America has always been an argument. An argument between a wealthy white few ready to kill or control the rest to seize more money & power and the bravest possible people determined to make the promise of life, liberty & yes happiness apply to all, no exceptions.

For no reason at all, thinking about how hard the Sisters in Sound of Music went media1.giphy.com/media/SjslKo...

Man the bias dynamics on display at City Council today are all sorts of messed up

man, I really appreciate our progressive Councilors staying resolute and steady while the moderates thrash around trying to get their way I'm biased, but I can't imagine this looks great to someone who's more on the fence

EPG and Novick as “labor” folks, immediately turning around and voting for Smith, who is freshly accused of trying to break Council staff unionization push, is really something.

it's been 10 years, but I still think a lot about this graffiti I saw on the sidewalk in Buenos Aires

By all means, @warren.senate.gov, keep helping Trump on credit card interest rates, while he lays siege to another American city.

To put a finer point on it: I don't think it's asking much for one of the most progressive members of the Senate to treat the battle of Minneapolis like an actual emergency.

ICE has a role in our society and that's being chained to one another while they break rocks in a prison camp and serve as a warning to others about what happens when you join a secret police force in the United States.

this is so cathartic

We do not elect dictators in the United States. There are limits to the powers of a president and if one exceeds those limits, their rule loses legitimacy. Their government no longer commands our loyalty and we enter into the "alter or abolish" stage spelled out in the Declaration of Independence.

i will never get over this rebecca tiffany quote: the goal of yimbyism is a world where "every trans eighteen-year-old who is stuck living with unsupportive family [is] able to afford an apartment in a vibrant urban space with transit on a minimum wage job." www.liberalcurrents.com/feminism-wit...

blue sanctuary states gotta make room and build more homes

The feds hate cities because city residents resist. They organize. They help each other.

These fucking politicians need to STOP CONSTANTLY admonishing protestors to be "peaceful" while they are being brutalized regularly by the gatekeepers of the state. You should be up there telling ICE and Border Patrol to be fucking peaceful.

Expel ICE, CBP, and the FBI from Oregon. They are not law enforcement. ICE and CBP are anti-civilian paramilitary forces, and the FBI are their enablers. Blockade their buildings with ODOT snowplows. Shut off their power + water. Call up the National Guard to haul them out and dump them in Idaho.

ICE needs to be taken apart, brick by brick, and we need to salt the earth.

Hey transpo world, do I have this Kotek timeline right? - Didn’t do anything for the initial transpo package - Showed up to push for a bill that would’ve defunded city and county DOTs, which failed - Called a special session to pass a bleh bill that will be challenged - Now wants to repeal

ICE must be abolished. The work of our time is to tear down the system that built it and remake it into one that embraces and designs systems that include all people from all places. This work will be done, because the alternative is unbearable.

Republicans in multiple states passed laws that immunize people who drove into protesters. Rightist outlet The Daily Caller once made a video cheering people who drove into protestors These sh*tbags are taking their infatuation with vehicular violence and trying to pin it on us.

There is no choice but to build a new world

Media that cannot even describe an event recorded at multiple angles, and instead regurgitates the motivated interpretations of organizations involved, is utterly worthless.

“… is not even a law-governed constitutional state”: correct. There may come a point where governors run out of choices but to acknowledge that the Trump administration rejects the governance of the Constitution in domestic affairs — and to take steps accordingly in protection of their citizens.

(Or as I put it the other day:)

"… this is not a constitutionally legitimate government": correct — and on the current trajectory, the government's rejection of its duties to the Constitution will at some point become too great for the states, which the Constitution also binds, to ignore.

Again: there may come a time that leaves governors with no choice but to say the presidency has abandoned the constraints of the Constitution — and that if forced, they’ll proceed in protection of the rights and safety of their citizens accordingly.

@fischer.bsky.social @ecosozialismus.bsky.social has Clark said anything yet today?

A heck of a chart: in every single one of the 10 major US cities that built the most housing between 2017 and 2023, rents for older, existing units fell—often by quite a bit.

One of my biggest takeaways from living in Tokyo was that the city is incredible in spite of the fact that 95% of the architecture is unremarkable. It makes the years-long design review process for a single apartment building in the U.S. seem all the more frivolous.

I really think that TriMet should use this crisis to move away from its one-seat ride model, especially for MAX. It's gotta be more efficient to axe Red + make Green Clack TC to PDX, right? Make sure that transfers at Gateway are timed well. It'd be a bummer that they just spent $ on Better Red

This thread is spot-on. The pearl-clutching about international law and the liberal international order reads to me like the foreign policy version of the clueless attachment to institutions we’ve seen over the last decade in the US.

I’m so envious of Seattle’s near future: Mayor Katie Wilson, social housing, and this new broad upzone.

5.6% of Multnomah County residents have difficulty walking. Of Oregon's 36 counties, 32 have higher rates. (Sherman County: 13%.) But only Multnomah has a meaningful number of residential elevators. The U.S. locking itself out of the global elevator market means only huge buildings can afford them.

The persistent belief that a previous version of Portland was perfect feeds the idea that our best days are behind us. It's inherently conservative, a nostalgic obsession that's little more than a Make Portland Great Again philosophy. We've gotta define a compelling vision of the future.

like 75% of dem messaging right now should be “the party led by epsteins best friend is breaking into pre-k childcare centers so they can record your toddlers and put the videos on internet”

mamdani setting the example the next president needs to follow; this trump white house is Constitutionally illegitimate and on Jan 20th 2029 the president should issue an executive order annulling every executive action which trump unlawfully ordered

If public policy can make elevators cheaper to build, not only will we build more homes in the middle of our amenity-rich and desirable neighborhoods, but all the homes we do build will be accessible to people who can't always take the stairs. housing affordability and accessibility overlap!

Went down to Pioneer Square to run an errand and grab a jianbing. The most off-putting thing I experienced was blocks worth of sidewalks covered in bird poop. What exactly are we paying Downtown Clean and Safe for?

“The meaning of life is how you wrestle”

This administration is a horrific band of vandals, crooks, and predators. Let's make 2026 the year we banish them into the wilderness, never to hold an ounce of power over anyone again.

Americans do not have a "love affair" with cars, the term typically used in the media. Rather we are in an abusive relationship, wanting to leave but fearing the consequences.

always a good thread to revisit, especially after trying to go to for a walk and have a conversation with someone on a corridor *cough* Hawthorne *cough*.

wow... they approved the new DQ drive-thru efiles.portlandoregon.gov/record/17614...

We need a threat assessment to show where the vulnerabilities are in our election infrastructure, well before November. @wyden.senate.gov @merkley.senate.gov @repdexteror.bsky.social - This has direct implications on the viability of Oregon's entire vote-by-mail system. Please get it reversed.

In New Zealand they have a term for this: the ring of shame. By this I understand them to mean, close-in suburbs that combine extremely high feasibility (i.e. cheap, low-rise structures on expensive land near the center) with extremely restrictive exclusionary zoning.

Noticed that Baerlic Brewing has an “Eastside Pilsner” and now I’m dreaming of getting Little Beast to brew an “Inner Beastside for All” promotional beer

2026 goal: make it possible for Inner Eastside blocks to look like this

Signing out for a bit - merry christmas to all who celebrate!

I have no desire to put up with this anymore. We can have someone who’s at least as good on housing and not garbage at literally everything else. We need such an overhaul of the Democratic Party in Oregon.