The more I speak to activists in other cities and hear about their concrete accomplishments, the more convinced I become that Portland is a uniquely performative city

No one is better at grabbing headlines

Real change? Elusive

I'm not saying this to be mean or run down the efforts of the Portland community, which have been considerable and impressive and surely brought things into the light. We've changed the national conversation

I just think we could be more

Everyone's taking this as me saying we should work within the system and that's fine, but it isn't the only option aside from direct actions where we yell at cops

Allow me to regale you with a story of Philadelphia

These activists broke into vacant public housing, quiet-like, and gave them to houseless folks. Took the city months to figure out it was even happening

Then, when COVID hit, they made multiple barricaded tprotest encampments

To be fair I was told the cops could have cleared that shit any time, but the optics were real bad. Optics: that evil word. They worked the media. They worked the narrative. Mayor didn't feel like he had the political capital to brutalize houseless folks

They got housing units, a written guarantee that all evictions have to go through the courts, a study commissioned on the effects of public land transfers on historically black neighborhoods, and amnesty for everyone involved

Focused action. Negotiations with the city. Results

Other places are organizing buildings into tenant's unions. Pushing back against landlords. Knowing their fucking rights. Educating people

Concrete improvements for real people. Not a single call to your representative necessary

https://twitter.com/hereticalshrew/status/1340782433059233792?s=19