Tactical urbanism, bicycle rebellion, Right to the City.

Portland Says “FUCK NO!” to War Against Syria

There has been much lamenting the death of the anti-war movement since the election of Barack Obama. Gone are the rallies calling for the abolition of war – for morality and justice owed to the victims of America’s lethal colonial endeavors. Liberals who rightfully screamed holy murder during the Bush administration are now content to remain silent while Obama orders deadly military attacks against Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and Libya. But when Obama signaled earlier this week that he would begin bombing the strife-ridden nation of Syria, it would appear he just went too far. From the looks of it in Portland, Oregon and abroad, the anti-war movement is back with a vengeance.

Last night, dozens of peace activists with the PDX Overhead Light Brigade (OLB/PDX) gathered atop the Burnside bridge, blue-glowing signs in hand, to deliver a message of opposition to Obama’s planned attack upon yet another country that poses no threat to the United States. From OLB/PDX’s event page: “Much like in the lead up to the invasion of Iraq, the drumbeat of war is getting increasingly louder with claims of WMDs and chemical weapons.”

For several hours, activists displayed the message: NO WAR w/SYRIA as thousands of cars and trucks sped by below. A constant cacophony of approving honks from passing vehicles echoed up from the I-5 freeway.

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Community Solutions to Capital Urbanization

“I do not think the measure of a civilization is how tall its buildings are, but rather how well its people have learned to relate to their environment and fellow man.”
~ Sun Bear of the Chippewa

As our human population relentlessly increases, more people are moving to cities, and cities continue to spread outward and upward. Rapid urbanization is often argued as necessary based on scales of supply and demand. This is sometimes true, but such growth engines are designed rarely for public accommodation and far more often for the purpose of generating vast sums of wealth for a select few individuals. As previously covered on Rebel Metropolis, the mechanisms of urban development are obedient to the ownership class, the wealthy, the economically privileged – not the working class, the poor, or the disenfranchised. City governments function as real estate enterprises to further enrich the developers that finance political aspirations.

Recently, Portland’s own mayor Charlie Hales has come under fire for remarks viewed as intolerant and uncaring of our city’s houseless population, as well as those who could be priced out of their homes by waves of new high-end apartment construction. When questioned about expanding the community operated ‘Dignity Village‘, Hales quipped “it’s hard to find land.” When asked if he would support a ‘Homeless Bill of Rights‘, he replied “Haven’t seen it.” The much criticized mayor also expressed his ambivalence to practices of housing displacement. Hales claimed gentrification isn’t all bad if it means the city becomes more prosperous, “I’d rather grapple with the problems of success than the problems of disinvestment.” Ostensibly, ‘success’ is being cynically defined here as only pertaining to those capitalizing on development, and not those suffering from gentrification.

Those cheerleading new development use cleverly crafted language, advocating market-based methods of achieving so-called ‘affordable’ housing. They’ll insist that tweaking systems of capital is the only realistic solution to furnish our housing needs. They’ll claim if we don’t increase density, we’re only encouraging more sprawl. This is a false dichotomy, as the issue in question isn’t increasing density, it’s how we’re increasing density.

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The Meme War that Killed the CRC

The Columbia River Crossing freeway mega-expansion has been slayed, there should be little doubt about this fact. Recent media hype over a potential re-animation of the nightmare project is just that: hype. It’s been speculated the moment that governor John Kitzhaber declared dead the $4-10 billion dollar freeway & light rail mega-project, Oregon AFL-CIO president Tom Chamberlain was calling up the gov, screaming expletive laden protest against such a quick surrender. Oregon might look like a progressive Democrat stronghold, but the reality is elected Dems in our state often slide into home with only 2-3% voter margins. Oregon Dems rarely have a shot at winning without a strong Labor ground game and DNC state PAC funding.

According to sources familiar with inter-legislative chatter, this last-second Hail Mary for the CRC is nothing more than posturing, simply an obligatory effort to please trade unions that lust after the biggest, costliest projects – not the kinds of cheaper, jobs-rich projects like the Common Sense Alternative to the CRC or the new CSA 2.0 plan currently being vetted.

For now, there is little worry a new CRC plan funded solely by Oregon tax payers could ever fly. According to sources, no Republicans in the Oregon legislature support such a plan should a special session be called in September. There is also internal information indicating elected Democrats fear a voter revolt should they choose to go back on their promises that funding triggers in HB2800 (Oregon’s CRC bonding bill), were in fact binding.

