Jessie Burke - former champion fencer, business owner, mother of three, and now-candidate for Multnomah County Commissioner - is one of my favorite Portland people. Courageous, loyal, no-bullshit, we’ve worked together, eaten together, maybe not drank together (gotta fix that…) and together watched what was poised to be the next great American city start to crater around 2016 and, to many eyes, reach full catastrophe in 2021, with spikes in homelessness, murder, drug addiction, and citizens taking flight.
"We're really bottoming out. This has become a city run by children," Jessie told me that year, of local politicians equivocating as Portland literally burned.
That Jessie has now set her sites on fixing a host of public safety issues should surprise no one. She spearheaded the revivification of North Portland’s Kenton neighborhood in 2008 - her bakery, Posies, became an anchor tenant on what was then a tractor-trailer corridor - and in 2015, opened the Society Hotel in downtown Portland’s Old Town. A bright anomaly among the area’s many missions, the hotel and its staff now navigate a record number of overdoses and people in mental health crises - Jessie relays several horrifying stories of women in extremis - due in part to Oregon’s experiment with drug decriminalization, and years of political infighting that took precedence over the needs of citizens.
“There’s a lot of ideological posturing rather than the performing of services,” said Jessie, of leadership in conflict with itself. “You cannot live in a society that is all carrots and no sticks, and that’s sort of what we’ve created, we’ve created an incentive-only society.”
Also discussed:
Dirty dealings at the Olympics
The time Jessie’s employees would not serve a guy in a MAGA cap
“I travel a lot to remember what normal is.”
Why Jessie thinks Portland might be on the hero’s journey
A naked woman is crying in the street and Portland outreach workers bring her… a cookie?
What Jessie thinks of former Mayor Sam Adams saying he would nor run against and then, changing his mind
Learn about Jessie’s campaign at jessieburke.com.
This is the first in a series of conversations with candidates running for office in Portland, including the hotly-contested (or not?) race for district attorney, between DA Mike Schmidt (readers of this newsletter know I’ve had lots to stay about him) and Senior Deputy DA Nathan Vasquez. To hear the full episodes and bonus videos, become a paid subscriber or consider making a one-time donation.
Walk-on/off music: “Kid Dynamite” by Matt Welch
