
  It does frustrate me that certain revenue streams from marijuana legalization are touched while others appear to be left intact. When Measure 91 passed, these were the beneficiaries of tax revenue: 40% to Common School Fund; 20% for mental health/alcohol/drug services; 15% for state police; 20% for local law enforcement; 5% to Oregon Health Authority. Measure 110 plans to dip into the School Fund, mental health/drug services, alcohol and drug abuse prevention, the Oregon State Police, but does not appear to touch local law enforcement, a whole 20% of Measure 91’s initial tax revenue allocation. It is not cute that Measure 110 is taking ANY money from schools when we have 20% for cops just sitting there. It’s possible that attempts were made behind the scenes, but alas. Let us just notice that, once again, funding for schools is identified as more disposable than funding for the carceral state.
  Additionally, the measure is a little loosey-goosey about what will happen if demand for treatment exceeds funding, and also detailed plans about how additional recovery services will be rolled out. Sometimes writers of bills do this so that policymakers are not locked into a plan of action that may need to be adapted or tweaked. Let’s keep a very close eye to make sure that folks experiencing addiction are getting the maximum benefit that this measure can imagine.
• ⭐️ Measure 26–211: Library Bond: YES
  We need to pass this ballot measure because libraries, even when they have made decisions we are disappointed with (like the August decision to cut newest and lowest-paid staff, disproportionately staff of color had to be reeled in after public outcry), are crucial for education and tech accessibility in communities. This bond would fund what they’re calling a “flagship” East County Library, around the size and capacity of the Downtown Library, and this is reason enough to pass the bond. There are so many kids and community members who would benefit from this space and access to programs, books, free high-speed internet, and so on.
  Knowing that funding libraries would be a tough sell during the pandemic, leaders revised the bond this summer to focus only on the most sorely needed projects. Endorsed by East County Rising, APANO, tons of teachers, labor unions, Unite Oregon, Latino Network, and more. I did cry reading the endorsement from senior citizens on page M-53 of the MultCo voters’ pamphlet. Lmao. I’m actually welling up just typing that sentence. PASS THIS BOND
• ⭐️ Measure 26–214: Establishes tuition-free preschool: YES
  Peep APANO’s pithy summary in their endorsement guide: “Preschool for All is a community-driven plan to create universal high-quality preschool that prioritizes our community’s Black, Brown, and Indigenous children, families, and providers. This measure invests in our community’s future at every level, ensuring that providers are paid a competitive wage and all Multnomah County children access quality education for free.”
  Maaaaaan, having worked in schools where Head Start preschool is available onsite for families and schools where preschool options are tuition-only and far away, families who knew they had reliable, free preschool close to their homes were just less stressed. Often families who might qualify for free preschool don’t know how to apply for or access these programs or live too far away from these sites to drop the little kids off and then make it in time to drop older siblings at elementary or secondary schools. Preschool for All would lift that logistical nightmare off the shoulders of thousands of families. Importantly, preschool teachers and assistant teachers would finally make salaries that better reflect how hard they work.
  Kids who attend preschool are getting social skills and forming sweet connections, accessing new words and scenarios, and hopefully goading each other into eating weird bugs. VOTE YES PLZ
• Measure 26–213: Five-year levy for recreation, parks, nature, and water programs: YES
  Please pass this. Hasn’t this pandemic taught us that every single community needs a safe place to be outside? Our richest neighborhoods have the best parks and this is very much bullshit. Without ongoing funding, our ability to maintain parks, reopen pools and community centers, and offer low-income folks free programs will simply fizzle out and die. We want more parks in all neighborhoods, we want parks with more ADA accessibility, and we want more and better free programs, don’t we?!
• Measure 26–217: Amends charter to authorize new, independent police oversight board: Yes, but don’t act too cute about it
  This charter amendment is here to put lipstick on a pig. Congrats on the lipstick! My condolences on the pig.
  This charter amendment is better than nothing, but it does not move us significantly closer to abolition or defunding police. It does not meaningfully undermine the police union, which stalwartly blocks attempts to increase legitimate accountability and curb abuse of power. I am curious to see what kind of discipline for misconduct this oversight board can get away with considering how very wide and protective the moat dug by the police contract and union is. The Skanner believes this oversight board, funded by at least 5% of the police budget (a huge amount of money, y’all), would have more power than the previous Independent Police Review Agency, summarizing, “If the PPB were to reject a policy suggested by the board, the board could then appeal to the City Council to vote to implement the policy.”
  So sure. But understand that this is mostly symbolic. If this measure passes, we must have the fortitude to maintain focus on moving our world closer to community care and further from criminalization and this awful police surveillance state. We don’t exhale a sigh of relief when it passes. We double down. We keep a close watch on misconduct. We keep pushing our elected officials closer to defunding, non-policing community safety programs, and abolition, especially because City Council will have a huge say in whether the board’s recommendations go anywhere. When we enshrine a ratio like 5% into a budget contract, we have to be very watchful of potential manipulation, such as using this as an excuse to cap any oversight spending at 5%. When we pass police reform, of course we hope that any violence toward human life and abuse of power will be avoided, however incrementally. But we must also remember that reform shouldn’t distract us from taking meaningful, concrete steps toward abolition and alternate community safety solutions.
  Thank you to Lisa, Shilpa, and many others for discussing this measure with me.
