It is a heinous proclamation that the city of Portland, Oregon is “war torn,” “hellscape.” The agenda of violating, attempting to permanently remove, the constitutional rights of it’s citizens by framing a city under siege at the same time dismissing, disregarding, mishandling, mocking true global conflict and human rights violations is the height of culpability to authoritarianism, fascism. Make no mistake, they bring in recently hired, untrained thugs and far-right agitators as their federal agents to provide the accelerant to violence. We have problems to solve, a mockery of human and civil rights is not the way. We return to the city that sustains and educates…life moving forward.
I have “the city” in my DNA. As much as I love open spaces and greenways of our neighborhood, where crickets chirp so loudly on a warm autumn night, my grandson had to ask “what is that clicking?” He stood at the edge of darkness in the yellow pool of light from the open garage as we got ready to return to his mother. Where houses crowd out the crickets, where neighborhood cats meander across the road, where he can walk to school. We are in the long line of ancestors from lands of green and rolling fields, warm beaches and olive groves. Who found themselves landed on the shores of urban, ghetto landscapes. Where their dreams formed and passed in sooty resolve to me.
When my sister and I visited our relatives in New York City during a Christmas holiday season, we were reminded of our grandparents and parents beginning there. The stories we were told and the streets we walked with them. While we revisited the city, I could feel the hum of remembrance. Had my mother crossed this street as a young girl of 18 to go to work in Macy’s department store? Driving through tunnels tasting the thick metallic exhaust coating our tongue, I imagined my father on the walkway as an NYC transit patrolman. We explored the grandeur of hotels, train stations, Rockefeller Center and Times Square. Their city, our childhood, echoed in our bones.
Deep Downtown (a grandson’s wisdom)
“Sometimes when Papa and me go to Powell’s to get books, we go to a Sushi restaurant that has a conveyor belt. I only like when they have a conveyor belt.”
“Oh, Papa told me about that. Maybe I can go there with you sometime.”
“No, you can’t go there.”
“Why not?”
“You don’t know where it is.”
“Well, I can ask your Papa. He can tell me where it is.”
“No, Mamó. You can’t go there because it is deep downtown.”
I was lucky in lights as I made my way to deep downtown to visit the new apartment. The city opened her arteries to me, I flowed through streets filled with memories of my days in the urban setting of Portland State University. Past the transit mall, the beating heart of possibilities. Past artists’ haunts, restaurants and bookstores, the houseless unkempt and unhidden. Past the Chinatown Gateway with its dragons and the lively conversation about history with my grandsons, the Chinese Gardens and the Japanese Garden. Past school buses and city buses crisscrossing the freeways and bridges. Past dog walkers and scooters, leafy oak trees, their colors not yet tinged with autumn red and orange. Under the canopy of trees on Burnside, the bustle of intersections with students, children, tourists pulling their little suitcases darting to their destination, to catch the train or trolley, scramble into the bookstore, grab a meal. Past the concrete and glass softened to pink reflections of the setting sun.
It has been approximately 120 years since our ancestors arrived at Ellis Island to build a new life in a city. The urban setting was different from their fields, farms, and villages, where they struggled to survive. They met new challenges as we will. Once again, a city provides renewal, a blank slate, a new beginning, familiar in its power. Deep downtown, where only the invited and the brave can travel and thrive.
