Rethinking Public Safety

Transcript

Announcer: [00:02] Welcome to OurPortland 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: [00:34] Welcome to another edition of the OurPortland podcast. I'm Sarah Iannarone a candidate for Portland Mayor. I'm running in the primary election that will be held in May, 2020. I use the pronouns she and her. In today's episode, we'll touch on a Street Roots vendor pinched by TriMet fare enforcement, a Congress person, forwarding some transformative criminal justice reforms and the tweet of the week [tweet sound]. Then toward the end, we'll take a deep dive into what it means for every Portlander to be truly safe with the release of my new Rethinking Public Safety policy that we are releasing today.

Sarah: [01:15] It's been another busy couple of weeks on the campaign trail. I'm guessing that from here on out, it's going to stay that way. We've had some amazing opportunities to interact with Portlanders and seen some interesting things happening in our city. I was fortunate to be invited by Chris Cantino and Jamie Schmidt of Super Maker that's @supermaker who asked me to speak at the Grow Your Own Way conference that they hosted this past weekend for a lot of innovators, entrepreneurs and makers over at the new Remote.ly space on Mississippi Avenue. It's an amazing coworking space and they had some really inspiring speakers talking about the future of innovation and entrepreneurship and how we can take our own initiative to make good things happen in the world. So I was happy to be able to kick things off with a few remarks around what I think we can do with some fearless leadership for Portland and folks from Portland and from outside the city were all pretty impressed that we were able to have such an interesting and engaging conversation around local politics at this critical time.

Sarah: [02:23] I had some interesting conversations with Portlanders about the addition of Carmelo Anthony to the Blazers roster. I'll admit you'll have to watch on Twitter as the season unfolds, but I'm in a household divided. My daughter says "Hey, those are Nasir Little's minutes, you better watch it." But I'm pretty excited about what Mellow brings to the team and to the town in terms of energy and experience and leadership, so we'll see. That remains to be seen. We had an amazing conversation with Mark Lakeman, which in case you missed it, we taped. You can find it as another episode of the OurPortland podcast episode number 4. I hope you'll have a chance to go back and listen to it if you weren't able to join us. It was pretty interesting dive into how do we think about repairing our civic fabric as the basis of some of the problem solving that we need to do around things like housing and inequality and even transportation investments as opposed to thinking about civil society in a healthy democracy as this abstract concept or set of concepts that exists apart from our everyday reality. And just to give you a heads up, we're going to be having another community conversation coming up this time in December. It's Monday, December 9th. I'll be in conversation with Ciara Pressler. We'll be at the Riveter, which is in the old Washington High School on Southeast 14th Ave. and you can find details and RSVP at sarah2020.com/december9 so that's sarah2020.com/december9 for details on the next community conversation where we'll be engaging around issues of affordability and inclusivity and accessibility for entrepreneurs, innovators, small business owners in Portland as the city grows. [musical interlude]

Sarah: [04:22] if you listen to the podcast of the community conversation, you might have heard me conducting an icebreaker, which is what I call, something that we can use to get acquainted with each other even when we're gathering in large groups. So one of the prompts that I give is asking people to pair up and then share with someone that maybe they haven't met before, something that's exciting them about the topic that we're discussing and maybe something that's on their mind or of great concern. And so a lot of times when I'm out in the world, you'll hear me ask the question "What's really troubling you about Portland, but also what's exciting you about Portland?" So as part of this podcast, what I do every week is try to bring that right home in terms of the news that I've been paying attention to for the week. One thing that's got me a little worried or concerned and something that's got me pretty excited about the future.

