Gonzalez gets going


I see that the new Portland city councilman, Rene Gonzalez, has done the first sensible thing to come out of City Hall in quite some time: He's ordered the bureaus he manages to stop giving out free tents and tarps to the nonprofit industrial complex and its street addict ambassadors. The stated reason is the fire hazard, but honestly, I don't care what reason he gives, as long as he does it.

And immediately, and I do mean immediately, the usual suspects took to social media to denounce him. He's cruel, he's a murderer, people are freezing to death, blah blah blah. And those were the polite ones.

Of course the government should not be handing out free tents to anyone. There are shelters. If you have nowhere else to go, that's where you should be staying. If you don't like it, there are a lot of other places on the West Coast you can go to live and die on the street.

I hope to see a lot more of this kind of thing from Gonzalez, and perhaps it will inspire the bobblehead next to him, Mingus Mapps, to show some of his brains and guts, too. Mapps talks a good line, but there's not always action to back it up; he seems like he wants it both ways sometimes. The other three, I don't have much hope for.

But the big question here is whether Gonzo will continue speaking the truth and doing the right thing, or whether he'll fall victim to the groupthink that has infected just about everyone who's ever been elected to anything around here. Will he succumb to Portland Polite, and go along to get along? To stay the course, he's going to have to be willing to face a lot of ugliness from the people who think the status quo is fine. Yes, he'll be called a murderer, and worse. Yes, eventually he'll be sued, by the ACLU, the "justice" people, and the various "activists" living off the taxpayer dime. Yes, the kids will go to his house to demonstrate.

But if those people don't come after him, it means he's probably not doing his job. If Portland is going to come back even a slight part of the way from its recent crash, Gonzalez will just have to take the catcalls and brickbats, and laugh them off in private. I hope he does that. It's why we voted him in.

Comments

  1. The usual suspects never seem to be in step with common sense.

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  2. I was disappointed to hear him say this tent moratorium is only temporary. Let’s hope that’s not the case.

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    1. Temporary until Portland recovers. That's looking like 20 years, or forever.

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  3. I've not seen figures for how many tents/tarps the city has been giving out. Am I mistaken that the previous enormous counts in the news were associated with Mult. County, not city, handouts? I wonder if this is more posturing than actual change?

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    1. Oh, I'm sure the city was doing it, too. And if it's posturing, it's damn overdue posturing.

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    2. The very idea of any government agency handing out tents and tarps is clearly, absolutely, patently absurd. I agree with you Jack.....no tent?....no tarp?.....then into a shelter, where you just might stay warm and dry while also receiving treatment for your dysfunctional addictive use of decriminalized substances. Kick some butt with tough love.

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  4. I couldn't care less if it's posturing or not, as long as the end state is what is desired. Motivations only really matter if they are incredibly destructive - otherwise it's just people getting to consensus from wherever they started.

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  5. They also seem to replace the tents and tarps that end up in the landfill after a sweep. Whatever happened to recycling? When I was in the Boy Scouts back in the 60's we had to settle for Army Surplus.

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  6. A few months ago I thought Portland was improving somewhat. Now it seems to be slipping backwards. I see more tents than ever. Reading that the downtown library is being transformed into a homeless day shelter (even more than it used to be) makes me think that homeless everywhere is going to continue to be the norm for Portland, which means it’s doomed economically.

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  7. Only in a bizarro world could this small step be actually compared to “making progress” on the homelessness issue. Boy, Portland sure does have it’s sights set high doesn’t it. What’s next........outlawing disposable razors? That might help also.

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  8. I wonder what's going on with the ADA lawsuit re sidewalk camping.

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