Welcome to our Portland with Sarah Iannarone made possible by contributors to friends of Sarah for Portland. Portlanders have everything we need to make radical progress today on emergencies like climate chaos, housing affordability, and staggering inequality. Each episode we'll hear how Sarah plans to be the mayor to lead the city of Portland to a more equitable and sustainable future. And now here's Sarah.
Sarah
Hi everyone. My name is Sarah Iannarone and I am running for Portland mayor. My pronouns are she and her. Election day is next week, Tuesday, May 19th but the last day to safely mail in your ballot is this Thursday, May 14th. Postage on your ballot envelopes is prepaid, which is new this year. So not having a stamp is not an excuse for not turning in your ballots. Whatever you do, whether you drop it in a mailbox by Thursday or drop it in a ballot box by next Tuesday, we need you to vote. This is a very important election. We know that the incumbent is going to be Portland mayor through the end of this year, but who takes office on January 1st, 2021 could shape outcomes for future generations of Portlanders. So this is a special episode of a conversation I had on Instagram live with Lucy Bellwood. She is a professional adventure cartoonist to based here in Portland. Her comics projects have covered a wide range of expeditions, including rafting trips through the grand Canyon, trips across the Pacific ocean, an expedition aboard the last wooden whaling ship in the world. She is a fantastic conversationalist, a civic gem. I had a wonderful time talking with her and I hope you enjoy it.
Lucy
Hi Sarah.
Sarah
Hi. Can you hear me okay?
Lucy
Yeah, I can hear you great.
Sarah
It's so nice to meet you virtually.
Lucy
Lovely to meet you. Yeah, thank you for being here. It sounds like you've got quite a docket of, uh, Instagram live appearances over the course of the next couple of days.
Sarah
You know, it keeps me fueled. I miss Portlanders so much, don't you?
Lucy
I do. I was just saying to my partner that I, the last like major public event that I went to was the mayoral climate debate. Where I got to see you totally dominate the stage. It was so impressive. And one of the reasons that I was really excited to do this is that I realized that, you know, the kinds of people who go to debates and public events are often already engaged in local politics to a certain extent. And like it was such a pivotal experience to see all of you on stage and just to get an idea of how people interacted, what they brought to the table. It was great. So I'm really glad to be able to provide at least that in miniature with two people instead an auditorium of 800 people.
Sarah
Yeah, that was my second to last public appearance. They did one forum the following Tuesday for the Street Trust and that was March, I think 10th and we've been sheltered in place ever since.
Lucy
Yeah. So I was going to ask you, this is like kind of a, a heavy hitting question, but I'm curious like this is obviously a really major shift. It's, it's every policy. I mean, I don't know if it's your worst nightmare, but it's a pretty heavy blow to have for a campaign. And I've been so impressed to see the ways that you've pivoted to make this, about neighbors looking after each other. You've provided resources for the community, like you've really stepped up and provided so many resources and ways to help. But I'm curious, is there anything that you're grieving or regretting right now not being able to do?
Sarah
Well grieving. We're grieving in this household. The loss of the family business that I cofounded back in 2006 and it wasn't just about me because I haven't owned or operated it in a while, but it was the neighborhood brunch joint and you know, neighborhood is that place that has these centers and we have these maps in our minds.
Lucy
Of course. Yeah.
Sarah
And so it was part of my map and it's hard for me to walk around and not have it be there just as this place I stop in and be like, Hey everybody, you know? So there's that.
Lucy
Yeah, of course.
Sarah
There's, for me, I'm a community animal, like in isolation, I just don't function as well, like rain is at less than maximum because I'm a person who gets things done by bouncing ideas off other people. I'm a person who is so much more powerful when I'm surrounded by other people because they check me and they help me.