Sarah: [05:05] One of the things that concerned me most this past week was an episode that happened with a Street Roots vendor. Mark Rodriguez had an interaction with a TriMet fare inspector who issued him $175 citation for not tapping his monthly pass before he boarded a MAX train. He had his Hop card and his receipt, but the fare inspector was (needless to say) uncompromising. Street Roots and Mark posted that to Twitter. Obviously Portlanders were outraged, especially on the heels of TriMets recent media debacle that was basically poor shaming people who may not have access to transit fare for riding transit, boarding transit without fare. And so a lot of Portlanders stepped up to support Mark. I guess it's that notion of where you are most disappointed about things you can also find the most hope. Because what we saw in Mark's case (the same as we'd seen in the previous week when TriMet was acting less than a community oriented, shall we say) was an outpouring of support from Portlanders who are pretty earnest in their desire for some more humane treatment of people on our transit system.

Sarah: [06:31] Whether that's fareless transit or discretion with regard to enforcement. I think it's this notion that we need to make sure that the people who need access to mobility the most in our city are able to use our transit system without fear of reprisal, if they may not quite have adequate, fare or otherwise are having a hard time demonstrating proof of fare. So there's that. Makes me miss fareless square, really when you think about it, the luxury of being able to hop on and off transit without a lot of drama or work. The positive news story of the week. I'm really excited. It's not a local one, but I think it has local implications. And we're going to talk about it a little bit this week about why. But according to Essence magazine, a Massachusetts Democrat, Representative Ayanna Presley unveiled a sweeping criminal justice reform resolution this week and she's hoping to dismantle the structural racism that constitutes our criminal justice system. Incarcerating and killing members of the Black, LatinX and indigenous communities.

Sarah: [07:36] She's calling it the People's Justice Guarantee and it's got a lot of stuff in it. She's talking about the DOJs role in investigating police departments that repeatedly violate civil rights. She's calling for banning law enforcement from using facial recognition software. She's talking about making sure that we're not transferring military equipment to local police departments. The militarization and police forces is something, you know, that in Portland we're pretty upset about. She's talking about dismantling and rebuilding, just, compassionate and humane immigration and providing resources for non law enforcement led community based violence and trauma interruption models. She wants to ban the death penalty and she wants to decriminalize drug use, human condition of experience in addiction and she wants to decriminalize sex work. We've linked to Rep. Presley's resolution in our episode notes so you can check it out there. But I think that's really great news for Portland because so often we talk about ( I'm talking about on the campaign trail) how we've been forced to go it alone as municipalities with very little help for our most pressing issues, the reforms that we'd like to see locally where we see our family members, our neighbors suffering under these unjust systems.

Sarah: [08:58] So to see some help coming down from the federal government or at least recognition and awareness that the federal government can still change outcomes for people's lives. So impressive. So thank you representative Presley for your hard work on that. And I look forward to reading more, which brings us (not altogether tangentially) kind of full steam ahead into our Tweet of the Week. [Tweet sound] On the topic of decriminalizing sex work. Some of you may have noticed this week that Portland's mayor in the midst of committing to some not particularly limiting campaign contribution (big air quotes coming up) "caps" of $5,000 from individuals and $10,000 from corporations that he would not take those from industries that were problematic including big tobacco, military constructors, big pharma fossil fuel industry and wrapped up in that bundle of evildoers was the adult entertainment industry. And since our campaign had been working pretty extensively with people here who are in the sex work industry, in the adult entertainment industry, as we developed our rethinking public safety policy, we had been in direct conversation with people who were like "Whoa, I cannot believe that I am personally being rolled in with big pharma, the military industrial complex and the fossil fuel industry.) It feels pretty insulting."

Sarah: [10:37] Ultimately, the mayor ended up walking that back saying that he was not limiting those contributions to actual sex workers, but rather that that would be only sex industry corporations, which again, still seems a little vague. Does that mean if you own a sex club, maybe a mom and pop shop, a small proprietor or LLC, he won't take contributions from you? I don't know. But needless to say, our campaign was pretty outraged about the lack of real campaign contribution limits and the dig on our friends out in the community who are actually engaged in that industry of consensual adult sex work. So we picked our tweet of the week based on that. The tweet of the week this week comes from @SusanElizabeth and that's Susan Elizabeth Shepherd who writes "If by banning adult industry contributions Ted Wheeler unites Portland sex workers into a voting block for Iannarone (possibly the most viable mayoral candidate in a major US city to be pro decriminalization) it could be his signature achievement." We like to think that too. I really want to say thank you to all the sex workers who came out and supported us in advising our decriminalization policy. And I hope that we can continue to engage in meaningful conversation with the people who are working in Portland's adult entertainment industry (both workers and small business owners) to talk about ways that we can make sure that what's going on here is making our Portlanders healthy, happy and prosperous all around. [musical interlude]

