Oregon's Terrible No Good Very Bad Midterms

pretty good. Sarah. You're a deputy features editor at The Verge. You are a lawyer and a journalist, so you have embraced the two most cursed vocations in two um and you you've number one most recently written an incredible piece UM about the Portland and abductions, which is like brutal and um, very important for the Verge. People ought to check it out. It is Uh. I don't know. I've had trouble getting through all of it because it is very good and because I was there. But everyone needs

to read it. It's an important piece. We're not talking about that today. We're talking about a post that you made on the Twitter dot com about a week or so ago that I I messaged you about wanting to to chat about you want to kind of talk about what that post was and what you were trying to get across. Yeah, the audience. So, if you live in Portland right now, it's, um, it's absolutely fucking rancid. Like I think the discourse well sometimes sometimes a city, but

the discourse is rancid. Uh. It's like this in a lot of other cities as well. Um, but is like the discourse around homeless people, right, yeah, Yeah, every every conversation you have with any random person, it's like eventually goes to oh, it's gotten so bad here lately, and it's always about homeless people. Um, and they it always goes to this place where they're like, oh, we should start rounding people up into camps and getting rid of them. And it's like people are a little too excited for

literally murder homeless people. You get just saying the most insane things like oh, I'm not going to break my car if I see one of those homeless people. It's it's awful and like, yeah, it's really really awful and like and then you get people going like, oh, well, you know how things are and like pulling out murders that have happened in like New York, um of Asian women at me to like justify why it is that I need to start supporting the cops and so on

and so forth. Um, And it's just there's this thing where I think that they're well meaning leftists really want to sort of pull out like let's humanize almost people, which like, yes, but the people you're talking to they don't deal with empathy actually, right, they already don't see most of the population as people. So what you're doing is you're not even speaking the language that they speak.

The issue for me is that what they're what people are doing when they dehumanize the homeless or like turn them into like a problem that you can just sweep away or like kill or put in danger or drop into a camp where they're more likely to die or get sick or be harmed. Um, it's it's that you're making a vast class of people based on like superficial characteristics. Right, Um,

they might be dirty, they're intense. Whatever you felt threatened by one of them once, So now everyone who's ever been homeless deserves to have a worse off life because you didn't feel great about it this one time and or two times, and it's it's really absurd to me because like, yeah, I I've had many instances in my life where I haven't felt very safe, um, because of someone who was homeless, because of someone who was an addict. I mean, I'm a small Asian woman. I take public transit.

It is, the vibes are off in every fucking city right now for people who look like me. Um, But that doesn't mean that everyone who looks like the person who's making me uncomfortable deserves to be swept up into a fucking camp. And in fact, like if I like, roll the tape back and look at sort of, oh, let's look at people who have made me feel threatened, afraid whatever. I've gone through big old sprints in my life where I'm getting a lot of death threats from

white supremacists. I mean, I'm sure you've life too. I can see I see it, But like you, I don't know because you're a woman writing on the internet, Like you'll get more in a couple of months than I do in an average like year. I mean it depends, right, Like it depends. I was just looking at your mentions yeah, I don't know. I don't really look to carefully, so I don't even know what the numbers are. Like this is.

I did have an incredible, like six month period where it was really intense because Tucker Carlson was like putting me on his show for a while, so it was it was really bad, like people like some guy called into my office and threatened to fire bomb it, and the people who got the phone call like, we're stressed out enough that they called the cops and there's like a police report and like, um, there was a bunch of stuff that happened during this period that was pretty

scary and uh. And it was always like guys who all sort of looks the same, right, It's like all the you know, the Oakley sunglasses, like taking a selfie of themselves in the car, like that sort of stereotype, right, And you know, I gotta say, for a while, i'd see that like that little profile picture, I'd see someone in person and like my heart would start beating faster. Right. Took a while for me to like be able to

dial that back. Um, during that six month period, I'd hear someone yell a racial slur, and I would almost have a panic attack because I fem like, oh no, like like someone's gonna come and make good on these threats, and I don't, like, I don't want to round people up into camps for looking like a shitty, racist, suburbanite white cut Like it's like it's the because I'm not a fucking Nazi. Like it's like it doesn't matter what

