Seriously? The city is in a total mess and they have time to kick Lincoln off his pedestal. Leave Lincoln alone. He is about the only person we have left to look up to.
The current Portland City government reminds me of the City of Berkeley in the late 1900s and the current San Francisco Board of Supervisors on any day of the week today.
Thanks. Contributing to the problem is that city staff made secret decisions to put Lincoln on the ground, and then compounded this error by not disclosing when they later met to discuss the return of Lincoln with people who have been closely following this issue, such as Concerned Citizens.
If you want to know where Portland’s monuments process is headed, look at the moderator and panelists selected for the September 8 “Lincoln’s Return” conversation. They bring relevant experience, but the panel appears designed primarily to examine monuments through the lenses of marginalized voices, Indigenous history, race, power, and contemporary social criticism. Those are important perspectives, but the absence of a Lincoln scholar, Civil War historian, or recognizable advocate for traditional monument preservation suggests that the city has already chosen the framework within which the discussion will occur. https://www.portland.gov/arts/monuments/news/2026/8/27/lincolns-return-public-conversation
It's pathetic that the city will pay for a bunch of activists and near-kooks to posture over the placement of the statue of the republic's savior. As a metaphor for the demise of rational discourse in Portland, this one stands out among the profusion of "conversations," which are anything but. Put Lincoln back on the dammn pedestal and be done with it. No signage from progressives carefully instructing the mopes about what to think. Let people think for themselves.
Then get the other statues out of their secret storage. Be brave for a change.
Portland says its plan to put Abraham Lincoln on a much lower base reflects years of community input. But the city has not shown that Portlanders were ever asked whether they wanted the statue removed from its historic pedestal.
The public response we do have points the other way. In the city’s 2024 survey, 82 percent of about 5,000 respondents wanted Lincoln returned. The city instead relies on listening sessions, partner organizations and a symposium attended by about 100 self-selected people. The symposium discussed monuments, public memory and the city’s values in general. It did not ask participants to choose between restoring Lincoln to his pedestal and placing him near the ground.
City staff took comments gathered through these carefully framed events, selected the themes they considered important, and turned them into supposed public authority for a design the public never approved. The decision was announced in June even though PSU was still analyzing the project’s public-engagement work and the final report was not scheduled until later in the year. Now the city is holding a “public conversation” after announcing what it plans to do.
That is not community decision-making. It is a decision by city staff followed by an effort to give it the appearance of community support.
The city’s own Lewis & Clark report warned against exactly this. It said public engagement is merely performative unless people can see how their views affected the result. It called for alternatives not limited by a predetermined outcome and a clear explanation of the final decision. Where is the Lincoln-specific report showing who chose the lower base, what alternatives were considered, and why the original pedestal was rejected?
The appeal to “accessibility” is also unconvincing. Accessibility normally means providing an accessible path, viewing area and interpretive material. It does not require lowering the subject of a historic monument. The real purpose is plainly to change Lincoln’s symbolic standing—to make the monument less reverential and to cut him down to size.
Behind this is an ultra-progressive reading of history that holds Lincoln personally responsible for American expansion as an episode of settler colonialism. Because he signed the Homestead and Pacific Railway acts, he is faulted for failing to reject one of the basic policies of nineteenth-century America. This is an absurd standard. It amounts to condemning Lincoln for failing to abolish nineteenth-century America while he was preserving the Union and abolishing slavery.
Lincoln’s treatment of the Dakota deserves honest discussion. But even there, the usual account omits that Minnesota authorities wanted 303 men executed and Lincoln commuted 264 of those sentences despite enormous pressure for mass vengeance.
Lincoln and Roosevelt are historic monuments, not proposals for new public art. They are grandfathered. Portland may commission all the ground-level, interactive and non-reverential monuments it wants. It may add interpretation to the old ones. It should not redesign historic works to express the current preferences of arts administrators and then claim that “the community” made the decision.
Restore Lincoln to his pedestal. Add accurate historical context. And stop using curated community engagement to disguise decisions the public was never allowed to make.
Hurrah for causing this event. Mayor Wilson and his co- conspirators deserve as much criticism as can be delivered.