Sarah: [12:21] I appreciate you listening to the OurPortland podcast. We can make fun of some events you know, happening in town, especially when people are acting a little bit foolishly. But really this is about serious issues that are on people's minds everyday here in Portland. And one of the reasons that I'm running for Portland mayor is because I believe that I'm uniquely positioned from where I am situated in our city to help us craft a path forward out of the systems of oppression in which we seem to be bogged down and which are very much a hindrance to us achieving some of our more aspirational goals, especially when it comes to (I as you know, something I'm passionate about) climate change but also racial inequality and injustice. And when you think about one of the places where that is on display most in Portland, it has to do with public safety.

Sarah: [13:15] It may seem strange when we start drilling into what we're calling the Rethinking Public Safety plan. I'll say that for you again because I really want you to bear this in mind. What we're talking about is rethinking what public safety means and for whom and what does it mean for every Portlander to be truly safe, day to day. We're going to try (the best that we're able, with the channels that we're able, in the community that we're able to build through this campaign) to reframe the conversation in our city, away from policing and criminality to true public safety. And when we think about that, what it means is asking ourselves 'What investments do we need to make? What policies do we need to establish? What systems do we need to break apart and get rid of? What systems do we need to build a new? Which things can we reform to ensure that all Portlanders can thrive in their daily lives without fear for their health or wellbeing?' And as part of this we really had to go outside our comfort zone policy-wise, outside our comfort zone from a campaign perspective because this is a much more nuanced conversation than just 'more money to police' or 'not more money to police' or yes, you want the police to adhere to this rule' or 'no, you don't want the police to adhere to this rule'. It's a very high level conversation about expanding our understanding of how we are going to advocate for safety for everyone in our city. The Portland mercury reported recently that the police union contracts underway are going to be proceeded by a series of public information meetings hosted by city hall. I think in large part in response to the protests (that no one on this campaign would ever been involved in) but the protests that went down around the last set of contract negotiations. And this has been a huge sticking point for many Portlanders interested in criminal justice reform because as you know and as I've said repeatedly on the campaign trail, many people think that it's actually the police who are shaping this from inside their bureau.

Sarah: [15:41] But in fact, it's the police union that is determining not only working conditions for Portland's police, but policy of how policing will go down in our city. And as community members, we need to assert our right to a healthy democracy, to community oversight of the things that go on in our city and to discretion in how our resources are spent to ensure that we're meeting our goals. And oftentimes (at least in my perspective) the police union stands in direct opposition to what I hear is on the minds of Portlanders day to day with regards what they would like to see in terms of public safety and even policing. So as we go into this, this won't be the last podcast on this topic and we're not going to get into everything today, but I wanted to work through it piece by piece so that you would have a good understanding of the framework that we were bringing to this policy.

Sarah: [16:43] So without further ado, I want to get us right into the meat of this policy proposal because it's not easy reading. There's a lot here and I encourage you to go online to sarah2020.com/rethinkingpublicsafety. Let me say it for you one more time in case you are in a place where you can pull that up and follow along as I go through it. It's sarah2020.com/rethinkingpublicsafety. And what I'm going to do is walk you through the sections of this policy. Pull out some of the highlights, some of the things that I think are a little bit more innovative. But what I want you to bear in mind is the 'why?' behind this. Why forward such a progressive public safety policy? Incorporating things from all over the city, not just policing in a conversation about what keeps Portlanders safe.