you've experienced. You're like, what legitimate harm you faced from people who look a certain way, Like you don't round them up into camps or like talk about like how you're not going to break on the straw on the street. I'm glad I was happy for kind of your perspective

on the matter, because I do try. Like whenever people talk about how scary Portlands are, how scary the homeless camps are, Like, the thing I want to say is like, like I have like five or six different running routes in the city, and most of them have homeless encampments on them, and I run through them at night. I

went through them at the day, never had a problem. Um, you know, sometimes there's like trash, and I would like it if it were cleaner, but also primarily the people cleaning up are usually like autonomously organized groups of formerly houseless folks, which is the thing that happens in a couple of the neighborhoods that I go to, um and like.

But at the same time, I don't want to bring that in when there's an argument about it, because like, I'm a six ft three pound white guy, right, Like, of course I'm as a general rule in a lot of situations, I don't feel worried what other people do because I'm a big white dude and that's UM. But what I will say, I had an experience a couple

of months back. A person that I live near, like a neighbor of mine, is a young woman within like a six month old infant, and she was out jogging on one of the trails near our house, and two guys uh in new Kawasaki like motorcycles, dirt bikes, whatever you want to call them. I assume rich kids because these were very new bikes drove up and shot at her and her baby with baby guns. Hit her in

the face, nearly hit her baby. Um, And it was like homeless folks and people at an illegal skate park who came to her aid and like made sure she was okay, and when I got out there, because I I rolled out there with a fucking beat stick and a handgun just to be like, if I see these motherfucker's,

we're gonna have words. And I started talking to homeless folks that I knew on the route who were all like, yeah, those people like they come by to shoot at us, and it's and I have heard this in multiple encampments. I've heard this at Laurel Nurst a number of places that like kids from the suburbs will come in to shoot homeless people with baby guns and mace them, and um,

I have I'm not gonna say again. I've also been in a situation where like an agitated, houseless woman was like swinging a machette at some folks, and you know, everything was de escalated. But like, I get it. The fact that there are people out there who are having like mental health difficulty means that people are going to

have encounters that can be frightening. Um. But by and large, the people that I find myself most threatened by are like kids, people like those assholes rolling by and shooting people with baby guns, and of course folks driving gigantic trucks in tiny streets like assholes often while wasted. Um, Like those are the things that scare me in Portland,

not the encampments. Yeah, and honestly, like there there are some increasing safety issues in Portland, but like a lot of it is also just like from cars, right, Like it is a it's more there's more of a car culture than there used to be. Um. And people get hit and uh, they go to the hospital or they die,

like it's it. There's like they're they're big changes in the city for sure, but like it's there's so much focus on homelessness as being like the root of all of that, and like, I don't know, they'll say, oh, Portland has gotten so bad and the same breath as like talking about how high rents are or like how expensive houses have gotten just not even connecting those two things, right, Like why is it that housing is so expensive now? Like clearly people are placing bets on real estate either

that or just we haven't built out enough. Could that be something? Um? Or maybe things aren't as bad as you think, and it's it's a desirable place to live.

Um it's really like it is. It's extremely frustrating. Um. I I also think that there's this weird thing where you just don't really think about the fact that you might have one or two encounters where it's upsetting you feel scared, and then like the vast majority of people who are unhoused are just trying to stay the funk out of your way, right and like there you're not going to see them, you're not going to talk to them unless you go out of your way to talk

to them and reach out, and like they're probably scared of you because they don't know who you are, Like you're a stranger. You might be one of those assholes on Kawasaki's like out to to shoot you, out to shoot them, and like it's it's really frustrating, like it's halfway. I don't know. Some some of the people who buy into this kind of discourse are just outright terrible human beings, right, Yeah, they're just they're just fashions, they're just they're just fast.

