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East Portland helps celebrate 30 years of city neighborhood support

Neighborhood volunteers construct Rose Festival float entry, hold 30th anniversary party at City Hall

LEE PERLMAN
THE MID-COUNTY MEMO

(from left) Christine Caruso, Roseway Neighborhood Association; Ross Monn of Wilkes; Bonny McKnight, Russell; and Office of Neighborhood Involvement, or ONI, Director Jimmy Brown, share ideas at the neighborhood association birthday celebration held recently at City Hall.
MEMO PHOTO: TIM CURRAN
Considering that they weren’t even officially part of Portland at the time, Mid-County volunteers have certainly done their share to celebrate 30 years of city support for neighborhoods. East Portland volunteers helped build a float depicting older-style homes, and some of them rode on it or marched behind it in the Rose Festival Grand Floral Parade. The float won the Rose Festival Court award for Community or Civic Involvement and Pride (Talk about a ringer!)

The following Saturday, neighborhoods held a 30th anniversary party in front of City Hall. One of the activities was a Cake Walk, with contestants competing for cakes obtained by the Wilkes Neighborhood Association’s Ross Monn through Joseph Quigley of the Safeway at Northeast 181st Avenue and Halsey Street.

Others on hand were Alice Blatt of Wilkes, one of the pioneers of the East Portland neighborhood movement, East Portland Neighborhood Office director Richard Bixby, and East Portland crime prevention specialist Katherine Anderson.

And, as has become increasingly the way in recent years in citywide community efforts, the principal organizer and keynote speaker was Bonny McKnight of Russell.

Neighborhood groups seek visibility
The turnout was not spectacular but McKnight says the venture was a success to this extent: “We got together to throw ourselves a birthday party, we had a good time, and we did it with virtually no public money.”

Another agenda of the anniversary event was to publicize the work of the neighborhood volunteers. “We’re demonstrating all the things we do,” McKnight says. “We do a lot of work for the city, but what we don’t do very well is tell people about it.”

Something new that neighborhoods should be doing is fundraising and gaining financial independence from an increasingly oppressive city structure, McKnight says. “I’m a strong supporter of the neighborhood system, but I’m not going to fight the city for it,” she says. “The politicians will never give true power to neighborhood volunteers. If we get a gift from City Council, there will always be manipulation.”

McKnight could almost be an echo of Mary Pedersen, who designed and was the first director of the bureau. Her intent was to provide the city with enough control to act if associations or district coalitions fell too far astray of their basic charter (as her successor Diane Linn charged had happened with the East Portland coalition), but independence from day-to-day interference by the politicians. “The problem with this is that if it’s at all successful, the politicians will take it over,” Pedersen once said. Pedersen, now living in Arizona, was unable to attend the gathering, although Linn did so.

Charges of elitism
Some say Pedersen’s prophecy has come true. Activists complain that commissioner Randy Leonard, who oversees the Office of Neighborhood Involvement, or ONI, makes major changes in programs that affect volunteers groups with no public input. Leonard says such critics are out of touch with the majority of citizens, who care more about results than process, and that his easy re-election proves it.

At the celebration, ONI director Jimmy Brown addressed the charge that neighborhood associations are unrepresentative of their communities. “Neighborhood associations are participatory, not representative,” he said. Those who don’t think such groups are doing the right things, or are doing them well enough have an obligation to get involved themselves, he said.

Back to the old days
While the neighborhoods of East Portland are chronological newcomers to the Portland neighborhood system, they may be spiritually closer to the spirit that started it. Many of the original neighborhood groups were the products of communities who felt their backs were to the wall, whether because of a Mount Hood Freeway that threatened to destroy 1600 houses in southeast Portland, a 32-block expansion by Good Samaritan Hospital into Northwest Portland, or urban renewal plans that called for elimination of what was left of old South Portland. Community volunteers then organized as a matter of self-preservation, and they were not just motivated, but mad as hell.

Mid-County activists two decades later included people who felt they had been pulled into Portland against their will, through trickery and false promises. They approached their new city officials with a chip on their shoulders, unwilling to take any crap. They were also used to providing for themselves.

In short, at Portland neighborhood system’s 30th year, Mid-Multnomah County residents were there to remind their older cousins of some important lessons.

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