There is a bizarre controversy in Portland, Oregon after the city began to put up notices on buildings that it deemed unsafe for possible earthquakes. The city is trying to prepare for “the big one” — a massive earthquake that is now overdue. It is identifying older buildings susceptible to collapse with public signs. However, it is facing a challenge from the NAACP of Portland which has declared the signs to be the embodiment of “white supremacy” and racism. There is also a challenge for building owners.
The NAACP declared that the policy to warn the public “exacerbates a long history of systemic and structural betrayals of trust and policies of displacement, demolition, and dispossession predicated on classism, racism, and white supremacy.” The reason is that many of the older buildings are owned by African Americans that that the posted warnings will make it difficult for them to rent space or sell the property.
Rev. E.D. Mondaine, a pastor at Celebration Tabernacle Church in north Portland and president of the Portland NAACP chapter declared that “We will no longer allow the same principles that have driven us out again. We will no longer allow these things that have driven us from our community.”
Given the projected 50 percent chance of a massive earthquake along the Cascadia Subduction Zone off the Oregon coast in the next 50 years, one would think that the racist act would be not to warn occupants of the danger. Otherwise, these buildings will remain until they are likely to collapse on the occupants.
The new law requires the posting of the signs and the filing of a record of compliance. The warning reads “This is an unreinforced masonry building. Unreinforced masonry buildings may be unsafe in the event of a major earthquake.”
The warning signs for some 1,600 buildings must have an 8-by-10-inch plaque must go up on public buildings this month and on other buildings by March 1. The warning on them says: “This is an unreinforced masonry building. Unreinforced masonry buildings may be unsafe in the event of a major earthquake.” The law further requires:
- The building owner must notify existing tenants that the building is an unreinforced masonry building, and unreinforced masonry buildings may be unsafe in the event of a major earthquake
- In addition to a placard, every lease or rental agreement entered into or renewed after the timeline for placarding noted below, must contain a statement that: “This Building is an Unreinforced Masonry Building. Unreinforced Masonry Buildings may be unsafe in an event of a Major Earthquake”
- Building owners must record an agreement not to remove the placard and acknowledgment of compliance with tenant notification requirements
- The ordinance requires URM owners to post a placard according to the following timeline:
An actual legal challenge has been filed by brick building owners who recently filed a lawsuit seeking to block the ordinance on the grounds of violating their free-speech and due-process rights. The challenge maintains that the signs for private owners to “broadcast the government’s message instead of their own.” It is equally hard to see the merit in that challenge. The ordinance forces disclosures tied to public safety. That is neither uncommon or unconstitutional so long as there is a rational basis for the disclosure.
The NAACP is a witless organization, something that was made blatant in Bruce Gordon’s letter of resignation as executive director thereof. Gordon had wanted the agency to commit itself to practical social work programs, rather like the Urban League. He also didn’t want to have to take orders from a no-account like Julian Bond. After he departs, the board shows just what they’re about by announcing their new priority: a federal ‘hate-crimes’ bill. They hoover-up donor dollars, employ people, spin their wheels, and make public nuisances out of themselves. The commonweal would be better off if they disappeared.
I applaud them. They’re antagonizing white folks with a microaggression. And soaking idiot donors from their hard earned money, awesome! . lol
Stories like this are fantastic. Whitey needs to build his clannish feeling, and some oppression always helps that along.
The NAACP is a racist, radical extremist organization and an artificial construct of unconstitutional “Generational Welfare,” “Affirmative Action Privilege,” food stamps, forced busing, social services, WIC, HAMP, HARP, TANF, “Fair Housing,” “Non-Discrimination,” and every other form of unconstitutional communist redistribution of wealth, social engineering, central planning and control of the means of production (regulation).
“Imagine there’s no communism
It’s easy if you try…”
if its members actually had to work hard, obey the law, show respect and survive on merit alone.
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People must adapt to the outcomes of freedom.
Freedom does not adapt to people…
dictatorship does.
UH, the city of Portland should put a sock in it. The logical step after this one would include public signage on buildings in Florida built prior to the major code changes which followed hurricane Andrew and that buildings everywhere built prior to 1978 have signs warning of possible lead paint. When the economic downside of that hits the wealthy and influential it will end. The NAACP is right on this one.
PS When the city of Portland puts warning signs on it’s downtown streets warning visitors to keep moving because buildings may fall on them, they’ll at least have consistency and purity on their side.
Is there any stupid cause you won’t endorse?
Maybe you can make a substantive argument attacking my position, but I doubt it. Like Allan, you seem to think simple minded ad hominem attacks will cover, and maybe on this forum that’s all it takes.
Your substantive argument is that its racist to put warning signs on buildings because they haven’t done it in Florida. It really doesn’t require a detailed ‘refutation’ from me. It’s facially inane.
Given the fact that I didn’t accuse anyone of racism, that isn’t a substantive rebuttal. It’s much less than that.
Given the fact that I didn’t accuse anyone of racism,
You said, “The NAACP is right on this one”. And making that accusation is just what they did. Reading comprehension (of your own words). It’s great stuff.
Uh gee, my “substantive argument” as you called it was not that “it was racist to put warning signs on buildings”. I made clear that I thought it was stupid and gave examples of what it leads to. Your inability to address that “substantive argument” is duly noted. One would expect the “conservatives” on this board would decry the “nanny state” implicit in Portland warning residents of events that might happen in 50 years, though they haven’t in the much more than 50 years since these buildings were built. I know, expecting “conservatives” who sold their principles for cheap to their cult leader 2 years ago to still have any left is foolish. Guilty!
I made clear that I thought it was stupid and gave examples of what it leads to. Your inability to address that “substantive argument” is duly noted.
