Gloves Off

I have three assignments for you

Let me start things off with a belated but heartfelt public thanks to the Portland Police officer who followed up on my 911 call after I was assaulted by a man either drug addled and/or in the throes of a psychotic episode while I walked Rosie (my English lab) and Junie (my son’s and his partner’s dog) one lovely mid-September evening in 2022 on Northwest Raleigh Street a half block east from Wallace Park. The officer was professional and gracious, his questions cogent, his empathy for me, given the circumstances, sincere and comforting.

Mea culpa. A four-year delay for a thank you is inexcusable. I was raised better.

By the time of that perhaps 15-minute phone conversation with the officer two full days after the assault, I was settled down, emotionally, albeit still a little sore, physically, from the coldcock to the side of my unprotected head while my arms were pulled in opposite directions by the taut leashes connected to the dogs as they were trying like hell to get away. The kick to my shoulder after I fell to my knees rendered subsequent walks with them a rather tender exercise for a few days.

In case you missed it in the previous paragraph: TWO FULL DAYS AFTER THE ASSAULT!

Which is, I should point out, a much better response than that from my 911 call to report a man swinging an unsheathed machete on the sidewalk across from New Seasons on Raleigh Street (again!) a couple of years ago. Assuming 911 calls are recorded and archived, some sleuthing might turn up the actual conversation. Until then, I present, for your consideration, the gist of it reconstructed from memory:

[911 Operator] 911. What is your name and location?

[Me, after providing requested info] There is a man swinging a machete and screaming like a maniac across Raleigh Street from the New Seasons in Northwest Portland.

[911 Operator] Has he injured anyone?

[Me] I don’t know. I just got here and I noticed a panicked woman running across the street and into the store. He is now slamming the machete against the brick wall and screaming incoherently outside Mama Bird restaurant, if that helps.

[911 Operator] So you don’t know if he has injured anyone?

[Me] Ma’am, I repeat; he is swinging a machete, screaming expletives. He’s raging. He’s striking the machete into the brick wall outside Mama Bird. I saw a woman running away from him. If he hasn’t injured someone, he’s going to.

[911 Operator] It is not illegal to swing a machete in Portland.

[Me] Please tell me that you are kidding.

[911 Operator] It is not illegal to swing a machete in Portland.

Click.

Not to mention all the times I didn’t call 911 since 2020 when the City Council cut the Portland Police budget by $15 million and the electorate approved Measure 110, legalizing hard drugs on our streets. A quick brain dump of that inventory: three or four (I forget, although I did file police reports online for all of them, if you want to fact check me) incidents of car windows smashed and car contents cleaned out; stolen mail; the guy defecating on the corner on West Burnside and Northwest 23rd Place; the morning reverie of people screaming profanity at sunrise; the woman who almost ran me and Rosie down at the pedestrian crossing at the intersection of Northwest Savier and 23rd Avenue (‘Stop in the Name of Something, Anything’, NW Examiner, Sept. 27, 2025) and, last but not last (pun, sad as it is, intended), the guy who less than two weeks ago almost ran over Rosie with his gas powered mini-bike going about 20 miles an hour down the sidewalk in front of McMenamins Tavern and Pool while a friend and I discussed literature and movies at a table over a cold one. When I stood up and held out my hands to STOP the guy before he hurt Rosie, he complied. Kinda. Shirtless with vacant, glassy eyes and a line of inked, somehow menacing, symbols tattooed in a vertical line down the side of his neck, he sat on the purring bike and informed me that he was going to “slap me f***ing silly” for the audacity of interrupting his drug-fueled joy ride on said sidewalk. After a few moments of tense standoff, he powered away, sans slap, around the corner heading east on Savier.

To paraphrase a song from Van Morrison’s last album:

This is who we are/ This is where we’re from

Enough is enough. Mess with me, and that’s one thing. Mess with Rosie, and it’s gloves off.

If there’s any uncertainty about who should be issuing the mea culpas to the residents of Portland and Multnomah County for the new normal of havoc and violence on our streets, there was none after I attended the Pearl District Neighborhood Association’s “Reignite the Pearl” event on public safety at the Portland Armory on June 22 featuring Portland Police Chief Bob Day and Multnomah County District Attorney Nathan Vasquez.

Their somewhat nuanced responses to the pointed questions written on little white index cards from the near-full house crowd made clear that the Democratic Socialists of America on Portland’s City Council and our Multnomah County chair (and some commissioners) fully own Portland’s spiraling descent. And, if the hair on the back of your neck doesn’t rise when you hear your two top law enforcement officials utter sentences like “We are failing you” and “We’re a train wreck,” I might suggest that perhaps, just perhaps, your apathy or outright contempt for a society built on civility and a set of values around respect and common law render you an enabler as well.