This is useful. But then there's like it's really frustrating how many people in the city right now are just useful idiots for the fascists have just like gone down that gone down that rabbit hole and aren't thinking past like what it means to quote unquote take care of the homeless problem, Like what do you what do you want to do here? What do you actually want to do? Where are these people going to go? Like what's going

to happen to them? And it's it's super frustrating. We're focusing on Portland because it's where we live, but all of these things are evidence of like broader trends. You can see a lot of the same tactics being used

in Los Angeles and Austin um in Minneapolis. And one of the things is kind of this conflation of like disorder, drug use, homelessness with like deadly violence and a number of things, like we've talked about kind of jailing and putting into camps the homeless is is one thing people suggest There's also a lot of like suggestions around massively

increasing the number of police. And this all also goes into you know, you've got this kind of series of of right wing uh cups against elected leaders who have any kind of other suggestions. We saw this in San Francisco with the DHS abode and the police like just refusing to enforce like the law when they were when CESSA was attempting to carry things out in a different way. And like what we're seeing in Portland right now, We've got um, a city Commissioner, Joan Hardesty, who uh number

one is the only black woman in the city council. UM, the only person on the city council who rents, uh and the only person in the city council who was in debt and who is endured. And I'm not gonna

say she's a perfect counselor a perfect politician. There's plenty of things to criticize Hardesty over UM, but there has been, like number one, this kind of unhinged campaign of attacking her because of the fact that, like her financial situation isn't great, which I see actually as a plus UM, because a lot of people in Portland are in rough financial condition. Maybe it's nice if they're represented on the

fucking city council. But also she's instituted as people keep fetching about, you know, violence and gun violence, which are problems that have gotten worse in Portland. Although it is important to note Portland is one of the safest cities in the entire United States, even after the quote unquote surge and violent crime. I don't think that mitigates that. I just think it's important to keep like things in perspective.

But hardesty has instituted the only effective program that has reduced gun violence in the city of Portland in the recent past, which was essentially a series of traffic calming measures, right, Like, I think that's probably a fair to say it. It It was sort of altering the way in which um traffic worked in a neighborhood to kind of try and reduce some of the situations that were like leading to violence. And um, she's undergoing this massive attack right now by

a candidate, a right wing candidate. I mean, he, like everyone who runs importantly, he claims to be a Democrat. Um, he's donated to Republicans. He is called named Renee Gonzalez, who's being backed by a lot of the same business interests that are pushing this anti homeless agenda, pushing the

mayor's proposal to put homeless people in encampments. And UM, I don't know, it's just I feel like I can see it all coming together, and that I hate how many people are, as you said, kind of useful idiots about it, where they're like, you know, look it, clearly these people who are talking about rehabilitation or who are trying to, like, actually, who are not suggesting a car serrale solution to the fact that it's unpleasant to see

people suffering on the street. Um are wrong because look at what the news tells me about how much worse violence has gotten and stuff like, I it's very frustrating. Don't vote for reagans hoas but yeah, please please don't vote for a man who donated to a Republican pack six months after January six Let's please please, let's not do that. But god, it's it's I think, like really sad that. I mean, like people I think really just don't want to think about how damaged all of society

is right now. Yeah, Like wait, like we lived through you know, currently had one of the worst responses to COVID. Uh. Millions of people are dead. Um, our mental health is fucking shot through. Uh, even people who didn't experience sort of federal jack boots on the ground. Um, we're not well right like it it's any number of housed perfectly like financially stable people turned to substance abuse during this period, UM,

and UH are are still you know, recovering. UM. People who are unhoused also turned to substance abuse if they weren't um already there, and their mental health is also shot there. And uh, sort of the upshot of this is everyone is fucking sick and taking it out on each other and it really sucks to see. It really sucks to see people be their worst selves reasingly and increasingly. Yeah, and I first off, I want to try to provide people with some objective numbers. And this is just on

the city of Portland. So Portland number one never defunded its police. There are police currently get the most money they've ever gotten. Um. But we do have one thing it is accurate to say is we have fewer police per capita than any major city in the United States, and we have the fewest number of police on the

force in living memory. I'm fairly certain right now there's like seven hundred Portland police officers, which is significantly down from because it's not a pleasant job, because people hate the cops here in Portland, so they keep quitting and moving to other cities. Um. And it is true that when the pandemic hit, violent crime in Portland raised by about two hundred and seven percent from January nine through June, which is the largest increase compared to five comparable cities.

