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I'm starting to feel like a lot of left-leaning Portlanders have gone a bit crazy over the boarded-up buildings and graffiti downtown. It's an overwhelmingly Covid-generated phenomenon, yet there is this growing implication that it's the fault of anarchic protesters. CRINGE.
People are not going to work downtown. They're not going to restaurants or theaters or in most cases shops. Hence the boarded-up windows during the pandemic, long BEFORE the protests. Studies long show that boarded-up windows and low-trafficked streets attract tagging.
It's also true that protesters particularly in the summer caused a lot of vandalism, but that lingering memory seems to somehow be growing in people's minds while the overwhelming effect of the pandemic and its continuing presence for some reason apparently recedes.
Which is to say nothing of hostility to homeless people, as if years of growing economic inequality are a non-factor but being too soft towards struggling families is. It's a complex problem requiring years of investment, not getting tough. Didn't summer 2020 teach us ANYTHING?
I'm not saying people shouldn't be upset about vandalism. But when a place empties out and windows get boarded up, it invites such activity. The vandalism is not simply a sign of lawlessness. We can arrest perpetrators, sure. But doing so doesn't get to any root causes.
And when we try too hard to force simple solutions to complex problems without any empathy, that's when we make mistakes.
I hear people saying, "But you don't understand. I'm afraid to take my kids downtown now." Yet we completely agree on it being a bad scene down there. I just don't like idea of treating a once-in-century pandemic and ensuing recession as secondary factors.
By the way, I began this thread by noting a lot of left-leaning Portlanders were succumbing to these misconceptions. Of course on the elephant side of the fence, post-2016, deliberate misinformation has gone nuclear.
...aaaaand it's official: I've received my first "you're aiding and abetting the Antifa anarchists" response. History really is circular, not linear.