Sarah: [17:38] Well, one, I think we need to think about the silos between our bureaus and how public safety is administered and by whom and for whom that has meaning and for whom there's not a lot of safety anywhere they turn. Day to day, safety is an issue on the minds of all Portlanders and many Portlanders have expressed dissatisfaction with current levels of what we call public safety. Whether that's crime and criminal justice, policing, transportation, and fare evasion (like the Street Roots vendor experience this week), access to sanitation and hygiene. For many Portlanders public safety may mean freedom from physical violence. For some it might mean freedom from illegal police stop or freedom of living on a street where your kids can walk to school without the fear of being hit by a car. For many Portlanders public safety means the freedom that comes with having a place to sleep at night, insulated from the elements and many Portlanders agree that right now we're not a safe city.

Sarah: [18:47] It's not safe in perception, it's not safe in reality, but it's my philosophy that our communities are resilient and so we must put forth policies that respect this fact. I want our city to be a civic innovator that is a leading really on the vanguard, if you will, of what public safety needs to look like in the new world order. I talk a lot about things like poverty, homelessness, the rise of white nationalism as global crises for which we are going to need to adopt policies that are very place specific, very adaptable, very fluid, and able to be effective even as the context change rapidly. You know, in 2017 over half of the arrests made by the Portland police bureau were of people experiencing homelessness. In 2018, 92 unhoused people died in our streets. Traffic deaths continue to reach epidemic levels. We went up from 37 total in 2015 to 44 this year (and it's only mid November) despite a lot of talk about what we're calling Vision Zero. And even though Portland is a sanctuary city on paper, many residents feel threatened by repeated incursions from right-wing agitators that go unchecked or some would even say sanctioned by local authorities.

Sarah: [20:17] Other polls have suggested that the majority of Black and Hispanic Portlanders aren't satisfied with the way that Portland police protects them from violent crime and many feel that policing doesn't even address their safety or needs at all. So for me, putting out this policy was really about coming together as a community for a critical rethinking of what public safety means and for whom everybody who works, lives or plays in Portland has an inherent right to be safe here. When our neighbors are living under threat of harm, it takes a toll on our health. It affects behavior, it impairs our quality of life. So by making investments so that Portlanders feel safe, it helps our community members focus on thriving and prospering in the rest of their lives. A focus on improving the safety and wellbeing of our cities most marginalized means that people currently struggling won't be additionally burdened and might even have a better chance of success by the choices and priorities that we establish in city hall.

Sarah: [21:26] I know that Portlanders are more safe when our basic needs are met. A large part of our lack of safety (in my opinion) is due to a lack of leadership and vision with regard to the intersection of housing, transportation, employment, not to mention the decades of intentional and unintentional marginalization, structural oppression and exclusion of residents. In other words, Portland is a city that works, but only for a privileged few. I think that we need to understand that public safety is much more than an individual dilemma. This is a number of overlapping public health crises, any number of which may be affecting any individual in our city at any given time. I have this firm belief that we are only going to be as strong as the most marginalized person in our city, and that requires that we radically define new understandings of safety.

Sarah: [22:31] The way that I've broken this out is this.

Sarah: [22:34] We can think about what it means for safety for all people. Can we move the notion of public safety beyond policing to ensure that all Portlanders can thrive in their daily lives without fear for their wellbeing? I think that for us to be able to do this, we need to come up with things like creation of community health and safety hubs, which provide temporary shelter beds and hygiene and health facilities and critical services all across the city. We need to be providing relief for our neighbors who have fallen on hard times and that's not just about the 4,000+ people that we're able to carry out sleeping outdoors every February during the point in time count. That's about the tens of thousands who are housing insecure and food insecure on any given day. It's about the 70,000 of us who will be homeless if a natural disaster like an earthquake strikes.

