interviews
Reflections on Portland
by Commissioner Sharon Meieran
August 10, 2020
This interview with The Multnomah County Commissioner Sharon Meieran was conducted and condensed by franknews.
frank | As an emergency room doctor, community health advocate, and a Counry Commissioner, I am curious how you see your roles intersect at this moment?
Sharon Meieran | That is a particularly complex starting point. To be honest, I've been really trying to sort out that trifecta. It has been extremely difficult as a human to process the confluence of these crises, the different roles that I play, and the identities that I have.
I do really see this moment as the confluence of two separate pandemics. The first obviously being the global pandemic of the Coronavirus. The second is the pandemic, rather the public health crisis, of racism. Those two have come together in shocking ways, and it needs to be addressed in a much more complicated way.
How does it feel to be in Portland right now?
Portland has a long and proud history of peaceful protest and community engagement. This has been a historic moment of self-examination around racial justice across the country and the world. And in Portland, we have been having the necessary conversations on a community engagement level, on a local political level, and on a person to person level. Thousands of people were having these important conversations, by and large peacefully - we were an epicenter of a kind of community engagement and peaceful protest. I believe the Trump administration wanted to quash that, at least that is what it feels like on the ground.
He came in with federal agents, maybe hoping Americans would look the other way after the horrific response to the COVID-19 pandemic. But that is not what happened.
The presence of federal agents on the streets of Portland at our federal courthouse reinvigorated our natural inclination to protest, to assemble, and to exercise our first amendment rights.
Why Portland? Do you know why it started there?
Well, that's the question everyone has been asking themselves. I don't know the answer, but it feels very political.
Oregon is not a state, to be honest, that matters to the federal administration. It is not going to play a pivotal role in any presidential election.
It is a place for them to make a stand in some ways.
And as somebody who's elected on a local level, what are you trying to do? What can you do?
It was hard as an elected official to get any information initially about who the federal troops were that were coming in and what the real purpose was. All we can do is try to respond and support our residents and fight back in the ways available to us. For example, our attorney general has filed suit. At a local level, Multnomah County has thought about banning the use of tear gas as the local public health authority. It's still not clear if we can do this, but we're looking at the local ways that we can fight back against the federal government. To be honest, those are limited.
You were personally teargassed recently, right? What was that experience like?
Extremely painful and really unpleasant. It was traumatic. It was scary. There was chaos. I was with a group of women just standing in front of the federal building, and sort of milling about around the area. There was literally nothing happening at the time. Then, a group of what we later learned to be federal troops came out and threw down canisters of tear gas. Initially, I was not affected, I ran down the street, but I came back to see what was happening, and see if I could potentially help in some ways as an ER doctor. I thought that I was at the periphery of the tear gas, but I wasn't. I first started feeling irritation in the eyes and then really in a split second, just searing, severe pain in my eyes, mouth, throat, and face. It was difficult to swallow and it was scary to take a breath.
It seems particularly cruel to use a gas-based weapon in the middle of a respiratory pandemic.
You're exactly right. I could not have said that better.
It is particularly frightening that they are using this gas that affects the respiratory system in the face of this respiratory pandemic.
The indiscriminate use against hundreds, if not thousands of people, many of whom are elderly and who have underlying respiratory conditions, is unconscionable.
As a doctor, how are you understanding the confluence of these two crises and the contradictory prescription for each of them?
It's really challenging. You don't have to be a healthcare provider to know that mass gatherings are places where there can be increased transmission of the Coronavirus. We do things to mitigate the transmission such as masking, and trying to keep physical distance, which is impossible in the kind of protest situation that we're seeing. Being outdoors does help some. I've been to a number of the protests now, and by and large, virtually everyone is wearing a mask and is highly aware and doing their best to distance themselves. It is hard to determine if there has been any additional uptake in transmission from the protests.
But the problem is that, again, it is a confluence really of the two pandemics. We know that the response to COVID should be to mitigate risk. And similarly, when George Floyd was murdered, the appropriate response was outrage and protest. That's an appropriate response to a different public health pandemic, one of structural racism, but we need to respond to both crises at the same time. We need to do whatever we can to mitigate the impact of a protest being a mass gathering.
Do you feel like there is anything missing in the coverage of Portland you're seeing nationally? Is it an accurate assessment of the city right now?