You endorsed the NAACP’s complaint, Anon. You also added an inane argument of your own.
You’re not very smart, are you?
In the meantime I note your preference for bashing the coloreds to calling the city of Portland on a BS nanny-state act that will affect the property values of the powerless. I think I can assume – using your reasoning – that you oppose absolutely everything said in the NAACP statement or by any of it’s members.
I note your preference for bashing the coloreds to calling the city
I note that you fancy telling the truth about the social utility of the NAACP is ‘bashing the coloreds’ (or you’re pretending to think that for effect).
The NAACP reported in 2016 that their revenue from membership dues was $3.4 million. The standard dues are $30 a year. That translates into a tad over 100,000 members, not all of them black. You have about 30 million black adults in this country. A rough rule of thumb for the population at large is that political contributions and volunteer work are a hobby of about 3% of the adult population. That would give you 900,000 blacks most inclined to engage in political activity. Most of them aren’t mailing checks to the NAACP, which has had ample time to market itself.
A slight majority of their budget comes from grants. Over 40 corporations contributed in 2016 and about 15 foundations. The foundations are perpetual motion machines keeping another useless perpetual motion machine in business. Amusing to speculate about what sort of protection the corporate offices subsidizing the NAACP think they’re buying.
Much as TIAX2 tries to make this thread about the NAACP – he finds it more useful to bash the coloreds than to discuss the actual facts of this issue – it isn’t. It’s about the City of Portland labeling buildings as structurally substandard, which probably much or most our homes are, based on recent code, and if carried to it’s logical extreme would mean the devaluing of our property, much as this action has for many blacks in Portland. Their complaint is legitimate, even if they are colored.
“Their complaint is legitimate, even if they are colored.”
Wow, that says a lot! If they were white Anon would simply be saying the complaint is legitimate and not add such an offensive word, colored, for African Americans but since they are black or African American he adds, “Their complaint is legitimate, even if they are colored.” Even if?
I wonder who is “bashing the coloreds” as Anon says? That term went out decades ago, But Anon seems to be locked into another century.
Be careful DSS, Anon hates having his own words and thoughts being thrown back in his face.
TIAx2 is apparently incapable of following an argument long enough to throw anything back except lame insults.
Anon, I am not saying I always agree with DSS, but he is very capable of having an intellectual discussion based on facts. As Jan F. and your present alias, Anon, I think he feels his shorter statements of fact are more than enough. I tend to agree with him.
Jan F. / Anon I was quite nice to you until you started with your ad hominem under the alias Jan F.. You denied doing so on an earlier posting on another thread but I located the start of our discussion and even reprinted part of it to prove it was so. You didn’t like the fact that I used your own words in quotes to respond to the things you said. Don’t play innocent! Even after someone went through the effort to research the exact quotes you didn’t bother to respond appropriately. You acted poorly and continued to do so (by that time you had switched to the Anon alias). Then as Jan F. you left in a huff and changed your alias to Anon. That tells us who you really are and that you cannot make serious arguments that you are committed to.
Get help.
Given your conduct in this thread, he’d have been more concise (and quite accurate) just to tell you you’re being a major jerk.
Says the other clown who thinks insults can pass for discussion.
Anon, am I the one that had to change HIS name? No. You did from the atrocious Jan F. to the equally atrocious Anon.
You get upset at your own quotes when used to point out your hypocricy and you get upset that you don’t have the required intellect.
GO POUND NAILS
Oregon Leftists are getting what they deserve in these accusations of racism: an argument so batsh*t stupid it would make a horse laugh. Suck it up, Lefties. You created this deck of race cards. It is most appropriate that the race-baiters at NAACP are playing them against you.
Buried lede: there are black people in Portland?
Forget it, Jake; it’s Portland. They’ve raised stupidity to a very high level, and their desire to refuse to believe what they don’t want to believe, is even higher.
The NAACP seems determined to make many of the post-quake problems self-solving.
I have a dream….that we, as a people, will all die together in this building if the big one comes….
The NAACP is empirical evidence that, in general, Africans, Mexicans, Vietnamese, Chinese, Arabs et al. can and never will assimilate.
The NAACP must be compassionately repatriated in order for it to pursue and capture happiness.
Rather than “Thank You,” the NAACP says —- you!
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“…the harmony…is all important…whatever tends to a discordant intermixture must have an injurious tendency.”
“The influx of foreigners must, therefore, tend to produce a heterogeneous compound; to change and corrupt the national spirit; to complicate and confound public opinion; to introduce foreign propensities. In the composition of society, the harmony of the ingredients is all-important, and whatever tends to a discordant intermixture must have an injurious tendency.”
– Alexander Hamilton
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“I told you so,” freedom and compassionate repatriation are the answers, Abraham Lincoln:
“If all earthly power were given me,” said Lincoln in a speech delivered in Peoria, Illinois, on October 16, 1854, “I should not know what to do, as to the existing institution [of slavery]. My first impulse would be to free all the slaves, and send them to Liberia, to their own native land.” After acknowledging that this plan’s “sudden execution is impossible,” he asked whether freed blacks should be made “politically and socially our equals?” “My own feelings will not admit of this,” he said, “and [even] if mine would, we well know that those of the great mass of white people will not … We can not, then, make them equals.”
Is Rachel Dolezal back in the head muckety-muck seat at the NAACP?
This is, of course, business as usual for the NAACP looking for free attention and free money from the government and the folks who worked for it. If the big one came along and knocked down all the substandard buildings, the NAACP would sue everyone and everything in sight for not being warned in advance about it.
Not “if the big one came along”.
When The Big One comes along.
Yes, unreinforced masonry buildings will collapse.