During the July 13 City Council meeting, City Manager Jon Jennings implied that there is a core group of perpetually disaffected naysayers who will never approve of or trust what the City Council does. He said, “There will be a group of people who will not trust anything that we do.” This claim is factually incorrect and politically dangerous. It mirrors the “silent majority” tactic that disgraced ex-president Richard Nixon deployed against anti war activists in late 1969.

At that meeting, Portland’s mayor sought to establish a Racial Equity Steering Committee. Almost all testifiers opposed it. One mistrusts the council to find and appoint appropriate committee members; another disbelieves the idea that there is a “neutral” arbiter of conversations about race; another argues the committee seeks to do what has already been done, which is craft solutions to systemic racism. The Movement for Black Lives and Poor People’s Campaign have given us solutions. Councilors should enact them as the school board recently did.

Elected officials should not fall down the chute that Jennings has opened. We critique policies not for sport, but on moral principle. People who stay up past midnight to testify deserve deep respect, not dismissal. We choose fatigue over rest not because we hate comfort but because we love our community. There is no incorrigible minority of forever-unsatisfied activists in Portland. We are highly energized, freedom-loving, truth-telling, justice-seeking people who testify and march because we love and stand as the people whom a prophet called “the least of these.”

Marcella Makinen
Maine Poor People’s Campaign
Portland

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