I think that what is being portrayed is very small, maybe a two square block area of downtown Portland, between the hours of 10:00 PM and 3:00 AM.
The city itself right now is safe. The portrayal that I've seen on the media and by the Trump administration is entirely inaccurate.
I think that is lost in the conversation.
Where does Portland go from here?
I honestly don't know. One thing I appreciate has been the effort to bring back the focus to what prompted the protests in the first place. This is now, I think, the 60th day of protest. This is about racial injustice, the violence perpetrated by police against people of color, particularly Black men. This is what we have been protesting for, and that focus I feel was lost somewhat, with the seeming occupation of these federal troops. I believe, led by the Black Lives Matter movement and other Black leaders in the community, that we can bring back the focus to the issues that originally sparked the peaceful protest.
Is there any sign of the federal occupation leaving?
I have not seen any indication of that, which also is very scary. I think that that's part of that challenge of sorting through the confluence of so many elements. For example, if the endpoint for one aspect of protest is federal agents disarming and leaving the city, I don't see that happening any time soon, because I don't think that they feel any incentive to leave. There are so many different goals and purposes mixed in protest right now that we can't rely on any one thing happening to diffuse the larger picture of protest. What we need to do, I believe, is highlight the change that we want to see in the Black Lives Matter movement, and separate that out. Highlight a peaceful way of protesting against the federal occupation in Portland, and separate that and address that. If these issues are dealt with separately, they wouldn't be all conflated into this one giant protest, which I think only serves to divide.
[Shortly after this interview, there was an announcement, without any warning and without engagement of local government, that Governor Brown and the Trump administration had reached an agreement about federal troops leaving. I was as surprised as anyone, and am hopeful this will result in the de-escalation of the violence incited by the presence of the federal officers. I also hope this failure and escalation of violence will prevent the Trump administration from deploying federal agents to other communities. However, I understand federal officers are still present in Portland, and it is difficult to get any specific information on this.]
It certainly ends up distracting from the initial asks. I think part of it is that it is just shocking to see federal troops firing weapons at its own citizens.
It is shocking to be really upfront in that and watch fireworks being thrown at the federal building, hear the fence being torn down, and the plumes of tear gas overtaking all of that – it is all really shocking.
Probably not something you expected to see this year.
There are so many things this year that I just didn't expect to see.
To hear friends of mine say, "Yeah, I don't think I'm going to be staying for the tear gas tonight." Who'd have thought that phrase would be uttered?
It is crazy. It makes me wonder where the bottom is in all of the chaos. And whether that chaos is intentional from the top-down.
It's extremely stressful. Even if on a day to day basis, the vast majority of Portland is very peaceful, and we're not actually living in a war or riot zone, those questions and that stress is pervasive.
Has this stretched your imagination of what's possible on a civic level?
I think one of the benefits of this happening in Portland is the degree of engagement and pushback against the federal government being here. I'm not sure there is a limit to that pushback in this particular region.
I feel like Portland's response can serve as a model for other cities to fight back and to protest if this continues.
Hopefully, there will be a similar level of pushback if this spreads to other cities. Hopefully, the federal occupying force coming in won't be perceived as normal, and instead, people stand up and exercise their voices to say no, not here.
interviews
In Conversation with Morley Winograd and Jack MacKenzie
by Morley Winograd & Jack MacKenzie
May 28, 2019
This interview with Morley Winograd and Jack MacKenzie was conducted and condensed by frank news.
Morley Winograd is an author, speaker, Senior Fellow at the University of Southern California, and former Senior Policy Advisor to Vice President Al Gore. He is currently the president and CEO of the Campaign for Free College Tuition.
Jack MacKenzie is Executive Vice President and Market Lead for PSB’s Media & Entertainment Group, based in Los Angeles. MacKenzie is the 2015 recipient of the Market Research Association’s Impact Award for research innovation.
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Morley Winograd: I'm the president and CEO of the Campaign for Free College Tuition. I've been working the issue for about six years, trying to do something about economic mobility for the millennial generation – who I've written three books about.
Jack MacKenzie: I've read all of Morley's books and am on the strategic advisory council for Campaign for Free College. I offer up polling on the issue.
Morley, given your political background, why did free college become your focus?
