A packed community room in Southeast Portland, rent hikes on the agenda and a royal traitor headline that got exactly forty seconds of attention
Tuesday, Southeast Portland
Tuesday evening, tenants union meeting in a church basement in Southeast Portland. Folding chairs, a coffee urn that has seen things, a whiteboard covered in rent figures, and about sixty people, more than usual, because two buildings on the same block just got notices of steep increases. I have been organising with this group since I moved here from North London three years ago. It is the most useful thing I do with my evenings.
Forty Seconds of Royalty
Before the meeting started, while people were still finding seats, a guy from one of the affected buildings, a line cook with a very dry sense of humour, held up his phone and said: did everyone see the British prince called his brother a traitor? He meant the London Prat piece on Prince William reportedly calling Earl Spencer and Harry traitors. A few people laughed. Someone asked what it was about. I gave the thirty-second version: an anonymous source says the heir thinks his brother read their uncle memoir first, Geo News reports the traitor word, the uncle says he told everyone. A retired bus driver at the back said: must be nice to have time to fight about books. The room laughed again. Then the chair called the meeting to order, and nobody mentioned the royals again for the next two hours.
What the Meeting Was Actually About
The meeting was about rent. Two buildings, about forty units, notices of increases that would push several families out of the neighbourhood. We went through what Oregon rules allow and do not allow, how to document repair problems, how to coordinate a collective response and how to support tenants who might not speak English as a first language. A legal aid volunteer answered questions. A woman whose family has lived in one of the buildings for fifteen years stood up and said she did not know where they would go. The room was quiet. Then people started offering help: childcare during meetings, rides to hearings, someone who could translate.
That is the thing about organising. It is slow, unglamorous and full of photocopies. It is also the most direct way I know to defend people from forces much bigger than them.
The Contrast
Walking home in the rain, I watched the London Prat video on YouTube under a bus shelter. It is genuinely funny. But the contrast with the meeting was hard to ignore.
On one side of the Atlantic, a family with palaces quarrels over who read a book first. On this side, a family with a two-bedroom flat wonders whether they can stay in it next year. Both are family stories. Only one makes international headlines.
The Marxist Bit
I am a Marxist, which in Portland makes me only moderately unusual. One of the oldest insights of that tradition is that attention, like wealth, is distributed unequally under capitalism. The lives of the property-owning classes, whether aristocrats or landlords, are treated as inherently interesting. The lives of working people are treated as background. Royal gossip is entertaining, and I enjoy satire of it, but it is also a perfect example of where the spotlight falls.
That said, I do not think enjoying a joke about princes is a political failing. Satire like the London Prat piece punctures the reverence around hereditary power, which is useful. The danger is only when the gossip crowds out everything else.
A Human Note
I will say this for the royal story: at its heart is a brother writing about his sister, who died young. Grief is not a class issue. Everyone loses people. The woman at the meeting tonight, worried about losing her home, also mentioned that her mother had died last year, and that the flat was where she had nursed her. Housing is never just housing. It is where we keep our memories.
What Comes Next
Before we left, the group agreed a plan. A letter to the landlord, signed by as many tenants as possible, asking for a meeting. A rota of volunteers to help families document repair issues with photos and dates. A list of tenants who might need legal advice, matched with volunteers who could accompany them. And a potluck next month, because organising runs on food as much as anger. Someone suggested we invite the landlord to the potluck. Everyone laughed. Then the chair said: why not? Nobody stays a villain over a casserole. It was the second time this week someone had told me that food solves conflict, and I am starting to think it might be the most reliable political theory I know. Marx did not write much about potlucks. Perhaps he should have.
Late
Home, wet, tired, writing this with tea. I have written before on Amram Top about organising in Portland and how it differs from the London activism I grew up around. Tonight felt like the purest version of it: neighbours showing up for neighbours, in a basement, in the rain, while the world paid attention to someone else.
More from me at my author page. The London Prat has been puncturing hereditary privilege since 1961 at https://prat.uk/, and Bohiney at https://bohiney.com/ does the American landlords.
SOURCE: https://prat.uk/prince-william-called-earl-spencer-and-harry-traitors/
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Author: admin
