Inclusion or exclusion at City Council?
Northwest Examiner editorial
The City Council’s inability to choose a chair might be understood through my favorite Ashley Brilliant witticism:
“If we all work together, we can totally disrupt the system.”
Council members from both camps talk about their desire to cooperate and compromise, but to what end? What if the socialist-dominated “Peacock” caucus’s purpose is not better government but rather to “totally disrupt the system”?
How do you hold hands and walk together when you’re headed in opposite directions? And how do you build trust with the moderate-liberal half of council when your agenda is aired only in secret strategy sessions?
Peacock’s most outspoken member, Councilor Angelita Morillo, told her council colleagues last week that only their racism could explain resistance to electing Peacock member Sameer Kanal as president. Furthermore, failure to make Kanal the first BIPOC council president in history was “unacceptable” to her, and she would fight her cause to the end.
Success to Morillo is not a better-functioning government or more productive discussions with colleagues but getting her people on top of the heap.
Populist revolutions around the world have toppled tyrants from time to time, but they do not have a good record of establishing stable or democratic governments. Revolutionary forces, often led by ideological or tribal/ethnic minorities, have sometimes seized electoral power, but they have tended to use their official capacities to persecute rival factions, even to the point of executions and ethnic cleansing.
The test for those who would bring in a new order is not can they attain power, but rather, once in charge, will they endeavor to represent all the people? Will they govern for the greater good of the entire body?
Or is their goal vengeance rained down upon those who hindered their rise to power? We have a vengeance-based man in the White House; we don’t have to wonder what that’s about.
Councilor Loretta Smith may have said it best when she reminded caucus members that they are no longer organizers trying to shake up the power structure from outside. They now are the government, and they have a duty to foster the success of “the system.”
If the Peacock Six sometimes reveal their motives at council meetings, they have shown their hand in electronic messages they thought were only among themselves. These messages have dragged them into an Oregon Ethics Commission investigation over violating quorum and engaging in deliberation of council business privately.
One exchange involved scheming to line up a seventh vote to block the mayor’s proposed budget last May.
Councilor Jamie Dunphy: “Do we need to figure out a way to bring Steve [Novick] into Peacock without violating quorum?”
Councilor Candace Avalos: “He’s an honorary member, the 7th man.”
They knew they were skirting the law as well as their disregard for the spirit of open government. It also shows a condescension toward a non-Peacock member, whom Avalos considered deeming a member of the clique. It’s also hard to reestablish trust with a colleague once burned in this manner.
Middle school children play such games, writing rules as they go and wielding their only power—the ability to exclude people at their whim. Ironically, inclusion is one of their bywords, though only as applied to those who exclude them.
This is the nature of the outsiders who have found themselves elevated to power and believe their time has come to rule the city. If they succeed, will they learn from their mistakes and grow into the responsibility? Or will the Peacocks strut and make it clear they serve only their own kind?
The council takes another stab at breaking the logjam Wednesday morning at 9.
I believe many on the far left (and far right) view compromise as a sin and a form of surrender which for them is unacceptable. They have turned politics into religion. When Mitch Green claims to "care about Portland:, I call B.S. One of his first orders of business was to threaten PSU funding for a new performing arts center if the PSU administration took disciplinary action against the students who occupied the library yet ALL Portlanders would benefit from a new performing arts center at PSU and no Portlander benefits from people trashing the library. That alone is why Green is unqualified to represent district 4. He does not care able Portland, he cares about some "bigger" agenda that is unrelated to the daily lives of Portlanders. The problem with the "Peacock" (other than their ridiculous name) is they don't have any better ideas. I would say to Green, dude, you are no Mamdani so focus of the nuts and bolts of running Portland for all citizens. In the old days, people ran for city council to help make the city a better place, now they see themselves on a crusades.