Sarah: [23:32] So in my estimation, we need to start thinking about community led investments for these hubs in every neighborhood so that no Portlander is far from a safe space where they can rest free from harm, warm and dry, with access to their basic needs. Now along with this safety for all mindset, we need to think about a drastic expansion of the Portland street response and you're going to see a lot of that going on. There are city council hearings and it's going to be all in the news in the coming weeks. But we're also going to move things like Vision Zero and ending traffic violence into this safety model, and thinking about gun violence, urgency and disaster preparedness as one singular framework. So what does it mean to make sure that we're committed to ensuring safety for all Portlanders regardless of their zip code, regardless of their housing status, regardless of their other life experiences.

Sarah: [24:30] And that's very important when it comes to talking about sanctuary cities. So in Portland, we have decided that we want to be a sanctuary city. We know that it's important for us that people feel safe here. But what does that really mean? It doesn't just mean that our police department has minimum contact with federal agencies like ICE, right? (Immigration Control and Enforcement) But too often, our elected officials use this low bar to avoid meaningful scrutiny about our city's relationship with this and other troubled agencies. Portlanders want and deserve a true sanctuary city that does everything in its power to ensure that all Portlanders, regardless of citizenship status, will not be victimized by federal forces like ICE, Homeland Security, JTTF (or whatever other things Donald Trump and his administration send our way) so that our people find themselves unnecessarily thrust into the criminal justice system that increases their risk of deportation or incarceration based on nation of origin, religion, race, gender, sexual orientation, or even housing status.

Sarah: [25:47] Now I know we're never going to be able to abolish ICE just as Portlanders. But we can sure stop cooperating with them. We can refuse to cooperate with the Joint Terrorism Task Force. We can make sure that we're not partnering with corporations engaged in human rights abuses. These are simple things that we can do to make sure that we are enforcing the notion that Portland needs to be a sanctuary city. Now, in the sanctuary city, we understand that injustice is not just something that is reserved for immigrant and refugee communities, right? Our policing and criminal justice systems unfairly target and disproportionately impact black people, indigenous people, people of color, and historically oppressed community members not included in those groups. Our elected officials must commit to ending the disparate treatment of marginalized Portlanders and direct our precious resources toward addressing violent and abusive crimes in a trauma informed manner.

Sarah: [27:02] We must end broken-windows policing because it's clear that the increased policing of communities (especially communities of color) is not making Portlanders any safer. In actuality the criminalization of communities is making Portlanders less safe. We are spending millions of dollars every year focusing on low level, often victimless crimes. We need our law enforcement to focus on heinous crimes that the community cares most about like sexual assault, domestic violence, murder, attempted murder, police violence, and hate crimes. I know that broken-windows policing is a mindset that has permeated our culture, but we need to think differently and we should never allow these victimless crimes to be the framework for which our criminal justice system is operating. And there's more here. We need to increase transparency in our criminal justice system. We need to ensure that Black Lives Matter is public policy, not just a slogan or a yard sign that ends up in a quickly gentrifying neighborhood.

Sarah: [28:10] We need to create measurable metrics to determine whether our policies are actively working to eradicate white supremacy and provide restorative justice and improve material conditions for black Portlanders. We're going to have to devote funds and resources to expunge records for low level drug crimes, crimes of poverty, nonviolent crimes with race biased enforcement and crimes that are no longer illegal. Many Portlanders suffer housing, employment, and other subtle and overt forms of discrimination because racist and ill-conceived policies of the past have targeted them with permanent barriers. One of the things that I also included in here was the decriminalization of sex work. And that's how all of this (asking strippers to donate 8.74 to my campaign) came up last week. We need to end the criminalization of consensual adult sex and focus instead on sex traffickers and abusers rather than on workers.

