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. No
justice no peace, nothing about us without
us.
5312 NE 148th Ave.
Portland, OR 97230
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