MW: I've had a long career in business and politics, and my interest in public policy and American democracy's been a lifelong concern. When I turned 70, I retired from the academic world. A friend visited who I've known since high school – we were talking about what to do in our 70's. His argument was that we needed to return to the original motivation for our life's work and figure out what we could do in our 70's that we weren't able to do in our previous age.
Our lifelong issue is American democracy, and how to make it work better. What was keeping it from working better and what were the dangers and threats?
We thought about America in the 21st century and it's economic challenges. Economic mobility became more and more difficult and less and less frequent. The barrier seemed to be the vast value placed on having an education in our new information age economy. And the barrier for that, of course, was the price of getting a higher education. Unless we did something about that price, we weren't going to fundamentally address structural economic inequality in America.
We started talking about making college free. I coauthored a book called, Millennial Momentum, in the chapter on higher education, I came across the The Kalamazoo Promise. In the course of writing that subsection of the chapter, I got carried away at the end and said that some day the Kalamazoo promise should be American's promise – or will be America's promise, and that college would be free for everybody.
I re-raised that in the course of this conversation amongst people for whom that was the furthest thought in their mind. It struck a chord in the group of people we were talking to, who were politicians who had, like us, finished a career in public life and thought the notion of free college would be a very attractive one, but of course impossible, a crazy idea. One of them called me on his way home from the golf course one day, and said, “I figured it out.”
I said, what do you mean you figured it out?
He said, "I figured out how we can make college free." We reconvened everybody and he presented his ideas – half the group quit because they thought it was such a stupid thing to do. Other people in the group, like Sara Goldrick-Rab, said yeah, that's what I've been arguing for. Out of that was born this non-profit of the Campaign For Free College Tuition.
Jack, how did you get involved?
JM: Morley and I go back 15 years. This was a perfect match of both our professional interests and our private interests. I was a journalist for the first half of my career, and a market researcher in the second half. In both of those careers I’ve seen the disintegration of the middle class and the growing disparity of life success that seems to be drawn on educational lines. It didn't used to be that way because we had a different kind of economy and you could have a high school diploma, get a good job in a factory or in a number of manufacturing jobs, and do okay in America. You can't now.
People say it's a good idea but not possible. That's actually the perfect combination, which is, no one says it's a bad idea. They just want to come up with logistical reasons why it wouldn't work – money, process, whatever. People in this country need an education. I believe that 14 or 16 is the new 12 when it comes to the amount of school necessary to compete in this economy, and if that's the case then we ought to make it possible.
How does the organization operate? What are your goals for policy, specifically at the state level?
MW: In the course of our organization's history, we've kept our eye on the goal of making college tuition free, and then tried to figure out different strategies for getting there. Originally we were very focused on the federal government. We were fortunate to have president Obama decide it was a good idea also, and when he announced his idea for how the federal government could support state efforts to make their community colleges free, it became the thing we focused on for almost a year.
We made almost no progress at the federal level, but there were states like Tennessee and Oregon, that were actually going ahead and doing it. We concluded that the most progress we were likely to be able to make over the next few years would be at the state level, and that we could provide resources.
We're a 501C3, we can't do political campaigns, but we can advocate for the idea. There was a crying need for expertise, resources, information at the state level on what Tennessee was doing, what other states were thinking of doing, and what other states had actually done that fell short of the promise, but were still greatly improving college enrollment and affordability.
We decided to devote the rest of the 2016 campaign year to putting together what we called a briefing book. It was initially a policy resource center designed for state leaders. That strategy proved to be our best idea yet because since then, we're up to a dozen states with truly free college programs at some scale and level, and the universality that qualifies them for recognition from us.
The most recent one, which is always surprising to people, although it shouldn't be, is in the state of West Virginia.
The president of the senate, who's their lieutenant governor, was the prime sponsor, the republican governor signed it, and they did so on the strength of the economic development argument and providing more opportunity for West Virginians.
When I tell people that, they say no, no, no, that's not what free college is about. It's about free college for all or some other federal program. We say in reality, the idea that states should make their colleges tuition free is not a democratic idea, it's very much a bipartisan idea. The pioneer was a republican governor in a very conservative Tennessee legislature. The second one was a democratic legislature in Oregon. The governor who inherited the idea is a democrat, but really wasn’t active in making it happen. It's passed in not only red and blue states, but purple states. The Nevada legislature, which became democratic and passed it, was signed by a republican governor, so it's a purple state.