Sarah
And for me like the weakness of isolation is really hard, but it's reinforced my core values. That community, the power of community is insurmountable. Right. And so the other part that I think for me just being someone who's a little scrappy is I learned a long time ago to try to take ad..., you know, at first conditions and find the opportunity in them,. Find the silver lining. And I call that tactical optimism. But when you practice that and say, I'm going to be grateful for this moment and I'm going to find an opportunity, that's where things like those good neighborhood cards come from because it's how can we take this really shitty situation - pardon my french - and turn it into an opportunity. Sure we still need to campaign. I'm not going to be like obtuse about that and save you weren't, but can we connect and can we, you know, create ways of people to engage that maybe after this they endure.
Lucy
Absolutely. Yeah. This is something I think about a lot as a, as a creator who gives a lot of things away for free on the internet and that is in and of itself a form of advertising. But it's also a form of altruism and community building. And I think that's something that people can, people are smart, right? They can tell when a politician is making a grab for like, Oh, doing this, like for the publicity. And something that I have loved seeing in your campaign is that there's this real genuine feeling of like coalition building and community activism behind it. And you can tell when the primary motivation is to help. And the secondary motivation is like also, you know, if you want to do more of this, like we could do more of this together if there were a bunch of people who were all collected behind this movement.
Lucy
I had a couple of questions from people just about like, a lot of folks are I think just like starting to learn about mayoral elections in general. So we're coming up on, uh, the, this is like a primary election. How does that work for the mayor's office? Do you, is there a possibility that you would take office like right after the election or is this, are you going to get a couple of front runner candidates and then have a runoff? Like what's the, what's the hope? Is there any early polling?
Sarah
Well, that's a lot of questions.
Lucy
There's like, there's so many, there's so many things. Don't feel obliged to answer all the time. I'm just like, I know people are curious and I am too.
Sarah
And I love that you're doing this because for me, you know, I know you ask what I'm missing too. I'm usually, I teach a course at the Wayfinding Academy this term is called citizenship and futures and it's the culmination of their first year study. It's about thinking about who you are and the issues that you care about the world and like putting those together to create change. So I'm happy to host like local politics 101.
Lucy
Yes. Amazing.
Sarah
But for folks who don't know, you know, Oregon is so unique. We have vote by mail and this year we have the paid postage, right. And thanks to Next Step, formerly known as the Bus Project for their advocacy on that. But thinking about the fact that you have to get your ballots in the mailbox by May 14th and election day is May 19th at 8:00 PM. So you can't put it in a box after that. And those election boxes you can find online or even public libraries now.
Lucy
Yeah, I'm putting in, I'm putting in a Bitly link which will take you to the, the finder on the Oregon government website. So you can type in your address and it'll give you the closest dropbox that's in the chat.
Sarah
So a few other things. We have nonpartisan elections here from Metro, which is our regional government all the way down. So the region, the County and the city are nonpartisan, which means that this race is really decided in large part in the primary. So what happens is on next Tuesday, if no person gets 50% plus one vote, we get the top two go to a runoff. And both names are on the ballot in November.
Lucy
Got it.
Sarah
If a person gets 50% plus one. They are not the mayor until January 1st, 2021. They are the mayor elect. And that would be a pretty remarkable accomplishment against an incumbent, but it's still possible. Our real goal right now is to force a runoff with the incumbent. He hasn't really been very energetic about the position he occupies and Portlanders I believe are very energetic about the city we occupied. So for me, I would love to correct that mismatch.
Lucy
I think that's an excellent goal to have. And certainly, I know personally, I've talked about this with many friends that nationally, feeling so helpless in the face of politics right now. You know, it's, it's been, I've noticed this in myself, like a real anxiety and hesitancy to commit to hoping for something for anything because we've just, you know, there's been blow after blow after blow. And I think something that is really inspiring and empowering about being able to participate in local elections is that there is an impact. There is so much more you can do in your city. And that's a question that kind of dovetails with this idea of community contact and even just the Instagram live streams that we're doing. I feel like you've run a really, uh, community oriented and like very smart campaign and that you are everywhere. Like I think I saw you at least three times in Portland before I knew who you were, but you were at the climate March. You were at the debate. You know, I'm just like, I see you out on your bike. You've got amazing fashion sense, just like not a requirement in an elected official but also like strong work. Definitely the coolest glasses out of anyone in the race, but it's like having you in the community and being a member of the community. I think that's something that for a lot of us is really intimidating. This idea of like, Oh, I can't go just talk to the mayor. What are the ways that you think you can keep that kind of like availability and accessibility? If you're in office, are you imagining like some sort of monthly date where you're at a coffee shop and people can come talk to you or like what are some of the ways that people can talk to their mayors? Is that a valid thing to do? If you're a community member and you have an idea about something you'd like to see change?