This is from an article in the Oregon Capital Chronicle, Minneapolis, Atlanta, San Francisco, Denver, and Nashville. UM. However, it's also worth noting that over the course of the last year, we're

at seven a fewer homicides than we were the year before. UM. Overall, the number of homicides in two has fallen two percent from one, even as we continue to have fewer and fewer police, almost as if the Surgeon violent crime was not a result in policing, but as you said, the result of a lot of other factors around the pandemic and around the economic situation, and like the rate of

violence has been continuing to decrease. It's also worth noting that while we're talking about homicides here and Portland did see a surgeon homicides during the pandemic, that's not the only kind of crime or the only kind of violent crime. UM.

And I want to quote here from Travel Oregon. In February one, the Major Cities Chiefs Association issue to report noting that sixty three of sixty six major cities saw at least one violent crime category grow in Among cities of comparable size, Portland generally experiences violent crime at somewhat

lower rates. Like the A lot of this is media driven, and it's specifically the thing that you highlighted in the post that that made me reach out to you was was talking about how particularly white suburbanite homeowners are driving this panic and are driving these kind of surge and very like fascist solutions to the fears that they have about homelessness and about crime. And one of the reasons why this ship works is is people don't go into the city. They live in the suburbs. They see the

scary news. And that's the thing I don't know how to actually combat because it is a nationwide problem. Shootings and deaths due to shootings. They have increased since the pandemic, but if you look at them on like a twenty

year graph, fairly flat nationwide. Um, but what has got right, like nobody statistics of gun crimes like what in like the last couple of years, And then now they're saying that gun violence has increased, like it's it's yeah, yeah, anyway, what had What we know what has increased vastly more than gun crime is reporting on gun crime, which has surged. It like and and that's because you know, if it bleeds,

it leads in whatever. But it is this thing of like that's the stuff that gets people to pay attention, and it's the stuff that spreads on social media, just like pictures of like poop on the streets of San Francisco can spread on social media, and it it all exists to keep these kind of suburban voters at a constant state of agitation, which makes them easy to manipulate.

And like that's the thing that scares me the most. Yeah, I mean things are almost shittier with Portland because well, like, okay, the same Nisco poop situation, So how you live in the Bay area, that was a real situation. Francis is just human there's just human ship everywhere. Um, it's you know, you you live with it. It's it just is what

it is. And you know someone's from New York when they start complaining about it, right, like, it's uh and it I think New York which smells like p everywhere, but I mean it's it's most like hot garbage because they don't they don't take their garbage. They like just put their garbage out on the curb. And when it's summertime.

It just smells fucking terrible. Um But uh so everyone's got their problems, but it's it's this weird thing we're just because of the way that we're drawn up geographically. We've got all of these people like like you said, like out in the burbs who vote, who have control over the way the wind blows, who just never come

out here. Ever in this they never come out here, and uh in San Francisco, Like yeah, they've got outlying areas as well, But it's it's not drawn up exactly the way that we are quite right, Like like the people who are going to be the most alarmist about San Francisco are like not going to be in the area where they're voting about the things that happened to San Francisco, the way the Chasis stuff went down, Like I mean, that's complicated, right, Like I mean it was

it was a witch hunt and it made me really in Srancis and made me really want to never move back. But it it was like we've we've just got a different sort of set up here where the people who are the most upset about all of the crime in Portland, like they don't come out to where they think the crime is happening at all, Like they like they just don't really interact with the city. They're off somewhere else,

and it's it is truly strange, really annoying. Uh yeah, and it is this is like, I don't know, this is part of why, this is part of why politically