Same is true in Maryland. Democratic legislature, republican governor, easily reelected in blue state Maryland. Made their community colleges tuition free. It doesn't have any partisan perspective, it's something that almost every parent and now most children and students, are recognizing as a necessity, and we have such a hard time convincing people that it's not only a by partisan idea, but enjoys universal popularity. Universal's too strong a word for the way polling is done, but 80% of the population supporting an idea is unheard of.
JM: And that's my job. To give people the political courage and cover that what sounds like a progressive issue as an all American, everyone's in idea.
Why does it “sound progressive”? Who decided that sounds progressive?
MW: Bernie Sanders.
JM: At some point, high schools became free.
MW: 100 years ago.
JW: So we haven't talked about the government providing more education than 12 for 100 years. And in today's lingo, something that the government provides...
MW: Free.
JM: Free, generally is perceived, or at least marked with, the progressive or liberal tag. It's a question of how they spend the money.
Right.
JM: Lower taxes or do we offer free college? But they're not mutually exclusive. Morley's point that in West Virginia, the economic development storyline is what took hold, is just a different way to look at how to spend the state's resources. If you look at it as Johnny gets a free education, that feels like a government hand out. If you look at it like we're going to make Johnny a better member of society…
MW: Pay more taxes.
JM: Pay more taxes. That's an investment, it's not a cost. It’s going to take some time for those numbers to come around. It plays out over the course of years. But, the early return suggests that it's a really smart investment. More kids are getting educated, which means they're getting better jobs, they're probably staying in the state, and contributing to the economy, and not draining the economy, or not sitting unemployed, not sitting in job insecurity because they don't have the skills for the next job and the next job.
MW: A lot of debates at the state level, legitimately so, turn on the question of affordability, not the affordability of college but the affordability of a program that takes away the tuition revenue from the existing system and has the state back fill it. I wrote a piece after looking at some of the research data which continues to grow, thanks to Michelle Miller Adams and Sara Goldrick-Rab, on the impact of free college on employment and economic opportunity.
Because in the long run, if they don't do it, their individual economies will fall so far behind they won't be able to afford the kind of government, lifestyle, society and economic environment they tell their voters they're in favor of.
That's where it's come to, and it's a powerful argument. It's the reason it gets a lot of bipartisan support. Obviously, a lot of the support comes from a traditional, liberal perspective. We need to do right by people and give them opportunity and therefore we have to do this. But it has just as much power as an economic argument on the other side of the political aisle.
Speaking to people's desire to work and participate makes education a big part of that conversation.
MW: It's always been apart of the American conversation. The first major bill in American legislative history was the Northwest Ordinance. It set aside one subsection of a six mile township in all the northwest territories to be devoted to school, you had to have a free one room schoolhouse for every township. Jefferson was saying, without an educated citizenry, democracy won't work.
Education has become elitist in sentiment. Where did that come from?
JM: I think it's a politicized sentiment. It is, at the core of a lot of populism over the years, which is the anti-elites. But we're not talking about making people elite. We're talking about making people job ready. This isn't join the fortune 100, this is get a good job that allows you to pay a mortgage and live with some level of confidence, and have the belief that you can have children, and that you can set something up for them. This is really about keeping a middle class versus the elite class, and what is increasingly the growing disenfranchised.
MW: Some people have come to us saying we can't get this past a republican legislature because they don't think everybody ought to go to college, and they're not convinced college is necessary. It turns out they don't have any children college age. For the most part, anybody with kids understands the necessity of a higher education experience in order for their children to be successful. What they don't understand is how they can possibly afford it, that's why the message of free college breaks through, because it's such a startling message.
I was told by one democrat in one state that will go unmentioned, that I could come in there and talk about making community college more affordable and college more affordable, but I couldn't talk about making them free if I wanted to get republican support. I said well, you know, the name of the organization is the Campaign for Free College Tuition, not the campaign for more affordable college. It's without the message of free, and without its ability to change the culture. People think it's about the money. Money's important, we've got to have the money to pay for it.
You mean I could go to college if I just applied myself? I don't have to worry about how much it costs? The price of college is pretty high even if you make tuition free. We have to deal with those issues as well, but it begins with making tuition free, and then you can talk about everything else.
What messaging works best according to polling?
