Ilektra M. | Red Phoenix correspondent | Oregon–
At a time when Portland officials claim there is not enough money to adequately fund the public services working-class residents rely upon, and these services are facing severe cuts, millions of dollars in climate investments are being targeted for reallocation to policing instead. Behind this effort is Safer Portland, a police-backed political action committee campaigning for a ballot measure that would increase the Portland Police Bureau by roughly 50 percent by diverting a quarter of the Portland Clean Energy Fund. The campaign has become increasingly controversial not only because of the proposal itself, but because of allegations that paid signature gatherers have systematically misrepresented the initiative to voters. Beyond the immediate controversy lies a broader political question: why, amid deepening economic inequality and social crisis, are solutions that expand policing consistently prioritized over investments that address the conditions producing insecurity in the first place
Safer Portland, officially the “Community Safety Coalition PAC,” is the predatory entity which has come under fire as of late for its dishonest and misleading efforts to gain signatures for a ballot initiative to increase the staffing of the Portland Police Bureau (PPB) by 50%. This is to be paid for by appropriating 25% of the Portland Clean Energy Fund (which two-thirds of Portland voters approved in 2018 as a means of mitigating the effects of climate change through a 1% corporate tax increase). This comes despite the fact that the worsening climate crisis is hitting Oregon especially hard. Additionally, despite claims that hiring more cops would decrease violent crime (which has already been decreasing for the past several years), it would in fact likely make the situation even worse. Countless studies, such as the one from the Center on Juvenile & Criminal Justice have proven beyond any reasonable doubt that the increase in police presence in communities increases, not decreases, crime. Of course, this is entirely the goal behind such initiatives to heighten the presence of armed agents of the bourgeois state in our communities. More cops directly lead to more crime, which then, by design, leads to increased convictions, and of course, a heightened supply of cheap labor, and higher profit margins for the prison corporations which stand to gain the most from free or nearly free prison labor. It should come as no surprise then that the very same corporations are the ones lobbying the government to pursue implementation of legislation like the above-mentioned measure.
Recently, Safer has been employing a particularly shady tactic in its police union-backed campaign to gain signatures, namely, the outsourcing of canvassing labor to Washington, D.C.-based contractor FieldWorks. This is a particularly shady organization which has allegedly, according to reports from dozens of affected individuals and multiple former employees, been training its staffers to intentionally mislead the people they gather signatures from in an effort to gain as many signatures as possible from people. These signatures come from people who would otherwise not have signed on to the petition had they been shown the full picture.
The Red Phoenix spoke with one such victim of this scheme, Portland resident, worker, and part-time student Natasha Benton. Benton told us that when a FieldWorks canvasser approached her on the street about signing a petition, the canvasser opened by briefly alluding to “police reform”, further explaining that the petition’s purpose was to “decrease 911 call response times” and “increase mental health support,”. Of course, this was all said without any mention of the true nature of the proposed ballot measure, which according to its own text, would do nothing except add an additional roughly 400 officers to the existing count of approximately 800. After signing the petition, which, given the manner in which it was presented, seemed like a reasonable, common-sense issue to support, Benton asked the canvasser who would be hired to answer 911 calls and decrease emergency response times, at which point it was admitted that it would be more police. Immediately taken aback and appalled at the lack of transparency displayed, Benton requested that her signature be removed from the petition, since she would never have signed it in the first place had she known what it was really for. The canvasser’s response? A distinct, drawn-out, “Noooooooo.”
“If they did mention police reform [up front] it wasn’t super clear to me. They just kept it vague and mentioned shorter wait times for people calling 911 and mental health support,” Benton tells us. After being informed that these supposed shorter 911 response times would be accomplished by hiring more cops, she says, “I made my objections clear. When I got the info I needed, that was not volunteered.” Upon submitting a support request with Safer Portland to have her name removed from the petition, the response Benton received was also less than adequate: “We are checking to see if there is a way to find your signature among the many thousands we have collected. If we can find it, we will remove it,” a fairly passive-aggressive response to someone who rightfully feels misled and taken advantage of, and a response which has apparently been employed in other similar instances. It’s worth noting that the petition must receive some 40,000 signatures by July 6 in order to be put on the ballot come November.
When crime is viewed as an abstract concept detached from the material conditions in which it occurs, it is understandable that some well-intentioned but misinformed people may see simply increasing the number of state-designated “crime stoppers” thrown at the problem as the be-all, end-all solution. But crime is not a phenomenon which occurs in a vacuum, caused by certain “bad” individuals who get joy out of hurting others. It is more often than not the result of the poverty, desperation, and deprivation of basic human needs brought about by the very system of class exploitation we live under that punishes said desperation with violence and imprisonment. This, all while the system’s beneficiaries at the top substantially benefit through bribes, backroom deals, and particularly exploitative labor practices employed within the U.S. prison system, just as one example, where incarcerated individuals make an average of less than $1 a day.
It is ironic that this increase in funding to the police to supposedly “stop crime” is coming at a time when programs workers rely on are being systematically defunded, increasing poverty, desperation, and often, crime. Across the country, programs that help working-class families meet their most basic needs, including food assistance through SNAP, have repeatedly come under attack in the name of “fiscal responsibility.” Yet depriving people of the means to feed themselves and their children does nothing to make communities safer. Consider a single mother working a minimum-wage job, struggling to feed multiple children. If the food assistance she relies upon is suddenly cut, forcing her to choose between paying rent, buying groceries, or keeping the lights on, does anyone seriously believe that this makes crime less likely as a last resort? It is a striking irony that politicians who claim to be “tough on crime” are often among the first to support cuts to the very social programs that help prevent people from being pushed into impossible situations in the first place.
If we want to create a safer, freer world for everyone, the answer will not be found in increasing the presence of militarized police in our communities, nor will it be found through supposedly incentivizing “good behavior” by means of stricter laws and harsher penalties for breaking them. It will instead be found through eliminating the very conditions which give birth to the material hardship and the economic and social alienation which drive people to extralegal means of survival in the first place. This can only be done through heightened working-class solidarity, class consciousness, and labor militancy which has all been at an all time low. However, the capitalist system will always try to claw back whatever small reforms working class people have won. The only choice is to fight for the revolutionary reorganization of our society towards socialism, the construction of an economy and government run by the working class itself, in which production is oriented towards sustainably meeting the majority of people’s needs, rather than securing profits for an ever-slimmer few.