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About Street roots. (Portland, OR) 1998-current | View Entire Issue (June 17, 2016)
Commentary Page 12 Street Roots • June 17-23, 2016 Why we document you: Recording the city’s oversight failure appointed to committees do not depend on public services. Sure, they may be cashing a C O N T R IB U T IN G C O L U M N IS T S public salary to pay bills, but they have options. People with disabilities, people t seems like a million years ago, but recovering from mental illness and in Portland advocates are closely monitoring there was a time when the testament to addictions, often do not have options and police accountability discussions, making a fine performance or thrilling speech are entirely dependent on the public welfare recordings and carefully posting them was a standing ovation. Even further back, system. Our medical care, our housing, our online. for a moment in adolescence, we lifted our food} our protection from both the law and Why are we interested in the police? matches in a darkened stadium to share a perpetrators, come from this public Because our police are well known for their twinkling recognition of the ascendancy of business. As we are routine harm to rock. More recently, during Occupy, we all not represented at the people with mental learned to twinkle our fingers in agreement table, we need to illness. and hiss in displeasure. learn, follow and The decorum ©I the police Most of these cell Today our matches no longer light the understand every iota phone cameras are oversight meetings in Portland sky. Instead, we hold our cell phone of public business that held by people who cameras aloft, aimed directly at authority, collapsed because the structure affects us. have experienced secrecy and control. There’s plenty of each. was designed and built with But why the second mental illness and You can find the evidence on our website. version? Why not be the goal of containment and addiction, violence or Over the years, the website of the Mental control. It was built without the satisfied with the threat of violence by Health Association of Portland has collected fu ll and equal participation of high-quality recording our police - or are thousands of articles, reports, photos and made by the people directly harmed by the entirely sympathetic videos chronicling the history of mental committee? to the welfare of illness and addiction in Oregon. We built city - those due an apology Three important those who have. this rich archive because no one else and reform. reasons we document Why such scrutiny? bothers to collect our history - the story of you. Many of these how people with mental illness and One: Those high- meetings are also addiction have been treated in Oregon. quality recordings are recorded and carefully Our online archive documents our routinely deleted from government servers. genocide, generation after generation, at the posted online by the organization hosting When Sam Adams succeeded Tom Potter the meeting. Why bother to make a second, hands of the state and citizens of Oregon. dozens of recordings of meetings about often inferior, recording? We document the warehousing, isolation, routine police harm to people with mental Further, the makers of the secondary beating, poisoning, torture, drowning, exile, illness were wiped away. When the Portland recordings have been jerks, harrassing medical experimentation and unmarked Tribune and Willamette Week recently volunteer committee members, giving mass graves. We document the hatred, the updated their websites thousands of articles running commentary over the proceedings, contemptuous laughter, the poverty, and photos vanished. Local TV and radio intending the camera as a forceful spotlight, sickness and death. Our bullet-ridden bodies empty content from their sites every news pointing it like a weapon. They are tell a terrible story that few acknowledge cycle. intentionally rude and should cease. But and fewer mourn. We document an ongoing Who cares? News by definition is those hosting public meetings need to ephemeral. Piles just lying around are horror, through the years and as it happens. smarten up and recognize when they’re unnavigable and unhelpful. We need to move Much of this happened out of society’s being pranked. on into the future. Set aside grievances and view, and society was just fine with that. We support the right of community focus on now. Moreover, the decisions and policies that members to make recordings of public We care. These documents - whether we shaped our lives happened without us. meetings and post them online - and record agree with them or not - are our history. Today we have a new tool to bring authority Articles, photos, recordings, tell the story of any part of the making of the public’s out of the darkness and into brilliant what happened to us. They are often clumsy, business - because our lives depend on that sunshine. not created in the way we would like to tell business being fair, legal and beneficial. Cell phone cameras are now flooding city the story, but they are what we have for Public scrutiny acts as a shield. and county chambers, public meetings and now. At some point in the future a careful Most persons elected to office or committee hearings across the nation. And BY JASON RENAUD AND JENNY WESTBERG Jason Renaud and Jenny Westberg are members o f the Mental Health Association o f Portland. I PHC and thoughtful historian will arrive and make sense of these days. So for now, we collect in preparation for that effort Now your history is ours. Second: Our local media stopped covering government business over a decade ago. Both the mainstream media and the so-called alternative media are almost exclusively interested in scandal, conflict and scoops. They don’t provide unbiased analysis as advertised; they never did and never will. The future of journalism is flotsam in the swarm, picked over by aggregators and curators, led by Snowden and hackers and public records requestors. The cell phone takes back the power, just a little bit, in a jiggly hostile gesture, but it is ours and not theirs. Finally: The way the pocket camera or cell phone is held is a new gesture which says something substantial about this generation. Held out at arms length it could be intended as some sort of collective shield charm by the internet swarm to ward off evil, as a crucifix or garlic may have done in other story lines. Held out at arms length in the midst of confrontation during a conversation about police brutality it becomes also a weapon, symbolizing a gun, to slay an opponent. The irony of mental illness advocates pointing cameras at police is fierce. Note: when advocates point cameras at advocates, the police sit back and chuckle. The decorum of the police oversight meetings in Portland collapsed because the structure was designed and built with the goal of containment and control. It was built without the full and equal participation of people directly harmed by the city - those due an apology and reform. That apology has not occurred. That reform has not occurred. In response to challenging words the city has produced yet more barriers to reform, more lawyers and rules. To expect decorum now is ridiculous. 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