JW: What's interesting is our research and polling is with people. What Morley has to face is the difference between talking to politicians and how they might frame something either internally within their legislative bodies, or back to their consumers. What we say is, here are the things you can say if you like this idea, here are things you can say to your voters and they will respond to. What works from a messaging standpoint with people is the argument that young people can have a better life if the state does this for them. All the messages that have to do with individual gain work for people.
At the state level, inside the state houses, often times you have to couch the idea and you have to turn that into the economic development question. The economic development question is hard for an individual person sitting at their house because they've got a kid across the table, they're going, can we send you to Pasadena Community College? Can we do that? They don't care that Pasadena may benefit.
Right.
JM: They care that their child could benefit. At that point it goes into the political sphere of making the larger economic development issue.
You don't lose people at “the state should help”?
MW: No.
JM: No. These numbers are incredible. Our company polls on national issues all the time and the idea that anything debated in public discourse right now has 81% support, is incredible.
Perpetuating a debate that you say doesn’t actually exist, by framing this issue as a debate is problematic then. Because your data says there isn't a substantial disagreement on this.
JM: There is not a disagreement.
So, why does it seem like there's a disagreement?
MW: The difference between voters and politicians. If you phrase it in a very ideological way, the state owes everybody a free education, that's going nowhere. If you say students need education in order to be successful, and the state should help by making tuition free, everybody says yeah, that's right, because you're not saying it's a hand out, you're not saying it's a give away, you're not saying it's all about fairness and equality, you're saying hey, this is an economic reality out there and state's ought to do their part.
If on the ideological right, you say there's no such thing as a free lunch, therefore there can't be free college. Somebody's got to pay for it. Well, how does high school work? Now we go back into the murky world of cost versus price.
You will hear many higher education people, particularly those who are involved in the financial aid policy world, say the solution to high price is to make sure poor people get in free, and have the people who can afford to pay the high price, pay for it. That's the most equitable solution. And that's what our entire system is built around – scholarships for the needy, and then everybody else pays. Unfortunately it doesn't quite work for the middle class, because it's unaffordable for the middle class, as well as for students from poor families. The fact of the matter is it doesn't work at all. The system has been tried for 30 years and hasn't done anything about improving college enrollment for minorities or poor students.
The point is that despite its popularity, despite its practical importance, despite its political power, the institutions of existing financial aid which inhabit vast administrative desks in colleges all across the country, and those who support it like the college board, are devoted to making sure faculty don't lose out and don't get the raises they're used to or don't get a job they want. Those forces are very powerful inside the legislative process. They've been working it for 30 years.
JW: One of the challenges, and this is the God's work that Morley and his team are doing, is any state legislature has say 100 to 120 people, and they all have ideas about what's important to them. They went back to their district and campaigned on roads, or infrastructure, it could be all kinds of things. In each of those states you've got to find someone who says, yeah I want to take this on.
MW: Right.
JM: You can't just throw it out there.
MW: You need a champion.
JM: You need a champion, and you need someone who's willing to take some heat.
MW: In California the champion would be somebody you've already interviewed, Ortiz Oakley.
Chancellor Oakley, yeah.
MW: You need to find those, and it's not quite as frustrating as it sounds. It's frustrating to hear the same old debate, the same old arguments, played out.
Stale.
MW: In national media, no reference to research. People putting up theoretical reasons why it can't be done, ignoring the practicality that is has been done and has been successful. That's frustrating. But at the state level, when you find a champion it's too much fun, it's not frustrating at all.
Presidential debates are coming. This will come up in the democratic primaries. If you were to phrase your own debate question about free college, what would it be?
JW: Were you sitting with us at lunch?
I wish.
MW:
JM: A good one.
Jack, would you have the same question?
JM: It's a good one. Because people want their state to administer the program. They trust their state. It's closer.
MW: Education's local. K-12 done by a school board, universities are done by the state, everybody gets that.
JM: The idea of a federal government getting involved in a heavy handed way, brings in all of the mistrust, all of the, “my state's different than their state.” We wanted something that works for a community. The key line there is, the federal government helping states support the programs. The idea that there's a federal solution to communities that are so different is hard to imagine and in today's environment, the idea that something could get passed at a national basis, is hard to fathom. But things get done at the state level all the time.
Every single day, states are accomplishing.