Sarah
Doesn't that. I wanna address two things that you raised because it's so important. One is that this notion of empowerment and feeling like your voice makes a difference. You know, we did a survey, I think it was, I'm trying to find, 2019, over half of Portlanders felt like their voice didn't matter in the local politics. That think about that feeling of doubt, whether they're frustrated or pleased or wanting to engage and feeling like what I'm doing doesn't matter. It doesn't shape outcomes. So it's one reason for me why connection. Again, it's not optional for me. In some ways the, the notion that this could be anything but community driven is anathema to who I am. And in fact, what we're trying to do is build a new municipal politics that's driven by community power. Because what we're doing when we leave those Portlanders out is we're leaving their energy and their ideas and their innovation capacity on the table.
Sarah
And that's the solution to our most pressing problems. And so that's one reason why our publicly financed campaign, we're about to break city records for the most donors ever in a race.
Lucy
It's been so cool to see, Oh my God, I love it.
Sarah
That means that every single of those people, we've had people telling us, I've never given to a candidate before. I don't usually vote. And for me it's about we need to keep you plugged in. It may not be a direct connection to me, I'm going to be representing, you know, 650,000 people,
Lucy
It's a big job.
Sarah
It is a big job. But what it's going to be is that my connection is empowering you to connect with the person on one side of you and the other side. You feel a sense of optimism and fearlessness and inclusion and engagement and education and that is going to make Portland. I think that's going to put us back in a position where people look at us as a leader again because they're going to say that's what makes Portland great, not a green roof or a bike lane, but that Portlanders come together to innovate around the future that they want. It's my dream. I think we can see it through.
Lucy
Yeah, absolutely. And I think that you can see that in how people are responding to the campaign that it's like, Oh, I mean I've talked to a lot of people who are like, this is like getting like Portland's own Elizabeth Warren, right? Like your website is a work of art. You have policies for everything and they're so well written and like there's a podcast for every policy. Like you can listen to it if you don't want to read it. The website is bilingual. Like there are so many things that are really thoughtful. And your background is in, uh, civic infrastructure, like public planning or city planning, is that right?
Sarah
Yeah, I mean, my background is varied and it makes it hard for people to describe me. Usually I just refer to me as activists.
Lucy
I know the feeling.
Sarah
People are complex. It's hard. I was in the food service business for the first career of my life and then I went back to school after the birth of my daughter at Portland State University to study sustainable cities because I see sustainable city building as really our human response to climate change. Right? It's how we kind of organize ourselves on this planet to conserve energy and make sure that resources are used wisely. That we're having good mobility and even how we arrange our housing. Think about how single family neighborhoods and cul-de-sacs tend to isolate us. Where if we have different organization of housing, we can connect better. Even share lawnmowers for goodness sake. Um, but the, so my background is in, you know, the theory and ideas of why we even plan cities. And then my job for 10 years was hosting, visiting leaders from around the world who came to Portland because they heard there was something really cool going on here. So I got to introduce them to my favorite ideas. Everything from Friends of Trees to intersectio repairs to pedalpalooza to IPRC and maker spaces in the Portland Mercado, community orchards. That's what people take away from Portland. Really.
Lucy
Yeah. And it can be easy to forget too. I think I've lived here for 11 years and like sometimes, you know, I sort of take it for granted and I was sitting on a, on a empty rooftop the other day looking out over the city and it's just, it's so green for so many trees. Like everything is coming into leaf right now and it just, I had this moment of like not everywhere is like this and we're lucky to be here. One of the things that that made me think of was, um, I was curious if there's particular area or issue that has been the biggest or steepest learning curve for you. Like where do you think you have grown the most in your awareness of issues facing Portlanders over the course of this campaign and like who have you turned to for help or resources with that? Who have been your allies in this?
