PORTLAND CITY HALL HOMELESS ENCAMPMENT

“I have nine children with nine different women,” said Richard Cox, 56, who also said he is a former Army Ranger and has been homeless for a year. He, along with Aaron Porter, 24, were assigned to me as trained press liaisons for the homeless encampment at Portland City Hall on Congress Street. Aaron told me he has been homeless for eight years but both men preferred to call themselves “unhoused.”

Press liasons Richard Cox and Aaron Porter

They were attached to me last Friday after I took some pictures near the medical tent and asked questions of the volunteers there. One got on a walkie-talkie and pretty soon Richard and Aaron showed up. We went around the corner on a side street so my digital audio device didn’t pick up traffic noise or screaming obscenities from “residents” like the two women near us were delivering with incredibly-loud voices. 

Gray stains on pavement are dried urine

The “unhoused” encampment has grown on the steps of Portland City Hall and on the sidewalks in front of and beside the impressive stone edifice for almost two weeks. It would be more accurate to describe the building as a formerly-impressive edifice as it’s now covered with stains of dried urine, tents, trash,  sleeping bags, canopies, and people sleeping or walking around. How much more the encampment grows may be determined by a Portland City Council meeting scheduled for Monday, August 3rd.

Aaron and Richard told me no one is working in the building since Covid and are instead working from home. However, the Portland Press Herald reported that City Hall closed for business the previous Monday because staff felt unsafe. Walking around the encampment, I was reminded of what's happening at the other Portland on the west coast and in Seattle where leftists took over whole city blocks.

A large, prominent, professionally-printed sign on the sidewalk declared: “Our Demands,” which included: “DEFUND THE POLICE” and “EXTEND EVICTION FREEZE.” Another sign said: “HOMELESS LIVES MATTER.” That called to mind the Black Lives Matters protests there few weeks ago accompanied by violence and looting. Protesters included organizers like African refugees Hamdia Ahmed and Abdul Ali. Later, someone named Abdikareem Hasan was arrested for firing several shots into the nearby Portland Police Station parking garage.

Abdikareem Hassan

Leaving Richard and Aaron and walking carefully up the steps of City Hall, I squeezed between tents and sleeping bags, some with crashed-out people in them. There was dried urine all the way to the top and I couldn’t avoid stepping in it. I pitied people in tents on the lower steps and on the sidewalk as the urine would, of course, flow down to them, especially when it rained. I was glad not to see, or step in, any excrement, however.

Urine stains on City Hall steps

In one kiosk, I saw a list of people to whom donated tents, sleeping bags, soap, XL women’s diapers, kids’ clothes, and many other donated items had been given. There were written directions conspicuously posted explaining when to administer Narcan for those who overdose. 

“Housed” people were arriving regularly to drop off items that were requested on still another list. Everything visible, except for the people, was donated from the outside. This was clearly kept going by others who wanted political visibility.

Press liaisons Richard and Aaron wore walkie-talkies on their belts and were periodically called to quell disturbances. A Paddy Wagon with blue lights flashing on the next block took people to the police station or to the Cumberland County Jail where I had been volunteering for four years until the pandemic closed it to employees and inmates only.

Preble Street Resource Center

Also closed down by government overreaction to the virus was the nearby Preble Street Resource Center. It had provided all the services to the homeless now being delivered at the City Hall encampment and more. That seems a foolish decision considering that those camping at City Hall and in Deering Oaks Park aren’t socially distancing and few wear masks. There were also toilets at Preble Street. Paradoxically, it seems the “unhoused” at the encampment don’t have to live in donated tents because city officials have said homeless shelters at Oxford Street and at the Portland Expo are operating at only half capacity.

Portland Police Chief Frank Clark reported that shots were fired at the encampment on Saturday. The whole thing seems a political stunt to this writer and US News said it's organized by something called the “Maine People’s Housing Coalition,” I did several searches for it and only came up with a Facebook page. Links from there led me to national, leftist sites with LGBT, socialist, and communist links. The Portland Press Herald, however, has not dug into the “Maine People’s Housing Coalition” or its affiliates.

