Page 4
February 19, 2020
Power in Governing
C ontinued from f ront
said she spent that day last August
among the EMTs and watched de-
velopments, including one where
a handful of kids were dancing
in front of Nordstrom’s, which
like other downtown businesses,
was closed for the day. Hardesty
said she was alarmed when a half
dozen cops in riot gear started to
approach the dancing kids, but,
apparently upon receiving orders,
turned around, got back on their
truck and left.
“I’m not saying women are bet-
ter leaders, but what I’m saying is
that women are not so prone to
immediately escalate,” Hardesty
said of the incident.
But that doesn’t mean Hardesty
doesn’t push some buttons with
her strong sense of what’s right
and wrong. Take facial recognition
technology, for example. Hardesty
said it’s bad science and does not
work the way it’s supposed to, par-
ticularly for women of color.
“My goal is to ban both public
and private use of facial recogni-
tion technology and plan to have
it before the council no later than
April,” she said. “Until I’m com-
fortable that it works the same
way for white men as it does for
black women, I don’t want any
part of it.”
Another thing Hardesty wants no
part of is saving all five city-owned
golf courses, which she doesn’t see
the need for, and believes that space
could be better used.
“Why do we have golf cours-
es?” Hardesty asked. “I haven’t
gotten a good answer to that, es-
pecially since we now have the
third mayor who’s declared a
housing emergency and the most
expensive thing in building new
housing is that people can’t afford
the land.”
Golf courses have plenty of
land, she said, which could be
used either to build new housing
or to construct tent communities
for homeless residents, with mo-
bile cooking units, showers and
garbage containers.
Hardesty said she believes in
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a “housing first” approach to the
housing crisis, but that developers
are not really building affordable
housing in many cases and are not
helping people who are very poor.
“The only tools we have to-
day that are addressing the severe
housing shortage on the very low
income scale are community de-
velopment corporations, but if
you build housing at zero to 30
percent (of mean income) you
need to have services in the build-
ing; it can’t just be housing,” she
said. “We need people to be able
to have their needs met where they
live…We’re doing things the way
we’ve always done them and there
doesn’t seem to be a sense of ur-
gency around it.”
In some ways Portland is better
than it was 20 years ago, but Hard-
esty said she believes that racism
has gotten worse in “the whitest
city in America.”
“In my entire 60-plus years on
the earth it’s only been in the last
two years that I’ve been fearful
in walking the streets of Portland
because of all the white suprema-
cists’ activity taking place, out in
the daylight, out in public,” she
said.
But Hardesty has hope for the
future, especially for the city’s
Charter Review Commission to
be assembled in 2021. At present,
each commissioner is allowed
to appoint four people to run the
commission, whose work could
take up to two years.
Big issues the commission will
be evaluating, include the city’s
form of government and whether
to make changes in how power
is shared between the mayor and
commissioners or a possible ap-
pointed executive; and if council
members should continue to be
elected at-large or from particular
districts of the city.
“We are all elected city-wide,
which explains why I’m the only
person of color on the council,”
she said. “We want to make sure
the Charter Review Commission
is diverse and clear about their
mission, which is to talk to every
corner of the city of Portland.”
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