Sarah
You know, the most challenging thing as an insurgent is the relationship between the establishment and the insurgency. Because what we're doing is we're moving a people's movement that's horizontal. People who are giving $5 a street roots vendor who for the first time they feel like their voice mattered because that $5 donation was part of the 500 contributions that got me qualified for public financing. Right? So that was an important $5 and making sure that I was actually exercising the emotional maturity to occupy that leadership space while empowering our neighbors in this, it's, it's a new emergent strategy that we're, it's about not trying to occupy this space as leadership that's been defined for us. Like since I was a little girl, I never had a president of my gender like in, so you aspire to these things that you are told are the power. But really when I know that the truth is that our power comes from compassion and connection and community, if I can have the wherewithal to stay in that, even when maybe the powers that be in the status quo would try to drive me from that and building a team that was focused on that.
Sarah
I think that's one reason why our communications are so effective. Like we have people on our team committed to accessibility and inclusion. We have people on our team designing things so that it brings joy. Like we have people designing messaging and podcast so that people who don't want to read through policy papers have an access and an inroad in a, in a format that feels comfortable for them. It's kind of strong mom vibes in a way.
Lucy
But it's good. It's like you have to go the extra mile. I think this is something that I talk about this a lot. Like I'm a cartoonist, I draw pictures. It's not really a medium that lends itself to alt text accessibility a lot of the time. But for my last book I went down this huge rabbit hole trying to make a screen reader compatible version of my book and it was something that like I started doing cause I was just curious about it. But one of my Kickstarter backers who funded the book commented and was like, I am legally blind. I backed this project cause I love your work but I couldn't read it. I'm so touched that you released this. And it's like, even if one person, it made it so personal, like I was approaching it as this sort of like, Oh, can I, is this possible?
Lucy
But the thing to remember is that there's so many people who might be wanting to participate in the campaign and exactly what you were saying earlier, all those Portlanders whose voices are not being heard right now who, because they encounter audio material that make, you know, the written word accessible or they encounter a website that's in their own language, like that creates a space that, you know, takes effort on the part of the creator, but it's also so worth it to go the extra mile. And I think that is something that is so refreshing to see in someone who's running for office of like, no, no, it's our job to make this viable for you. It's our job to make this, you know, welcoming and um, and playful even, right? Like heaven forbid, we have a little joy in our politics, but
Sarah
I mean, but think of that like, heaven forbid, we don't have joy in our blood. That's what I'm worried about. People, I mean, there's an opportunity in this moment, and I'm not just talking about COVID, which we know is decimating families and communities and whole economies. And so I understand there's a challenge here, but even prior to that, looking at climate chaos, economic instability, political instability, but the moments that we have to intersect, you know, the timeline with the values that we aspire to. I'll give you a good example that's concrete because when we heard the Proud Boys were coming to town last August, it was like a really dicey decision to say as a campaign, we're going to stand in anti fascism as everyday antifascists. We're going to go into a space that may not be safe either from an optics perspective or a physical perspective or an emotional perspective.
Sarah
And so we want to give people, um, you know, safety there. But what we did was we consulted with experts and really tried to distill that situation down to its underpinnings, which when you look at this, there's so much toxic masculinity there that's driving it. And so that's where we came up with a tamp out hate culture jam almost. Where we played tampon box Jenga and really played around with it to say, you know, if, if you guys can't get out of here, like we're just going to chuck Tampax boxes at you, because for us, that is how we hold our power. And ultimately we donated thousands of menstrual hygiene products to local shelters. But for us it was about taking what X are you trying to, trying to solve for and just putting that joyful cause then they can't rob us of that.
Lucy
Yeah.
Sarah
They can't take that away from us. That is power. That is where I think we're taking, you know, sticks to a knife, fight with this toxic masculinity and this alt-right BS.
