"It Became Portland Against Trump"

A litigator talks about what it was like to be inside the Portland federal building during the 2020 uprising, and whether the city can get out from under the weight of its own good intentions

Litigator Michelle Kerin came to Portland at age 21, seeing the city as “this really beautiful, idyllic, clean, safe place.” More than most locals, she’s lived the ideological clashes of the past few years, including working for the U.S. Attorney’s office in Portland’s federal courthouse when it was occupied by Trump forces and under siege by protesters for months. Here, she talks about the what it was like to have activists block her from getting to work, why Oregon’s drug policies policy are “inhumane,” and whether Portlanders are ready to stop pointing fingers and start having discussions.

Michelle: I moved to Portland thirty years ago this month from Southern California, and it just struck me, downtown in particular, as this really beautiful, idyllic, clean, safe place. I've built a career here. I have two daughters; one's a senior in high school, one's going to be a senior in college, and they grew up downtown. Every daycare downtown; every school was downtown; they’ve thrived in that environment and it's given them confidence to be in a metropolitan area and be able to navigate it. But I would say even before Covid, we were seeing kind of the deterioration of downtown in terms of safety and more drug use. I's just really heartbreaking. But it's also incredibly frustrating, to not see urgency from our leaders and from some members of the community to try to fix it, or to even to see it for what it really is. I hear a lot of people say, “people are overstating how bad Portland is.” But they're just not.

Nancy: We saw these two sides in summer 2020, "Portland is a dystopian hellhole" on one side, and the other side people saying, "It's confined to two blocks." Neither of those things were true then and they’re not true now. But both are somewhat true. Right now over in the North Williams neighborhood, there are lines for the best restaurants and people playing basketball in Irving Park and you can still eat grapes off the vine growing up a light pole. But there are pockets of Portland that have been hollowed out, and that hollowing metastasizes in the mind. It sort of doesn't matter if the city is not a dystopian hellhole when there's this perception that, you can't do what you used to do in Portland. That makes people insecure, and I wonder if you think Portland has the appetite to turn things around?

Michelle: I think that people are hungry for it. I think that there is a large group of people who are not typically vocal, but who have small businesses and are kind of desperate for change, because they have the same feelings of affinity towards Portland that I expressed. There are a lot of big hurdles. The most obvious in my mind is Measure 110 [the Drug Addiction Treatment and Recovery Act passed in 2020]. People are misinformed about what it was supposed to do, what it actually did, and the significant holes in its execution and implementation. The violence, particularly downtown, has created this lawless vacuum, and I think that people are desperate for this to change. I also think that there's also no urgency from our leaders. [The relationship] between Multnomah County and the city is so disjointed. A lot of people don't even know that Multnomah County is the one that's supposed to be in charge of substance abuse and mental health, which is really the biggest problem.

Nancy: I was at the Multnomah County offices yesterday, and was like, why is this place so empty?

Michelle: That's the thing. How can our city leaders, our county leaders, put the onus on businesses downtown, when they're not even calling on their own employees to come downtown and create a more vibrant community? When people who are civil servants aren't even required to come to work?

Nancy: I agree that there's an appetite for change. But I do wonder whether people are ready to admit they want it. I have had people tell me, more in 2020 and 2021 but even now, that they're hesitant to say, for instance, that they don't want the homeless camping on their street; that they'‘re afraid they’ll be called out for being intolerant.

Michelle: This corrodes public discourse. For so long we have not been able to question ideals of what is the most compassionate, socialist liberal ideas and how to solve a problem like homelessness or drug addiction or over-incarceration. That's not healthy for any democracy. This is a very homogenous community, and we can't talk about differences in our approach. Nobody is espousing far-right ideals of internment, or any kind of rollback to eighties Reagan-era drug policies. And yet you can't have those discussions. And that's not healthy. We can't solve these incredibly complex problems without questioning people's assumptions about them.

Nancy: Let's talk Measure 110. The people that are pro-110 said, "We are going to decriminalize drugs because we don't want to put people in jail for small amounts of street drugs," which I agree with. Sounds like a great idea. The other part of 110 was the money for wraparound services, $302 million [funded in part by Oregon's marijuana tax money] for services like drug treatment and healthcare. So Oregon pulls the trigger on decriminalization, but not the helping part. [An audit earlier this year showed how poorly 110 had been rolled out and implemented.]

Michelle: What we're doing right now is, we've agreed to write off a whole sect of our community who is addicted to fentanyl and is on the streets, because we don't have any mechanism to help them. And nobody wants to impose any kind of consequence. The idea of the consequence in the Portugal model is you remove them from using drugs so their brain clears and they can make good decisions to go to rehab. But we're just writing off people. It is not compassionate to let people die in the streets of fentanyl. Did you read that article in The Atlantic about how America needs to rethink its approach to drug addiction? ("America's Approach to Addiction Has Gone Off the Rails," by Sam Quinones.) They talk about how fentanyl is the real game changer. And it's a huge reason why measure 110 is failing in such a colossal way. The author writes that the more times you overdose, and are revived on Narcan, the more it messes with your executive functioning and your brain and your ability to be able to ever make the decision [to get off drugs]. If you talk to Portland bike police about what they see, they'll sometimes use Narcan on the same person multiple times in one day. Again, it's not humane, it's heartbreaking.

Nancy: Someone told me this week about a woman who was a heavy fentanyl user. She was passed out in a wheelchair still holding a used piece of foil. Some harm reduction advocates replaced it with several nice pieces of foil and new straws. I can understand why they see this as helping. They can't take her to rehab, they can't give her a home, they can't wash her or feed her. But they can give her a small piece of what she sees as comfort, and what they might see in the moment as compassion.

Michelle: I believe that all actors are well-intended. And I believe that there is over-incarceration that unfortunately affects [those with] low socioeconomic status and people of color; also, that there is over-criminalization of drug possession and use. That's messed up and has to be changed. And you can't even reform the criminal justice system in a meaningful way unless you figure out that drug piece. In my time as a prosecutor, just over and over the link between drugs and crime, it's astounding. So again, I believe all actors are well intended. But why are we making it easier for somebody to do something that's so destructive? Even if you believe in the drug user's autonomy, why are we why as a society, and as taxpayers, saying, we're going to make it easy for you to kill yourself?

Nancy: I agree that we are extending their suffering in ways that's that can be really horrifying to see. I've reported from San Francisco from some of the harm reduction centers and have seen people slumped over and using. I saw a girl near the Steel Bridge this week, she was maybe 20. She was wearing a plastic shield as a shirt and eating crumbs out of the street and clearly was under the influence of something. The first thing you want to do is to maybe find her family, or get her clothed and sheltered. Multnomah County's idea of helping her was until recently to give her clean foil and straws. [A plan put on hold, if perhaps not forever]. A majority of Oregonians are now apparently rethinking their vote for 110 and would like to repeal it, though I wonder what sort of fight that will be.

Michelle: It is a third rail in conversation, at least in Portland in some groups….