Sarah: [29:18] This is not a longterm solution. If we issue a directive to end the enforcement of certain state statutes, but I think it will provide some immediate relief and free up resources so that we can focus on crimes of victimhood in our city. I think there are some other things that we can be doing, like removing armed police officers from school, prioritizing the eradication hate crimes, re-legalizing the aiding of the homeless in public spaces, decriminalizing drug and alcohol dependency, increasing transparency in public records requests, committing to privacy and banning facial recognition software and even humane programs to reintegrate formerly incarcerated Portlanders more effectively. So this is one way that we're thinking about 'What does it mean for Portland to ensure that everyone is safe (even people who have not historically felt safe) engaging with our criminal justice system?' Another thing that we have to think about is the Portland police bureau, their transparency, their accountability and their effectiveness. When Portlanders actually trust the police, both the community and the officers will be safer.

Sarah: [30:33] But it is not our neighbor's fault that many of them feel as though they cannot currently trust the Portland police. Whether it's revelations of collusion with the alt right, indiscriminate violence at protests or a lack of community oversight. There are many reasons why some Portlanders do not trust our officers. I believe that for us to have a police bureau that actually serves the people of Portland, we need to increase civilian oversight, constrain day (I mean really limit) the use of force, negotiate a community informed police contract, demilitarize our policing and have zero tolerance for racism, racial bias (of any kind) in our police force. Now, what does this mean? Portlanders are going to need to be invested and involved in policing. Somehow compared to other city bureaus, the Portland police are uniquely insulated from scrutiny and consequences. It's almost as if the things happening in the police bureau exist outside of our participatory democracy. Where other agencies give the public an opportunity to weigh in on policy changes before they go into effect, the Portland police bureau operates relatively free from public comment and oversight and even when we do weigh in with comment and oversight, they ignore it. So we need to make sure that we carve out true community oversight of Portland policing. I think that what we're going to need to do is to devolve the current systems from these overarching detached advisory groups to smaller, more specialized oversight boards created for different stakeholders and frontline communities based on their needs, experiences, and relationships with the police. I also think that we're going to need to talk about establishing a residency requirement for incoming Portland police officers. Portland should be a place where our police want to live and where we want our police to live here with us. We need to ensure that our police are required to undergo deescalation, implicit bias and equity training more than they undertake combat training.

Sarah: [32:48] This is how we're going to limit the use of force in our policing. I do believe that we need to work on a fair police contract. I do support organized labor. I understand the importance of public sector workers in rebuilding our social safety net, but we all need to understand that the police union contract should cover police officers work, but that do not include provisions that decrease police accountability or subvert our ability as a public to enact civilian oversight of policing. And I also think that ultimately demilitarizing the police is going to be something that we need to focus on as Portlanders. If we truly want to see a kinder, gentler policing underway in our city. Now along the way, they're going to be a lot of smaller things that we're going to do. We need to abolish the gang enforcement team. We need to end the police secondary employment team. We need to stop asking officers to serve as social workers and we need to figure out a way to get rid of racist and violent police officers.

Sarah: [34:01] You know, talking about establishing a zero tolerance policy for racist and violent officers leads us to a very important conversation (in my opinion) especially as someone who's been participating in the protests against patriot prayer, the proud boys and other white nationalists who would come to our city to sow discord, to incite riots. I am a firm believer in protecting our freedom of assembly. We can't allow our constitution to be hijacked by people who are cloaking their racist ideology, their white ethno state agenda in the freedom of free speech and assembly. We must have leadership that shows up in times of conflict alongside her people rather than avoiding and deploying police (by default) to street protests. I have un-waveringly demonstrated my willingness to stand in the streets in solidarity with everyday anti-fascists and other social justice movements. And I pledge to continue as mayor to use the powers of city hall to encourage and support the first amendment by Portlanders.

Sarah: [35:29] Now this is not going to be easy, but it's going to be important. We need to demilitarize the police response to protests by making sure that armed officers in military style riot gear are not at the center of our public assembly. It is going to be okay for Portland police to monitor our protests from a distance. I have personally witnessed time and again how riot officers arriving on scene escalate the tensions at demonstrations immediately preventing the possibility of dealing with actual crimes on a case by case basis. Right? And when police rely on riot control agents and tactics, it affects everyone in a crowd regardless of their situation, their behavior, and it potentially injures innocent participants and exposes our city to costly lawsuits. Why would we want to do this? I think the most important thing that we can do is everything in our power to prevent right wing extremists from feeling welcome in Portland in the first place.