Lucy
Yep, that's true. Um, what are the other things I wanted to cover while we were talking? You've been, you've been so eloquent and I love all of these answers. Some of the questions that I got from people behind the scenes were about already I'm so thrilled. My friend, um, Lisa Rosalie Eisenberg just released a comic about a vote by mail and specifically vote by mailing Oregon which is amazing. I highly recommend it. And I was thinking like, God, it's so great that now we have stampless voting. Like if you want to put your ballot in a dropbox, uh, you can do, you need to do it by Thursday, right. In order for it to be counted. So you have two more days.
Sarah
Thursday if you mail it.
Lucy
And you don't need a stamp if you're dropping it. Yeah. Um, and I'll post the, I'll post the link again when I share this to go find your nearest dropbox. But for future elections, what are some things that you think Portland could do, or even Oregon could do to make future elections more equitable, more accessible? Like where, I mean, if we're, if we're talking about becoming a leader on the national scale, again, like what could we do to do even more?
Sarah
Yeah. I mean, this is the key point and I'm going to do a shameless plug for my website here sarah2020.com. There's a good government policy there and a lot of people in Portland right now are talking about the commission form of government and how we should have maybe district representation, but I think it goes so far beyond whether or not we elect our representatives from districts to things like participatory budgeting and how do we decide how our city budget is spent, publicly financed elections program that I'm in and making sure that it's a fully funded and independent, sustainable, and equitable and accessible. Thinking about tar voting, what we're ranked choice voting, which would mean instead of this first past the post where I see a lot of acrimony coming because someone thinks they have to choose between me and their favorite candidate in order to get really behind their favorite candidate.
Sarah
They have to knock me down. You know, Sarah sucks and this person's great. Well, when you get to just rank your choices and you can say, well, I really like this person and this would be my second favorite, my third and my fourth. I think reducing the acrimony and making it easier for people to get a toehold in the political process. Civic education, we really need to think about right down to the neighborhood level. How are we going to make decisions about our future? You know, we've had a lot of divisiveness overgrowth in thinking about. I don't like that Portland is growing and we need to go right down to the neighborhood level and say, Portland is growing. We need affordable housing. We want things like trees, we want mobility, safe mobility. How are we going to get there together as opposed to saying, do you want affordable housing or not? So this notion that we can rebuild the civic fabric and that's going to be the basis of our sustainable future. It's a premise of my campaign and my administration if I'm elected because we're not going to make progress on the other things if we can't have good politics.
Lucy
Yeah, for sure. For people who are looking to get more involved in these kinds of decisions what are some resources that you would point folks to on a neighborhood level? I know like neighborhood association, something I've been really aware of is that they are predominantly attended by homeowners who tend to be, you know, older white folks in the middle class and a lot of, um, certainly a lot of my colleagues are, you know, renters are coming from disadvantaged backgrounds and don't feel like a place for them in those environments. How would you counsel people who are looking to learn more about this? Because I think it can be overwhelming and a lot of it is just understanding that it is possible to attend a meeting. You don't have to say anything. You can just sit by the wall and be like, what's PBOT? What's this? What's that? You know? And then eventually, so much of it I think is just like learning anything. It's termed familiarization that at the beginning you hear a lot of these words that you're like, I don't know what any of this means. This is really overwhelming. And the, the longer you steep in it, the more it can become clear. And I think it's okay to recognize that there's a period of time. I'm sure for your students at Wayfinding Academy too, who at the beginning are like, I'm kind of unfamiliar with this. I don't know, just stream that class or like record it in any way. I would have loved to see it.
Sarah
It's actually such a fun time. It's a such a fun class. We go through all the theory of different ways of political organizing and then we'll look at how different forms of resistance to the status quo, but I'll actually give you an example from that class since you bring it up. I actually make them go on a public policy scavenger hunt where I have pick what is your biggest issue that you're struggling with? Like it can be like I want a zip line in a public park, right? Or I'm worried about homelessness? Well, they have to go to all the city offices or whatever offices in town and get the information, get someone to sign their scavenger hunt card that they act is now they're equipped to go solve that problem and politics are very pragmatic. I got involved in politics because I wanted to solve a problem and I always encourage people to do two things. Start with something that's bothering you that you would like to see made better. Right? It's a great mobilizer for action. And then to look for someone who's already doing the work, do not start your own organization.