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Rebels, Resisters, and the Condominium Revolt

Kevin Keating walked the streets of San Francisco wheat-pasting posters urging vandalism against ‘yuppie’ infrastructure infesting the Mission district some 15 years ago. Alise Munson floated balloons 85 feet in the air to illustrate the height of a proposed 8-story condominium on N. Williams Ave. in Portland earlier this summer. While their tactics obviously differ, their target was similar: gentrifying development that displaces lower income workers with housing only salaried professionals can afford.

The developers and politicians pushing condos and expensive new apartments like to speak in terms of supply and demand – that with influxes of new residents, new housing must be built to control market price. More recently, politicians have adopted language asserting that increases to ‘urban density’ are vital to combat global warming. While it may be true that low vacancy rates cause rents to rise, this is based purely on speculation, as it does not cost landlords more money to run their building if other buildings in the area are full. When hearing politicians like Portland city commissioner Steve Novick insist high-end development is needed to ward off climate change, it’s hard not to laugh considering Novick claimed there was nothing the city could do to stop the very coal exports accelerating this crisis. Such relativism is a red herring meant to turn eco-advocates against housing justice activists. The issue is not whether to have or have not density, the issue is on top of whom density is being built.

At present, the Portland market for condominiums has largely gone bust. The glass towers of Portland’s SW waterfront still have double-digit levels of vacancy, a sterile monument to a kind of growth machine that sputtered out five years ago. In the condo wake has risen a new boom of apartment construction for a rapid influx of young urbanites. Unfortunately, this wave of new apartments is being rushed with little thought or concern for existing spaces and the people that already occupy them. More unfortunate still is how routinely common this sort of urban apathy is.

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Cops Search and Destroy in the Streets of Istanbul

This weekend, the ongoing street battle between the people of Istanbul, Turkey and their shockingly violent police force flared up again. Once more, tear gas, water canons, batons, and rubber bullets were used to injure peaceful protesters as a new wave of dissent has gripped the city.

It’s been over a month since the debut article of Rebel Metropolis. In that piece, I covered a bit of the emerging Right to the City movement, with an specific focus on the turmoil in Istanbul that sprung from a fight to save the last public green space in the heart of the city. Since then, a mass revolt has spread across Turkey. Thousands of citizens have been beaten by police, five were killed, and dozens of journalists have been arrested or fired for coverage empathetic with the people in the streets.

There has been some good news. Under mass pressure, judges have seemingly blocked the destruction of Gezi Park from a plan to replace the common space with yet another auto-centric shopping mall. It is unknown how long this judicial decision will hold, as the the president’s ruling AK party is already looking for ways to override the court order.

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The PSU Foundation Board: Fossil Fuels, Wall Street, and a McDonald’s Analogy.

With the exception of a copy-and-paste press release in the Oregonian, the appointment of eight new members to the Portland State University Foundation’s Board of Trustees elicited zero press coverage last month. One might expect such appointments at our state’s largest educational institution ought to warrant a modest amount of coverage, even if only to offer congratulatory fanfare. Yet this absence of media attention has seemingly overlooked some clearly questionable characters joining a roster of already dubious trustees.

PSU has spent copious time and money branding itself a progressive, ‘green’, sustainable institution. It even retooled its logo to help convey this sentiment. However, viewing the list of names on the Foundation board, especially those recently added, it’s hard not to take pause and evaluate the credibility of PSU’s ‘green’ branding.

Among the freshly appointed board members sits David H. Anderson, currently executive vice president of superfund site polluters NW Natural Gas and current board member of the Northwest Gas Association. Anderson previously spent 16 years at TXU Energy Corp.  Liz Fuller is director of client services for Gard Communications, the public relations firm for Ambre Energy presently attempting to force coal exports through our region. Gard is also the contracted PR firm for PSU. Wally Van Valkenburg is chair of the Oregon Business Development Commission and board member at the Portland Business Alliance, organizations that both promote polluting resource extraction industries. Rupa Jack is a senior vice president with Morgan Stanley, the Wall Street bank caught illegally forcing hundreds of thousands of Americans out of their homes during the foreclosure crisis. Lindsay Stewart is a retired senior vice president and chief of staff at NIKE Inc., the shoemaker notorious for exploiting sweatshops and child labor. Stewart previously served as corporate counsel to Georgia-Pacific, one of largest U.S. logging and paper manufacturers, now a subsidiary of the infamous Koch brothers corporate empire.

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