Is Portland, Maine being plagued by the same leftist forces now ruining the other Portland on the west coast? It would seem so.

Request to Require -- Tolerate to Mandate

In its early days, what we now know as the “LGBT Community” begged society for tolerance of “alternative lifestyles.” Then it asked for acceptance. After gaining some measure of political clout, it demanded “rights.” Lately, it is imposing conformity by legislating civil penalties against people who adhere to biological facts and religious beliefs about LGBT issues. How soon before it criminalizes dissent? How soon will we discover as Cool Hand Luke did that if you don’t, “Get your mind right,” you’ll “spend a night in the box.”

Last week I saw two stories alerting me that it’s just around the corner. The first was in National Review about a former 30-year Emergency Room doctor in the UK who didn’t have his mind right and was fired. His offense? He said he wouldn’t use a “preferred pronoun” when treating a hypothetical “transexual.” He’d refuse to call a man who claimed he was a woman “she.” He said — as a scientist — that it’s impossible for a man to change into a woman. “If somebody has male XY chromosomes and male genitalia,” he said, “I cannot in good conscience call them a woman.” As a Christian, he believes God created humans: “Man and woman he created them,” he said, citing Genesis, Chapter 5: Verse 2.

Dr. Mackereth

Doctors in the UK, however, work for the government and the LGBT lobby mandates conformity from all government employees. It determined that Dr. David Mackereth didn’t have his mind right and could no longer practice medicine. At fifty-five, he was out of a job. Government would force him to ignore science, deny his religious faith, and lie in order to continue practicing. “I knew it could be the end of my work as a doctor,” he said, “but I could not live with myself if I didn’t speak up. It would be dishonest — and I didn’t want to live a lie.”

The second story was in The Federalist: “Starting July 1, 2020, all Illinois public schools are legally required to teach children LGBT history and only buy textbooks that include the topic. NPR affiliate Illinois Public Radio labeled Christian and conservative opposition to this law while it was being considered as stemming from ‘hate groups.’”

According to government-sponsored radio in Illinois, Catholics who believe Catholic doctrine that homosexuality is intrinsically disordered belong to a “hate group.” How long before Catholics are charged with “hate crimes” and imprisoned?

I’ve watched the steady advance of leftist control in public education ever since my own career began in 1975. In 2000, I had to pick out a textbook for 8th graders, but all texts by the standard publishers contained a pronounced left-wing bias and they were costly. I told the principal if I could pick save him money and purchase two cheaper texts for each student: leftist A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn and conservative: A Patriot’s History of the United States by Schweikart & Allen — I could get both for far less the price of one standard text. I could then compare and contrast perspectives in each of my lessons. He said that would be fine if I were to continue teaching, but what if I retired? What was the likelihood that whoever replaced me could do that?

I had to admit it wasn’t likely and had to pick one of the standard, leftist texts: Prentice Hall’s The American Nation, the most-used text in the country at the time. I didn’t like it but figured I would offer students contrasting perspectives from other sources when the bias got too strong. As bad as The American Nation was, it seems middle of the road now compared to what is mandated in Illinois — as well as in California, Colorado, New Jersey, and Oregon where similar laws have been passed. The left controls education thoroughly now, kindergarten to graduate school, and the LGBT lobby is riding high.

Illinois teachers' guide from Human Rights Campaign

Illinois’ Evanston/Skokie schools adopted a curriculum like what will be mandatory next year across the state. The equal sign logo of the Human Rights Campaign — the nation's largest, most powerful LGBT lobby — is stamped all over the materials. Children 3-5 are told about Jazz, a boy who wanted to be a girl. They see a video in which he reads from a book about his transition that made him happy. At the end, Jazz says: “To all the kids out there who are seeing this book for the first time, I just want to say that you can be like Jazz. You can be your true self.”

Illinois teachers' guide from Human Rights Campaign

The left insists homosexuals and transgenders are born that way, but what if they aren’t? Research at Brown University strongly suggests that: “‘Rapid-onset gender dysphoria’ [transgenderism] may be a social contagion linked with having friends who identify as LGBT, an identity politics culture, and an increase in internet use.” Are public schools turning into laboratories for LGBT identity culture?