Sarah
I lot of people want to start their own. They're like, I'm going to start up group dollars to donuts. There's a group out there working on this. So do your due diligence. But that is how for me, it's always been about, I got my start in politics because I wanted to crosswalk from my neighborhood to the Mount Scott community center in Parkwood. It was a swimming pool and I called PBOT and I said, could we please have a crosswalk here? PBOT being the transportation Bureau. And their answer to me was, well, we can't put a crosswalk there ma'am, because it's far too dangerous. And so if someone got hit, we would be liable because for saying it's safe to cross when it's not. And I thought, well, this is nonsense. And so, you know, a few years later we're building a pocket park down the block. It's a pedestrian Plaza that you know, for all these things.
Sarah
But that is how I think we affect change in the world is by looking around at something that's troubling us and putting our energy behind making it better. And then working with other people who are doing that to amplify our own personal powers, my suggestion. I wouldn't sleep on the neighborhood associations if we just leave them to elder white homeowners they will trend toward meeting their interests, which are not bad. But do you think that increased diversity and inclusion in those, you know, there's some existing political capital in those organization where there's a lot of civic learning to be done. Some of those old timers have a lot of understanding and knowledge of how we got here. And so making sure that we're forcing them into courageous conversations. Fearlessness is another one. I rarely take no for an answer. Look at this election. I came in third in 2016 I was like, I'm not taking third for an answer.
Lucy
I want to, yeah, I want to ask you about that. So you ran once before, which I didn't realize, I mean this is a testament to how, um, I wouldn't say I was checked out, I voted diligently, but I was just saying to my partner, like, I wish I could remember how I voted in that election. I think I probably looked at the Mercury's voting guide, which you know, is what a lot of Portlanders do. And last, uh, in the November election, a bunch of friends and I came together and we made like voting guide zines and distributed them all over town. We printed thousands and it was so fun and such a push in such a rush to connect with people in that way. And I know a lot of folks are just overwhelmed by the ballot and looking for, you know, guidance. But I'm curious like having run in 2016, did you know then at the end of that race that you were like, I'm right back in this fight, I'm coming back in 2020? Or was that a process for you of committing yourself? What was that like?
Sarah
I had no idea. I didn't even know it was going to run in 2016 I'm one of those involuntary politicians. I was looking at this problem of these two guys who are talking about the future Portland and everything that was coming out of their mouth was like not resonating with my understanding of the city and what it is and what made it work. And almost like, how do you think you get to be our leader when you don't even understand this place or how it works. Like that's not how this works. Like I knew it. You and I mean if you're a person who's connected to the streets and to community, you know what works and what doesn't and you also know what the choke points are. So I got into that race hoping it was looking like, you know, the incumbent Wheeler was going to just be kind of crowned mayor at that point.
Sarah
And I just didn't think that was right. I wanted there to be a good discussion about that. My goal was to force a runoff, which we didn't make that happen. Um, but what I learned was there are a lot of powers that be, that are invested in the status quo. A lot. And when we decided to look at 2020 as a space of I guess transformative politicking, if you could call this campaign that and we looked at all the various races, this mayor's race just popped up again, it was looking like he was inevitable. We had a few things at our back, the publicly financed elections program, which does that small donor matching and then the Supreme court decision that was just handed down. We've been banking on that all along because we knew 87.4% of voters had approved those caps. We'd been watching what trends were going around in the nation in terms of campaign limits at the state level and we felt really optimistic and our gamble paid off because now as we head into a general election, potentially Mayor Wheeler's not going to have access to those 5 and 10 and 20 thousand dollar checks to which he's become so accustomed.