I tend to align myself with like libertarian municipalism. Um. I think one of the problems we have is that places that have very little to do with each other get to pass laws that impact how people live in those those places, Like which is a problem, um as we all just got overseeing with fucking Donald Trump, right, Like that's a that's a version of the problem in a version of another version of the problem is that like people in Los Angeles can pass a gas tax

that makes total sense for cities in California, but fox Over people who live in the middle of nowhere. Um, and all of these things are like, I don't know, it's the you get the it's two simultaneous issues. Like one of them is you've got these liberals in Portland, who the rest of the state resents for dominating politics in the entire state, even in areas that are very

little to do with like western Oregon. And then you have these these outlying like you have these folks who don't live in Portland who you know, are pushing for like you know, who are responsible with the fact that we might get a Republican governor in the state right, who are reacting to like what they hear about Portland even though it's not accurate. And I don't know, I I this is we're getting past like what people can

do in terms of like voting on local elections. But I wish we had a system in which, like folks weren't constantly pitted against each other in this way, because I don't think it's very productive. Well, we're chopped up in a really by the way I vote to Charter reform, etcetera. If you're living in Portland. Uh, like we've we've got some some other other things going on with our our city government that makes things additionally weird and um suboptimal.

There's a bunch of things that I'm kind of dreading in the near future or from the midterm elections, including you know Renee Gonzalez. Um. You know, I I have strong feelings on the proposed gun control measure but um, I'm broadly optimistic about charter reform. That actually seems like

something good that we're likely to do. Yeah. Um yeah, let's talk about that a little bit, because Portland would be the first city in the United States to reform its city council along these lines, if I'm not mistaken, Along which lines like the way the chry to reform is like set up. Um. So basically Portland's currently has a commission form of government in which we have a very powerful mayor and for city council people who are handed portfolios by the mayor and they basically run the

city government. Um. Which is it's a pretty dysfunctional system. Um. It leads to a a small number of people running very large bureaucracies that they usually don't know how to handle, which is one of the reasons why the city is so dysfunctional. In addition to the fact that our Mayor Ted Wheeler is uh politely speaking dogshit. Under the new form of government that's that's being voted on right now, the Charter, the commission structure will be jettisoned. City council

members will not directly manage bureaus. Instead, they'll pass laws and meet with constituents. The mayor will no longer be part of the city council. Instead, he'll lead the executive branch. I'm not wild about the amount of power that the mayor will still have, UM, but I think broadly speaking, uh, it's it's a much better system and there will be like a larger group of people involved in actually like managing the city's affairs. UM. I don't know what we

have currently certainly is not particularly effective. Um. And I would like to see a more democratic system put into place. Yeah, and like obscenely outdated, right, it's like, Yeah, I don't know who else does things like Portland currently does. But the charter reform is greatly needed. Yeah, and it's going to bring in rank choice voting as well when on yeah, on their on their like city like which is uh.

Like one of the issues that we've had here is that like that we're having right now with like the gubernatorial race is that, Um, you've got three candidates running, one of whom is kind of positioning themselves as an independent Betsey Johnson, who does not really have a chance to win um and seems to be being funded by people like the Nike guy in order to take voids away from Tina co Tech who's the Democratic candidate, so that Christine Drayson, who's the Republican candidate, will be more

likely to win. I don't know, Like, um, I still don't know how much I believe Drayson actually has a shot. But the polls show them neck and neck, so are pretty terrifying. Um, yeah, we're we're kind of like covering on the cusp of of the governor seat going red to Yeah, it's yeah, I don't know. Um, yeah, that's the election that scares me. Like I really I really

don't want to see Renee Gonzala's win. But the if Charter reform passes, like the the harm that he can inflict on the city becomes limited, just because right now, city council seats just have outsized power in a very dysfunctional way. And uh, it's and that that changes with Charter reform, like we just get a little bit more of a normal city. Um. And uh but the state,

the state election though, that is that's pretty scary stuff. Yeah, the state, especially since if the Democrats stay in power at the state level, then there's a good chance that I mean as far as like what people are talking about then we're going to actually see like Portland's become

or Oregon become a sanctuary for reproductive health. Right, Like, that's one of the things that's that's on the ballot it um, So if you uh, like, if you care about that, that's kind of the whole game, right Like, regardless of the fact that co Tech has a history with our current governor that's not entirely positive. Our current Democratic governor has been a ship governor and handled the

pandemic terribly. Like, at the end of the day, it's it kind of has to be all about um uh, all about reproductive health, right because like the Republicans would not have handled the pandemic any better, um, but they will also support a crackdown against people having access to abortion. We also have the craziest Republicans out here like it, And I mean part of that is the areas are representing or whatever, but part of it is also just we've been under Democratic control for so long that like

the minority party gets weirder and weirder and weirder. Like we've got we've got the guys who like what ran away from the legislative session rather then vote on a climate change bill. Alright, like it's it's not it's not good. It's really bad. Like handing ending them the keys of the kingdom is a terrible move. Yeah. I don't know what else to say. Uh, you get anything else to say?

