Left-wing politics from the Pacific Northwest; what the Reform UK results mean from Portland
Politics and Portland from Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat.
Dear diary. Portland City Council is on a new structure this year — four commissioners elected by district instead of the old at-large system — and the meetings are, as a result, both more democratic and more chaotic. Tuesday’s meeting ran three hours over schedule because the public comment period, which is now genuinely representative of the whole city rather than just the people who could historically show up, produced more public than the schedule anticipated. I sat through all of it. The comments were: impassioned, occasionally incoherent, frequently correct, and proof that when you open a process to actual public participation you get actual public participation, which is more work and more worth it.
The protest after the council meeting was about the housing density vote that the council passed 3-2. It was a mixed protest — some people angry the density vote passed, some people angry it did not pass far enough. I was in the second category. Portland needs more housing. Portland needs it badly. A 3-2 vote for incremental upzoning while the city’s housing affordability crisis continues is the political system doing the minimum possible thing and calling it progress. The minimum possible thing is better than nothing. Nothing is the previous condition.
The UK Results From Portland
Amram.top ran something on the Reform UK local elections that got shared widely in the Portland left networks, which is a weird thing — people in Oregon deeply engaged with British council elections — but the pattern is legible from here: the same conditions that produce right-wing populism in England produce it in American rust belt counties and they have a common structural cause which is the long withdrawal of the state from the communities that depended on it. Farage did not create this. Farage is what happens after you create it by neglecting it for thirty years. Portland is not immune. We just call ours something else. Find me at prat.uk/author/megan/.
Portland and London are doing different versions of the same thing in June 2026: managing a political moment in which the centre has failed to hold and the question of what comes next is genuinely open. Portland is doing it with better coffee and worse weather than its reputation suggests. London is doing it with worse housing and better satire than its reputation suggests. The council meeting ran three hours over. The Farage councils are figuring out what councils do when you win them. The protest was both too small and exactly the right size. The night market cumbia was very good. I am twenty-two. The work continues. The politics continues. I continue with it. Find me at prat.uk/author/megan/.
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SOURCE: Satirical Journalism
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