Sarah: [36:46] We need to take an earnest and innovative look into all of the legal avenues that we could use to prevent hate groups from crossing state lines in their attempts to commit violence and crimes here in Portland. Only before and after all legal avenues have been exhausted, maybe then we can start thinking about how we're going to work with these folks. But there should be zero tolerance for people who are coming to our city to incite riots and commit violence. I do believe that police should intervene in public fist fights and other violent crimes, especially those targeting marginalized community members in the furtherance of white nationalism. And I'm going to stand up for our values on this front. I'm going to speak out against hate groups again and again with the goal of de-stigmatizing anti fascism and clearly demonstrating that the people of our Portland want to stand up against the rise of fascism and white nationalism.

Sarah: [37:48] There will be no equivocation on my watch. When the people stand up, I will stand alongside them. And the demonization of anti-fascism in America right now is dangerous for our democracy. Anti-fascism in practicality does not look like the blackcloud protesters (exclusively) that are highlighted in the media, fetishized in the media. But they look like me, moms and teachers and nurses and union members and people from all across society with a range of experiences and ideas, political orientations who just want to live in a world without fascists. It's not that complicated. And we really need to make sure that prioritize the safety of Portlanders over property. Now I understand that historically it has been policing his job to protect property rights, but we have to make sure that we're not using force indiscriminately against humans so that we can reduce property crime. Crimes need to be dealt with on an individual basis. And I will be clear that participating in an act of peaceful civil disobedience is not illegal. But if someone engages in violent criminal behavior, they will be charged. And I'm not going to risk the safety and rights of all Portlanders in order to prevent property damage. And I'm going to promote civil unity by encouraging participation in peaceful protests. When our city leadership fails to stand on the side of the good guys, they are leaving the door open for hostility to thrive. I believe that what we need right now is leadership that will choose to always reflect unequivocally, unwaveringly our values of respect, inclusion, and diversity of thought.

Sarah: [39:49] Now, I know that's a lot, but I think that what we've done is give you at least an overview of how we're going to start to undertake the rethinking of public safety in Portland. This has probably raised more questions than it's answered and that's okay. We've got a lot of months before the election in May of 2020. So if you do have any questions about the Rethinking Public Safety policy, please submit them to the show by recording a voice memo on your phone and sending it to [email protected] or by using the hashtag #OurPortland on social media. Our next episode is going to be all about answering your questions about the things I've just gone through here today.

Sarah: [40:32] A few side notes. If you enjoy this podcast, please rate and review us on iTunes to help other discover the show. And finally, since you made it this far, please know that you are critical to the success of this campaign and that even if you can't sign up as a recurring donor, even if you can not attend our public events, even if all you have time for is to catch a few minutes of this podcast week to week, we need you to sign up to volunteer sarah2020.com/volunteer. So that when we need to go knock on doors, make phone calls, send texts, and get out the vote in the spring, we know how to get in touch with you. We can get a lawn sign in your yard. We can get you engaged around hosting a coffee and make sure that you're involved in our campaign the way that works for you.

Sarah: [41:25] All right! With that, we're going to sign off. I hope you have a great two weeks until we come back.

Announcer: [41:31] Thanks for listening to Portland. If you have a question for Sarah, record a voice memo on your phone and email it to [email protected] or use the #OurPortland hashtag and send us a message on social media. If you appreciate a campaign with straight talk on issues that matter, consider signing up to be a monthly supporter of 5, 10 or even $35 between now and election day in May, 2020. Find out more at sarah2020.com.

Announcer: [42:07] This has been a production of Friends of Sarah for Portland.