September 8th is Tuesday, not Thursday. Might want to clear up this confusion.
Seriously? The city is in a total mess and they have time to kick Lincoln off his pedestal. Leave Lincoln alone. He is about the only person we have left to look up to.
The current Portland City government reminds me of the City of Berkeley in the late 1900s and the current San Francisco Board of Supervisors on any day of the week today.
Thanks. Contributing to the problem is that city staff made secret decisions to put Lincoln on the ground, and then compounded this error by not disclosing when they later met to discuss the return of Lincoln with people who have been closely following this issue, such as Concerned Citizens.
If you want to know where Portland’s monuments process is headed, look at the moderator and panelists selected for the September 8 “Lincoln’s Return” conversation. They bring relevant experience, but the panel appears designed primarily to examine monuments through the lenses of marginalized voices, Indigenous history, race, power, and contemporary social criticism. Those are important perspectives, but the absence of a Lincoln scholar, Civil War historian, or recognizable advocate for traditional monument preservation suggests that the city has already chosen the framework within which the discussion will occur. https://www.portland.gov/arts/monuments/news/2026/8/27/lincolns-return-public-conversation
Portland's mandarins are experts at stacking the deck...nothing new here.
It's pathetic that the city will pay for a bunch of activists and near-kooks to posture over the placement of the statue of the republic's savior. As a metaphor for the demise of rational discourse in Portland, this one stands out among the profusion of "conversations," which are anything but. Put Lincoln back on the dammn pedestal and be done with it. No signage from progressives carefully instructing the mopes about what to think. Let people think for themselves.
Then get the other statues out of their secret storage. Be brave for a change.
Portland says its plan to put Abraham Lincoln on a much lower base reflects years of community input. But the city has not shown that Portlanders were ever asked whether they wanted the statue removed from its historic pedestal.
The public response we do have points the other way. In the city’s 2024 survey, 82 percent of about 5,000 respondents wanted Lincoln returned. The city instead relies on listening sessions, partner organizations and a symposium attended by about 100 self-selected people. The symposium discussed monuments, public memory and the city’s values in general. It did not ask participants to choose between restoring Lincoln to his pedestal and placing him near the ground.
City staff took comments gathered through these carefully framed events, selected the themes they considered important, and turned them into supposed public authority for a design the public never approved. The decision was announced in June even though PSU was still analyzing the project’s public-engagement work and the final report was not scheduled until later in the year. Now the city is holding a “public conversation” after announcing what it plans to do.
That is not community decision-making. It is a decision by city staff followed by an effort to give it the appearance of community support.
The city’s own Lewis & Clark report warned against exactly this. It said public engagement is merely performative unless people can see how their views affected the result. It called for alternatives not limited by a predetermined outcome and a clear explanation of the final decision. Where is the Lincoln-specific report showing who chose the lower base, what alternatives were considered, and why the original pedestal was rejected?
The appeal to “accessibility” is also unconvincing. Accessibility normally means providing an accessible path, viewing area and interpretive material. It does not require lowering the subject of a historic monument. The real purpose is plainly to change Lincoln’s symbolic standing—to make the monument less reverential and to cut him down to size.
Behind this is an ultra-progressive reading of history that holds Lincoln personally responsible for American expansion as an episode of settler colonialism. Because he signed the Homestead and Pacific Railway acts, he is faulted for failing to reject one of the basic policies of nineteenth-century America. This is an absurd standard. It amounts to condemning Lincoln for failing to abolish nineteenth-century America while he was preserving the Union and abolishing slavery.
Lincoln’s treatment of the Dakota deserves honest discussion. But even there, the usual account omits that Minnesota authorities wanted 303 men executed and Lincoln commuted 264 of those sentences despite enormous pressure for mass vengeance.
Lincoln and Roosevelt are historic monuments, not proposals for new public art. They are grandfathered. Portland may commission all the ground-level, interactive and non-reverential monuments it wants. It may add interpretation to the old ones. It should not redesign historic works to express the current preferences of arts administrators and then claim that “the community” made the decision.
Restore Lincoln to his pedestal. Add accurate historical context. And stop using curated community engagement to disguise decisions the public was never allowed to make.