Lucy
Yeah. People who are not following along with this. I just got caught up on this recently and it was a little overwhelming for me. Um, but there is some campaign finance drama that has been going down, uh, with our incumbent mayor, um, accepting donations that, uh, had actually been ruled as illegal. Uh, and then refusing to give them back and then also like claiming, but he's in the right for doing so. And um, then trying to castrate on Sarah for taking public like community funding, which arguably that's what we want in our elections is not big business, throwing a bunch of dollars into elections. Um, there's some good resources on, uh, OPB has some good coverage in this situation if you want to read up on it and you're like, what is this? I don't know. So there's some good, some good background in there.
Sarah
And I saw in one of your comments too, I love that someone reminded me of this. Yeah. In our good government plan, we do want to open city elections to non-citizen residents. So I think every Portlander who resides here should get to weigh in on who our leadership is.
Lucy
Yeah. Are there any citizens who are any citizens, any cities who do that currently in the U S?
Sarah
I am not sure. I know some cities are exploring it. I'm not sure which ones are doing it.
Lucy
Yeah. Um, okay. Well we're at about half an hour here and I know you have other interviews to get to this afternoon. So, um, maybe just to wrap up, I was wondering what you are doing, uh, to take care of yourself right now. How are you recharging? I imagine a lot is being asked of you at this moment and you're having to perform constantly for other people, especially over the internet. That's really draining when you're a person who takes energy from other, like living, breathing human beings. It sounds very vampiric. I don't mean it that way, but like you're energized by being in crowds. Um, how are you taking care of yourself right now?
Sarah
Uh, I'm going to let my, my campaign directors watching, he's probably like, is she taking care of, because she's texting me 20 times a day. I'm spending, I'm sheltered in place with my daughter. And so this is the longest that we spent together in a very long time. So I'm cherishing that time together and we have a very cute dog who I think is getting almost threadbare in terms of how much we're petting him, is therapy. I garden and cook a lot, so I'm leaning into my Suzy homemaker tendencies where I think I made up. The problem is I'll like make a banana bread and then I eat the whole, uh, banana bread. But, uh, you know, this notion of just making place, walking around and just doing the things I do. I'm really busy, so I'm working really hard too, so I don't have a lot of time to get down. Sleeping is the hardest for me. Are you sleeping well in your household?
Lucy
I'm sleeping. Okay. Yeah, it varies. The wind the other night was so loud that it was waking me up every other every other minute and our dog just got neutered. So we're um, dealing with having a dog with a cone in the bed, like grappling around dogs. Pretty cute though. Dog is also getting very threadbare bedding.
Sarah
A lot of bald dogs.
Lucy
My husband today, I was like, it's the dog shedding more than usual or am I just petting the dog more aggressively than usual? I'm not really sure. Yeah. Yeah. Well thank you so much for taking the time to chat with me, Sarah. It's been such a pleasure and I'm really grateful to everyone who tuned in to watch. We had a nice little flow of people. I'm going to save this video and repost it hopefully in my Instagram story and I think there's a way for me to port it offsite too, so maybe other folks can catch up if they want to watch this down the line.
Sarah
Thanks for having me.
Lucy
Yeah, of course. Look out for yourself out there.
Sarah
Thanks for staying engaged in politics. We really appreciate it and I hope that we can take care of all the artists and creatives on the other side of this too. You're essential to who we are as a city and I value you. So thank you.
Lucy
Thank you. There are a ton of things I would love to talk to you about with the arts tax and like some of those people like don't end it. Keep talking. Um, I want to talk about the Arts Tax. I want to talk about your support for the freelancers bill of rights. Like there's so many cool things in there that as a self employed creator, I'm like, Oh my God, this is great. I would be really into having a candidate who's into these things. Um, but yeah, we'll say that'll be the teaser. Uh, and everybody, your, your website again, is sarah2020.com which I'm going to put in the chat. Um, and there are so many great policies there that you can read up on and things to listen to. So.
Sarah
Thank you.
Lucy
Thanks for watching. Take care.
Sarah
Bye.
Announcer
This has been a production of friends of Sarah for Portland.
