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About Portland observer. (Portland, Or.) 1970-current | View Entire Issue (Dec. 23, 2015)
Page 6 December 23, 2015 O PINION Do We Need a City-Wide Rent Strike? Priced out of housing l ew C hurCh The Portland Observer’s excellent cover story (“No Where Left To Go,” Dec. 6 is- sue) hits the nail on the head: Because of skyrocketing rents, lack of foresight and plan- ning by public officials, and a mainstream media which sees housing as just an “amenity” of some sort, many folks in Oregon and throughout the country are finding themselves as tenants who are priced out. Poor folks are sleeping out- doors in tent cities or at camps or shelters like Right to Dream Too in downtown Portland -- and finding themselves to be by people who are simply mar- ginalized with no where left to go. At Portland State Univer- sity, the Progressive Student Union and Tenant Rights Proj- ect have joined hands, in the words of an old rap song, to “fight the powers that be.” We have organized a rent strike on campus against a subcontract- ed student housing manage- ment corporation and launched pickets and demonstrations against two of the landlord’s retail businesses. We have held 104 Sunday night meet- ings with low-income tenants at the Butte and Biltmore buildings, downtown, housing owned and managed by Cen- tral City Concern, a nonprofit that runs on a $38 million an- nual budget. We have held a dozen tenant organizing meetings where we have also encountered down- right interference and opposi- tion from some landlords and some conservative tenants. This fall, we have advocat- ed for low-income tenants in a Home Forward housing au- thority building, The Jeffrey, at 1201 S.W. 11th Ave., across from the downtown Safeway. Some of residents at the Jeffrey have been targeted for de facto evictions by the landlord, Income Property Management. In one case, when a Tenant Rights Project sought to put up pro-tenant union posters, the landlord said no way, and in another, a tenant organizer was not allowed back in the building. This would seem to violate both the First Amendment and Oregon landlord-tenant law. Management claims of tenant and roommate disputes would seem to violate laws against false statements or libel. There is a housing shortage in liberal, progressive Port- land, and city officials, like Josh Alpert, Charlie Hales’s chief of staff, keep saying that there needs to be “more re- search” about why the rents are so damned high. For those of us who have been organizing for tenant rights for many years -- (I or- ganized years ago, as a VIS- TA Volunteer in Macon, Ga. with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s orga- nization) -- it means that it is time for tenants to do what Dr. King and Gandhi both worked on, vis-à-vis, to address hous- ing and exorbitant rents with a city-wide rent strike to stop the evictions, make sure that all people are housed no mat- ter how “marginal.” Does Portland belong to the affluent only or to all of us? We need to put a stop to evictions, legalize rent control in Salem for our state, pass inclusionary zoning, and start getting people indoors, out of the rain and the cold, and in houses! Lew Church is an organiz- er for Tenant Rights Project at Portland State, where he serves as Coordinator of PSU Progressive Student Union. A Bleak and Similar Path to Polarize the Public Instead, let us build bridges d r . m ajd i sreb At times of increased ten- sion, both ISIL and racists in the west are taking a similar path to polarize the public. I’d propose an alternative ap- proach to avoid a bleak future with limited civil liberties. Coming back from a med- ical mission that treated the unfortunate Syrian refugees in Jordan, I could imagine the customs and border protection officer denying my entrance to the country of my citizenship because I am a Muslim. “I am sorry, doctor, but the rules have changed since your departure,” he would say. Sitting in that cold waiting room waiting for an airline to take me some- where in the world, my past 18 years would flash in front of my eyes. This is a situation that I hope would never transpire. Born with blue eyes and fair complexion to a father from Latakia, a town on the coast of Syria, and a mother from the heart of Damascus, I can’t say that my experiences have been similar to other Arabs or Mus- lims. I have witnessed, howev- er, the horror of 9/11/01 and the by backlash experienced by many of them and even by non-Mus- lim Indians wearing turbans. We are living today in similar times with high tension since the Paris and San Bernardino attacks. Of course these cow- ardly attacks do not represent Islam just as the Oklahoma City bombing does not repre- sent Christianity. The heart of the matter, nevertheless, is that we are all falling into a ploy leading us to believe in a clash ISIL was, therefore, formed. The latter, however, does not represent Islam nor the Syri- ans. Its extreme ideology has been supplemented by spectac- ular, horrific and televised acts of terror. Since then, the whole world determined that it is the enemy and countless countries com- missioned airstrikes in Syr- ia with no regards to civilian lives. Meanwhile in the West, validated the racist rhetoric and assessment and, thus, increased its popularity. Both ISIL in the Middle East and the racists in the West have the same agenda: polar- izing the populace into an “us against them” mentality. With every televised horrific ISIL act and the ensuing bombings, more civilians in the Middle East are turning to ISIL for safe haven. On the other side, with every racist action in the Both ISIL in the Middle East and the racists in the West have the same agenda: polarizing the populace into an “us against them” mentality. of civilizations or religions. In 2011, a group of Syrians started a nonviolent uprising against the injustice and lack of political liberty imposed upon them by the Assad re- gime. They were met with bru- tal force. Unfortunately, some started carrying weapons to de- fend themselves. Many neigh- boring countries, with blessing from major world powers, add- ed fuel to the fire by allowing foreign fighters to enter Syria. there is a rise of fascism with racist slurs and religious big- otry. It is built on a rhetoric that ignites fear and rage in a population that is not familiar with foreign events, and leads to alienation and cornering of minorities. Hate crimes are on the rise and Muslim minorities are finding themselves in a de- fensive position. Two of them with sick brains in San Ber- nardino adopted an extremist reaction. By doing that, they west, more Muslim youth feel alienated and regress into an extreme religious propaganda available all over the Internet and thus more join an extremist organization. This closes the loop on a vi- cious cycle. Unfortunately, the media is falling into this trap like many of us. They are over- playing and overanalyzing ev- ery action and contributing to the division. Sitting in that cold room, I could remember abandon- ing the medical specialty that I loved the most because it was popular among American graduates and choosing a less popular specialty. I could rec- ollect practicing in an under- served area with a salary below the reasonable wages for my specialty for several years. I could remember the countless number of US patients that I treated from the heart without ever asking them about their religion or nationality. I would wish that people stood together across all religions and races and stopped this slippery slope. I would hope that instead of bombing Syria, we shut down ISIL’s social media and bank accounts, arrested their oil ex- ports to Europe and halted the flow of weapons to Syria. I would desire that we called out racists when we saw them, that we wrote to the media when they produced biased reports, that we networked with each other and rallied to tell the country and the world that that was not the trajectory we want- ed for humankind. I would wish that we built bridges, not destroyed them. Majd Isreb, M.D., an immi- grant from Syria, is a U.S. citi- zen and resident of Vancouver.
