Yeah this feels like an extremely dumb move, especially with all the recent financial mismanagement within the Portland government

The whole problem is your use of words like “offering” and “forcing”. Public transportation is a public good. It belongs to everyone. No entity is “offering” anything because it isn’t anyone’s to offer. We need to get away from the idea that public spaces are things that can be provided or withdrawn.

Yes, no, yes. I also realize that increasing police presence is not going to address any of these things, but rather will cut off transit access for the people who most rely on it, lead to more of those people being incarcerated, and deepen the terror the most at-risk communities are facing in this time of violent state-sanctioned oppression.

We live in a city that cares about community, self-expression, and anti-authoritarianism. I want us to live up to those ideals, and that means letting go of police mentality.

Do you think someone who’s acting weird on a MAX train deserves to get to where they need to go? Do you think they deserve shelter and dignity?

“the state of TriMet use enforcement” can you elaborate?

Being upset or disappointed with someone is not the same as not supporting them at all. Being in power naturally tends to pull people to the right–it’s in the nature of serving the American empire–and it’s the job of the people to remind them of why we supported them in the first place to hopefully prevent that.

This is a bad faith interpretation of why leftists are upset. No one is saying the bill was enough. However, it would have had the effect of blocking Israel’s defense aid, and in this desperate moment where Israel is being allowed to starve a whole people to death with no repercussions, it was something we could have done to mitigate their freedom to continue to do so. In her statement, AOC didn’t just mention the offensive-vs.-defensive aid thing–she also brought up protecting innocent civilians, implying that not providing the defensive aid would result in innocent Isrealis dying. In the context of innocent Palestinians being a day or two from mass death, that is a fucking cop-out.