I've had some friends ask me lately, "You've been really quiet this midterm season and on Multco chair and Governor's races. I'd expect you to be a lot more talkative-any ideas?"
Well, yes. In years past I would have exercised much the same process of investigating the issues through social service agencies and initiatives I've been a part of, take that information after speaking directly with candidates and making a direct appeal to family and friends on why I think the way I do and why I think one particular vote or another is the right move.
This year something different happened. I took on a particular line of study and investigation, which is the study of the socio-political aspects of fanaticism and its sordid cousin extremism.
I took in quite a bit of literature on the subject, your usual suspects like Amos Oz, considered the grandfather of the issue right on down to Purdue University's Zachary R Goldmith. Amos has now passed on, but I'm lucky enough to be able to chat with Zach.
I attended some online symposiums.
It took everything in my years of watching politics and turned it on its head.
I don't know why there is such a fire in me to study this. Someone once asked Stephen King why he wrote horror. Would he excel at some other topic, I'll never forget what he said, he said: "What makes you think I have a choice?"
Ever since watching the decline of the political structure following Trump, I turned to look at these aspects, because I knew that it would infect the world entire of politics like a cancer.
This political season, I've watched candidates make your usual embellished promises, with very little preparation or study, I've watched them make the race about themselves or their opponents and less on the deep-wound issues currently facing our state. After all, themselves and their opponents are what they know best, they are less prepared and edified on the hard issues but they'll try to sell you on them nonetheless. Typically it's because they try to spread themselves thin.
There is one area that is a flashpoint and much-heated debate issue in Oregon. This is homelessness and addiction. Oregon has some of the finest minds gathering together from our large and knowledgeable social service bank to sit on panels and advisory councils. Portland State University's Homelessness Research & Action Collaborative is a national model. The Metro Bond measure for housing is an important tool for us to address the conundrum of community members facing houselessness and addiction, but it has been the crux of poor financial planning and pilfering from some city legislators and groups seated in extremism such as the notorious People For Portland.
The city and state have two groups fighting against one another on this flashpoint bank of issues. The houseless and addiction prevention experts and the politicians who know piss poor little about either advising you that they are about to "end homelessness and clean up this city". We are in this conundrum because our city and our state made a conscious choice to ignore the housing crisis when it started and the subsequent fallout has incorporated infighting versus real strategized approach.
Now that the problem has reached a real crisis point, you have some city leaders and other politicians, both seated and candidate attempting to make the issues go away on a visual level.
There can't be any confusion. Fanaticism and extremism are devices used by politicians among other propagandized tactics. At the city and state level, the behavior hums around the extremism level, moving up the scale to fanaticism once it hits the federal level and beyond. This concept has intensified over the past six years. It was duly noted and broadly accepted at the highest level during the Trump administration's stay in the white house.
This political season requires true research on the issues, and not just the candidates. It is widely known by key social service agencies just how LITTLE the public actually knows about them.
A Home For Everyone ( AHFE )
Joint Office of Homeless Services ( JOHS )
Multnomah County Health Department , including Behavioral Health Division and
Public Health Division
Portland Housing Bureau
City of Portland Homelessness and Urban Camping Impact Reduction Program ( HUCIRP)
Metro
It will take nothing less than really delving into both issues to help direct your choice of candidate.
The Metro Housing Bond Housing Bond - a $652.8 million affordable housing bond measure passed in 2018 to create permanently affordable housing across greater Portland for seniors, working families, veterans and others.
And:
The Metro Supportive Housing Services Measure "Provides for much-needed wraparound services to help reduce homelessness across greater Portland. The program provides services for as many as 5,000 people experiencing prolonged homelessness with complex disabilities, and as many as 10,000 households experiencing short-term homelessness or at risk of homelessness.”
This is important, particularly on a county level. When you review these action items and then take another look at the candidates, it will become clear who the better choice is. Propagandized fear tactics are used primarily by those who exercise extremism and fanaticism as a placeholder for actual solutions.
Knee-jerk stop-gap solutions such as sweeping the visual aspects of a deeply rooted problem are hallmarks of legislators who have all but lost control of their county, city, and state.
This political season, because so MUCH is at stake, literally millions in bond money, please look instead to the issues FIRST, so that you may not become unwittingly maligned by the effects of political devices used to drive your choice. The better bet is always the candidate who does the hard work of studying the issues themselves and can show a record of how to best approach the crisis alongside their constituents. Beware of terms like "ending houselessness" Take for example Drazan, who personifies political devices to get to a particular outcome, particularly in redrawing districts, and has no real base at all in issues. Because she has had zero participation in the communities mentioned above and no real strategies for addressing the flashpoint issues, even the researchers she had hired to market hot-take phrases and words, miss the mark. The only devices she is using now are extremism and opponent bashing, oddly enough, by charging the opponent with extremism. The trouble is? She's in the lead.
Too much is at stake. This time, we ALL must become students of socio-political arena if we are to survive this. Godspeed.