Why should Blue America’s community care about the elections in 2024 to the Portland City Council? I pose this question not simply because I’ve decided to run for the City Council next year on an unabashed progressive platform. More important, the outcome of that election could give progressives a great launching point to show how we can effectively manage cities and solve problems.
I’ve been a part of the Blue America community for many years, mainly in a variety of policy posts on issues near-and dear to me: labor rights, economic justice, fair trade and peace. I fully embrace, and have worked my entire life to realize, Blue America’s vision of “a strong and activated progressive movement that will serve the needs of ordinary American families, not the 1%, not corporate special interests and not careerist political hacks and their lobbyist buddies.” Which is why Portland elections auger a big opportunity.
Let me give you some of the basics of the looming election. Last year, voters approved a ballot measure to radically change the way the city is governed. Until now, we’ve had an unworkable system: five “commissioners” elected citywide who, then, are assigned by a mayor to manage city departments. Most people who jump into local politics to serve on a City Council do not have the executive background to manage complex administrative departments. It’s a recipe for dysfunction and bad governing.
In November 2024, under the system approved by voters, we will elect 12 members, three from each of four districts, to a newly-empowered City Council. Ranked choice voting will also be in play on the ballot. The new council will, then, hire a city manager to run Portland day-to-day. This leaves the City Council, each of whose members will now represent a specific district and be more accountable directly to voters, to focus entirely on setting policy on behalf of the people.
We have a chance to elect a progressive, pro-labor, pro-people majority, a majority that can, then, construct a moral, uplifting agenda. Done right, the city can work for the people— and as we confront the whole panoply of challenges so many other medium- to large-sized cities also grapple with, we could lay out a roadmap for progressive politicians.
Not surprisingly, the city’s business interests and “moderate” forces are trying to seize control of the levers of government by running candidates who would appeal to peoples’ fears and frustrations. Their goal would be simple: roll back critical services, cut government, get rid of city employees , represent the 1% and leave the vast majority far worse off.
I think 40 years of campaign, policy analysis, executive roles and communications/organizing experience, working with so many people across the globe, has steeled me to take on the opposition. As a union leader I had to handle, or coordinate, the finances, budgets, strategy, legislative lobbying and political efforts. I won a U.S. Supreme Court case against powerful economic interests, a case that set a new standard for rights for all freelance artists. I’ve worked with great unionists and organizers, including for the Maritime Union of Australia for two years as its national campaigns and communications officer. Many of you know that I was a national surrogate for Bernie Sanders in 2015-2016 and two-time national convention delegate for Sanders (2016 and 2020).
There is a ton of rhetoric in this race, to date, around the challenges we face, a lot of it phrased in response to polling data. By contrast, as I roll out some very specific proposals so we can campaign door-to-door and speak to voters’ concrete needs, I’m going to base every idea, drawn from decades of experience, on a forgotten, important element embodied in one word that is the linchpin of union power: solidarity.
Solidarity is not simple. It’s actually hard. It takes a lot of work. I’ve been a union member—an elected leader and rank-and-file member—for almost 40 years. Every strike, contract fight, political mobilization or legislative initiative I’ve been a part of has always involved intense debate, strategy, and yes, often heated disagreement.
But, at the end, what has always guided us is the principle of solidarity— that it is us versus the elites, the powerful, the employers and an exploitative economic system. Whatever our differences might be, they are tiny compared to the wide chasm separating us and the powerful.
Too often, we have lost, I think, that sense of solidarity, the tying together of the broad community, partly as an outcome of the explicit drive by powerful interests to divide people. People feel frustrated, for example, by the inability to address houselessness that now visibly manifests itself in every community; in many cases, people, then, blame or feel hostile towards the houseless population.
Reinvigorating solidarity as a core value, however, would say to people: we understand your emotional reaction but let’s understand that you, and everyone around you, share a community that is under attack by economic and social forces that we must unite to defeat.
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