As we as we head into the midterm elections here in Oregon, I felt like, I don't know, this is broadly speaking, I really want to hear about your your your feelings on that gun control measure. Yeah. So we've got Measure one fourteen coming up, which is um gun control. So for people who don't know, and this may surprise folks, even how blue it is, Oregon basically does not have

any kind of like gun control laws. Um. This is a this is a state in which any kind of gun that's legal to own in the United States and any kind of magazine you can own in the state of Oregon. Um. We are a shall issue state, which means if you are a law abiding citizen and you apply for concealed carry permit, they have to give it to you. Um. Gun owners have quite a few protections

at present. Uh. The first major there was a gun control law passed in most reasonable gun owners had no issue with it because all it did was say you have to get a background check to you. So there's this thing called face to face sales, whereby in a lot of states like Texas, you can just hand somebody a gun for cash as long as you're not a professional gun dealer. That's that's legal, and that's that's bad. Generally. It's how a lot of guns get across the border.

That was removed as a legal possibility in Oregon back in But other than that, we haven't had a whole lot of gun control UM. In the wake of the Vivaldi shooting. A an organization I think Lift Every Voice is what they're called, led by some church leaders, pushed for what a ballot measure. So this is not something where and I do think this is interesting, there is not a situation where Democratic politicians in the state of

Oregon are trying to pass gun control. This is a situation in which a ballot measure was proposed and enough people voted that the entire state is voting on whether or not h to have gun control UM, which, regardless of my opinions on the measure itself, I think is a better way for stuff like this to work than a bunch of legislators just like making a law. But anyway, the measure itself is, in my opinion, deeply flawed in the way that it's written. It does a couple of things.

For one thing, it requires that every person who buy a gun pass a background check, which is already the law that's in the bill, and it shouldn't be because it's already the law. I think. One of the things that reasons I think that's dishonest is because it always gets summarized and like, this is what the bill will do. It will require that everybody pass a background ship. Well, they're all They're already required. It does not actually do

anything there. Um. It adds in a magazine capacity restrictions, and you won't be able to buy or take out in public magazines that have a higher capacity than ten rounds. We can talk about that in a second. And then the primary thing it does is it requires people pass a series of tests in order to purchase firearms, and the people who will be a ministering those tests and running the whole program are the police. So the police

essentially get control over who gets to own firearms. UM. I do consider that that is particularly the thing that I find problematic. Um. For one, thing. Regardless of your opinions on gun control. The right to bear arms is similar to the right to freedom of speech and guaranteed in the same way, and so the fact that the police are being made the arbiters of who gets to

exercise that right is deeply problematic to me. UM. I think given what we know about how often police in Oregon work with far right groups, work with organizations like the Proud Boys, UM, it is very likely that we will see uneven enforcement and uneven um. Uh like the police granting the ability to bear arms very unevenly, which

concerns me greatly. We had a mass shooting earlier this year at a protest in cha right winger killed a woman, UH, sixty one year old woman and injured five other people. That person was stopped by a left wing demonstrator with an a R fifteen style rifle. UM. What was actually technically a handgun, but that's anyway whatever, it was an

a R fifteen style weapon. UM. I'm concerned that under this new law, the right winger would have still had the ability to acquire firearms, but the person who stopped and would not. UM. So that's why I have an issue with it. I also think if you're going to I'm not. I don't personally advocate magazine capacity restrictions, but also I don't speak out against them. Washington recently passed a law restricting magazine capacity. I didn't say anything about that.