• Measure 26–219: Amends charter to authorize Water Fund spending and land use: Yep
  The intent of this measure seems mostly to be around zhuzhing up unused public land for public use in accordance with ADA (like green spaces and community gardens), and also importantly contains clauses about entering into mutual aid agreements with other government entities and tribes when needed.
  There is some vagueness here that is hard to stomach when we’re agreeing to pay yet more in taxes, but are we really looking at a year with some of the most destructive wildfires in history and saying no to figuring out every possible angle for water and land use? Puh-leeze.
• ⭐️ Measure 26–218: Funds traffic, safety, transit improvements through CORPORATE tax: YES GOD PLEASE DO NOT FALL FOR THE SNEAKY, CORPORATE-FUNDED SHIT
  Believe the Black and Brown leaders of movements who remind us time after time that equity work needs to happen everywhere: not just by protesting, not just in one sector or another, like policing or the justice system. Bias and discrimination live everywhere, so equity and justice efforts must live everywhere too.
  Bias and discrimintation live in our roads, in which communities have good sidewalks and crosswalks and bike lanes, in where the transportation lines begin and end, how late they run, how well they are maintained. In how much toxic pollution coats which schools in which neighborhoods.
  If you believe Black Lives Matter, if you believe we have work to do toward shoring up systemic bias, racism, ableism, and climate injustice in our metro area’s resource allocation and accessibility plans, I’m going to need you to take the chance to operationalize that ideology into this very concrete ballot measure. I’m also going to need you to contact your family and friends in the metro area who may have received very misleading mailers and advertisements that obscure facts and allow sneaky corporate greed to paint whatever picture they please.
  Let us highlight this a great op-ed written by local high school students of color. Edom Daniel, Gaby Phan, and Geo Su ask voters: Why are you listening to corporations who tell you that now is not the time to fund transportation infrastructure that would greatly benefit youth of color? Our most marginalized communities FOR YEARS have been asking for safer, broader transit and traffic options in our metro area so they can play, get to school, get to work, particularly in deep East and West Counties, where populations include more working-class folks and communities of color than in central PDX. If not now, when? If not funded by corporations who are wildly undertaxed in our state, funded by taxpayers instead in a few years?
  That’s the pattern in Oregon, after all: corporations unchecked by voter transparency laws (see Measure 107 for one step in the right direction) flood voters with slick, manipulative misinformation that manages to co-opt progressive rhetoric, all to avoid paying their fair share toward taking care of the communities that they greatly benefit from operating out of. It’s downright gluttonous. When enough voters are scared off by these ads and the measures fail, they get gutted, but the problems remain. So then weaker versions get re-introduced to the ballot without any teeth, deferring desperately-needed solutions sometimes years into the future, all while asking taxpayers to pay for these vital services because we couldn’t get the damn bill to pass with corporations paying a damn dime.
  The timing really matters here because if we pass this bill, we also unlock time-sensitive federal matching money, somewhere in the ballpark of TWO BILLION DOLLARS. This would allow us to catch up to other states and enact plans to significantly reduce carbon emissions: more green energy? High-speed rail along the West Coast? If we can’t pass this bill to throw down our side of the money, we lose that federal matching opportunity. Are we going to lose a cool two billion dollars because Nike, who looooooves to say that they care about communities of color until the time comes for them to pay taxes that would actually benefit communities of color, pulls one over on us?
  DO NOT FALL FOR IT. Don’t fall for the mailers saying that unnamed “climate activists” oppose this bill. No the fuck they don’t! Actual climate activists support this measure, like the Sunrise Movement, and Youth Environmental Justice Advocates. So do labor unions like Ironworkers 29, Cement Masons 555, and NW Carpenters who say this bill will result in tens of thousands of well-paying jobs. So do education unions. So does the Oregon Food Bank. So does APANO, the Albina Vision Trust, the Coalition of Communities of Color, and Washington County Ignite. Don’t fall for the manipulative wording that tries to imply that ordinary small business owners will foot the bill for this. It’s the top 9% of corporations, y’all. Nike, Intel, and Comcast can afford it, especially because they have weaseled their way out of paying any meaningful taxes in this state, like par-for-the-course payroll taxes or taxes on profit that look similar in structure to how corporations are taxes, like, literally anywhere else. We see you weasels weaseling. Knock it off.
  Thank you to Aaron for this fire blog post.
• ⭐️ Measure 26–215: Bonds to improve health, safety, learning in Portland Public Schools: YES, are you serious? Hello. Yes.
  I know you were already planning to support this ballot measure. Thank you, baby. This OPB article gives a very quick and clear rundown of good things this bond will pay for (floors in every school that are ADA accessible; functioning HVAC ventilation ensuring air safety after we’ve learned the hard way that poor ventilation is deadly for airborne illnesses; up-to-date textbooks and curriculum), and also underscores that remodeling Jefferson High School is a clear and direct investment in our city’s Black students. The PPS information page disaggregates plans a bit more, and also shows you where past funds have gone. Thanks for taking care of our precious students and staff.

Um wow, have a glass of water and stretch ya neck.
I hope this was helpful to you. Thanks for reading and sharing.
There are so many causes and people who need financial support. If in your budgeting it makes sense to throw my mama some rent $$, you can find me on cash/venmo/paypal @marissayangbertucci.
Love ya, learn so much from you, grateful to be scraping away at the fights that matter with you,
xoxo,
bitchtucci