Riddle me this, Batman: How can our city and county leaders look at the correlation of our crime statistics and police funding compared against other major American cities and twice—TWICE!—vote for MORE CUTS in the funding?

This, dear reader, is the work of ideologues who are either ignorant or intentional or both (my choice). They need to be voted out. The message they are delivering to us is crystal clear. Safety and security and a vibrant urban community are not their priorities. They are too busy saving the world to be preoccupied with something so mundane as the health and well-being of Portland and Multnomah County and their residents.

What’s it gonna take to get the adults in the room vocal and active in the reclamation of Portland before it’s too late? When are we going to stop dilly dallying with soft rhetoric in fear of “offending” someone and getting canceled in these oh so precious days? How did longstanding progressives like us allow the rigging of our city government structure to ensure that incompetent ideologues are elected without a majority of the vote?

The Portland version of the DSA is to principled progressive Democratic politics what MAGA is to principled Republican conservatism (and if you think there isn’t one, then you sit at the children’s table for this discussion); a cancer squelching everything good in the values of responsible citizenship that many of us hold dear, contextualizing criminal behavior as a by-product of systemic injustice rather than degrading values and leftist ideologies, extorting silence in the opposition by hurling fear- and guilt- mongering epithets (Karen, NIMBY, racist, fascist, entitled, etc.) and legislating policies designed to dismantle the institutions and laws that allow a diverse society to not only coexist but to thrive, if not perfectly, as our once fair city did. The DSA does not want true diversity.

They are of one mindset, angry and intolerant of any worldview other than their own. The current state of the city of Portland is their doing.

Do not yield the moral high ground to them. We must join in a pragmatic effort to make our city, our streets, and our merchant community vital and whole. To be anti-DSA is not to be pro-MAGA. Extremist ideologues are all cut from the same cloth. They don’t seek compromise. They consider as enemies those who oppose their agenda. They don’t disagree, they despise. They don’t want a seat at the table, they want the table and they can have it as long as it’s not at City Hall. I want the DSA out as much as I want Donald Trump to spend the rest of his life, (which I hope is long and non-prosperous) in prison somewhere in the Midwest or, better yet, El Salvador.

You may call me a dreamer, but (I hope) I’m not the only one.

DA Nate and Chief Bob were unequivocal about the pragmatic next steps to begin the climb out of the hole the extreme left has dug:

1. Now: Sign the Safer Portland petition to fund a police force equal to the task of significantly reducing the safety and security issues rampant on our streets. For perspective on the matter, Portland, population ~645,000, has a force of ~809 police officers; Boston, population, ~675,000, has a force of ~2,127.

2. This November: Vote Out those DSA members of the City Council who are up for reelection. In District 4, that means vote out Mitch Green, who had two opportunities to protect the latest round of cuts in the Portland Police Bureau budget and failed to do so both times.

That’s a middle finger to mainstream, law abiding citizens. Cast your vote for Eli Arnold, a progressive centrist whose focus on safe and secure streets and a revitalized downtown merchant center are refreshing in these difficult times.

Mitch Green purports to be an economist. How an economist expects a city to thrive when taxes are skyrocketing, fundamental services are being axed, streets are unsafe and insecure, property crime is close to the top of comparative cities across the U.S. and commercial properties are being sold for a few cents on the dollar baffles me (and I hope you, as well). Any run-of-the-mill economist should be able to detect a doom loop in the making. Green supports Portland’s descent. He needs to go.

3. This November:

a. Cast your vote for both Julia Brim-Edwards and Sharon Meieran for Multnomah County chair. This is a rare chance to use the cynical rank choice voting system to defeat the extreme left candidates that it was designed to elect. Take it.

b. Leave the extreme left candidate for Multnomah County chair, Shannon Singleton, off your list of rank choice candidates. She will continue the policies of inaction from current chair Jessica Vega Pederson.

Lest I be accused of omitting some of the good news, Chief Day also announced that Mayor Wilson has recently won the budget battle to repave Burnside Street. Now, if that isn’t the textbook example of putting lipstick on a pig, then tell me what is. It’s the sidewalks, Mayor Wilson, that need your attention.

Progressives: Stand up and take back the Democratic principles that we have stood for. Portland’s survival is counting on you. It’s imperative that your financial support and your vote get us back on track.

Joe McAvoy lives in Portland with his wife, Kyle, and their English lab, Rosie.