I think maybe I I think if it like, if it works, I will be happy. Um. I think the way the Washington law was written was a lot more sensible than the Oregon law because it was written in such a way that it stops the additional sale of expand of standard capacity magazines of thirty on magazines and higher without giving the police an opportunity to harass and arrest people over what they own, um, which I think

is important. The way the law is written, if you had, like whatever you had prior to the band taking effect, you can keep and continue to use as normal. Um, just no more it can be sold. And so the thing that the thing you're trying to stop with a magazine capacity band at this point is someone doing what the Vivaldi shooter did, right, where a kid goes out and buys a weapon and a bunch of thirty round

magazines and then goes on a mass shooting. Right, you want them to not be able to go and immediately acquire those magazines. Um it is. I think by making it illegal to take them out in the world if you already own them, what you're doing is giving police pretext to stop and search people, um to like search people going out and shooting in the woods like folks do in Oregon, um, without having an impact on mass shooters because they're not going to care about violating that

particular law. If you want to stop more of those things from being old, I think a law written the way the Washington law is written does the maximum in order to restrict people from purchasing the thing you don't want them to purchase, without giving police the ability to like harass and arrest people. Um. Anyway, That's that's my thinking of one fourteen. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's that's like an important as an important series of distinctions to get out there. Yeah, um anyway, I I I voted

against it. I try, really, I actually do try, despite my opinions not to talk about gun control too much on this show. But like that's my my thinking on the matter. Folks can do whatever they want. Will know when on January or November eight how they voted. Yeah, I mean like, it's hardly the most disturbing things on the balet right now. Yeah, no, no, no, And I am like like I there's there's so much going on

right now, and it's one of those things. I guess we'll all learn in the near future, Like we're gonna learn a lot from this election in Oregon, Like if Hardesty stays on, if we get charter reform, and if co Tech wins, then kind of regardless of what happens with one fourteen, I will be broadly optimistic heading into because it will show that the campaign of fear didn't work entirely. Yeah. Um, and if Gonzales and and drays and win and Chatter Reform gets defeated, I will be

really pessimistic heading in. Yeah. Yeah, if if drays and wins, like that's yeah, it's ah yeah, it's it's bad. It's really bad. It's bad news for a lot of fucking reasons. Um yeah, I mean row, that's huge. Um yeah, but yeah, like it's the sky is the limit for a state that has been under democratic control for this long, right, Like it's it's they've just gotten so complacent, is all I can think. Um. Oh, I mean the spoiler candidate. Obviously that that did change a lot. Um, but it's

the complacency was is alarming. Yeah, um, well, is there anything else you wanted to say about what we're heading into? Well, I mean, don't let your fear control you. Um, don't be a useful idiot for Nazis, and uh, don't put people into camps. I guess yeah, that's that's my thinking. Don't like, if somebody is trying to make you scared about a group of people who are the most powerless people in your community, you might want to assume that the per in doing that as trying to take advantage

of you. Um, that's that's That's kind of where I land on this sort of stuff. Um, yeah, don't put people into camps. We really shouldn't have to say that anymore, but yeah, we should have to tell people to not be Patrick Bateman from fucking American right, Like it's like we should people should like but no, it's yeah, we've we should not be regressing this hard in terms of our moral compasses. But that's where we are. That's where we are. Well, do you want to plug your plug

double Sarah? Yeah? So, uh, Rebert mentioned that I just put out a big feature about the Portland van abductions published on the Verge. Um. It's part of a longer series, uh that we did this year about the Department of Homeland Security, which is twenty years old this year. UM, so we did a bunch of features, some about Puerto Rico and FEMA, UH, some about Essay. Of course I did a short little thing about how Chad Wolfe was illegally ahead of the DHS for a hot minute. Um.

And so there's some fun stuff in there. Um. We've still got another feature that will go up by the end of this year. I think your your listeners would enjoy going through some of those excellent all right, Well, that has been the episode. This has been It could happen here, um by it could happen here as a production of cool Zone Media. Well more podcasts from cool Zone Media. Visit our website cool zone media dot com, or check us out on the I Heart Radio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It could Happen Here, updated monthly at cool zone Media dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.