The ACLU of Maine joined the Communist Party for Socialism and Liberation and other advocacy groups Tuesday to urge the Portland City Council to end its policy of encampment sweeps and to testify against their proposed expansion of the city’s Homeless Services Center (HSC).
The Maine ACLU joined protesters outside Portland City Hall before a scheduled workshop on the City Council’s proposal to use an emergency declaration to relax city building ordinances in order to add 150 bunk beds to the HSC, at a cost of over $130,000.
Tuesday’s protest came within two weeks of another “Stop the Sweeps” protest on Sept. 15, in which speakers called for city officials to allow the homeless encampments to remain until more permanent housing solutions are available.
The encampments have become open-air drug markets where narcotics are sold and used while police turn a blind eye.
[RELATED: ‘Stop the Sweeps’: Portland Communists Rally Against City’s Homeless Encampment Clean Ups…]
Portland’s Encampment Crisis Response Team (ECRT) began its policy of cleaning out the city’s homeless encampments this spring, with a large encampment on the Bayside Trail.
On Sept. 6, the ECRT swept the Fore River Parkway encampment, after spending more than $65,000 on outreach to the homeless living in the encampment to try to get them into housing.
The ECRT’s efforts resulted in housing placements for only 18 of the almost 100 individuals living in the encampment.
“The order facilitates the city’s increasing sweeps, which are inherently racist, government-sanctioned violence against certain Portland residents simply because they cannot afford housing,” ACLU of Maine Legal Fellow Heather Zimmerman said in remarks to the City Council Tuesday.
“In addition to threatening residents’ constitutional rights, seizing and destroying property risks the loss of life-saving items, such as tents, sleeping bags, medicine, and legal and medical records – not to mention personal mementos that one may consider treasure, but the government considers trash,” Zimmerman said.
Zimmerman demanded that the City Council “immediately stop the sweeps and criminalization of homelessness,” and for the Department of Health and Human Services and Public Safety Committee to propose “compassionate and evidence-based policy solutions.”
The ACLU says that the proposed order punishes and criminalizes “unhoused residents” for “engaging in life-sustaining activities.”
The Maine Wire has documented how Portland’s encampments have become open air drug markets, and how the homeless have terrorized local business owners with discarded needles, machetes, and loaded weapons.
The Oxford English Dictionary’s first recorded utterance of the word racism was by a man named Richard Henry Pratt in 1902. Pratt was railing against the evils of racial segregation.
Segregating any class or race of people apart from the rest of the people kills the progress of the segregated people or makes their growth very slow. Association of races and classes is necessary to destroy racism and classism.
Although Pratt might have been the first person to inveigh against racism and its deleterious effects by name, he is much better-remembered for a very different coinage: Kill the Indian…save the man.Although he did not coin it (the word racism), he may have popularized it afterwards.
Trotksy published What is National Socialism in June 1933. Lev Davidovich Bronstein[b] (7 November [O.S. 26 October] 1879 – 21 August 1940), better known as Leon Trotsky,[c] was a Russian revolutionary, Soviet politician, journalist, and political theorist. He was a central figure in the October Revolution, Russian Civil War, and the establishment of the Soviet Union. Ideologically a Marxist and a Leninist, Trotsky’s thought and writings inspired a school of Marxism known as Trotskyism.
Born to a wealthy Ukrainian Jewish family in Yanovka (now Bereslavka, Ukraine), Trotsky was initially a narodnik, but embraced Marxism soon after moving to Nikolayev in 1896.
Racist – A made up word by Leon Trotsky in 1927 – Word was used to browbeat all dissenters of the communist ideology – Still used to this day in the west to shut down all nonconformists.
But Marxism in practice didn’t work out so well. Communist regimes produced the greatest ideological carnage in human history, killing more than a hundred million people in the last century.
Point is, don’t fear the word racist, look who bandies it like a child that found his dad’s pistol.
Their concerns are not real and are only out to destroy Whites. Never fear their words because all they have is name calling and democide.
No one should ever take the ACLU seriously since they were founded by Roger Baldwin, an avowed communist.
Fmi: https://www.discoverthenetworks.org/organizations/american-civil-liberties-union-aclu/
The American Criminal Liberties Union should be outlawed as a subversive anti-American organization.
The law outlawing Communism in the USA should be strictly enforced !
Repudiation of the oath of office by government employees should be a capital crime.
When you can’t face up to the truth, use the RACE card as the get-out-of-jail ticket. There is nothing racist about closing down the homeless encampments. Why not just bus the homeless down the NYC where they can receive vouchers for hotel rooms and other accommodations – the homeless situation here in Portland will never be solved by either democrats or money thrown at it.
Go visit the other Portland and see how tolerating this behavior has worked out for them.
And — why is it racist when most of the homeless are White?
Now that some of those people are black it’s all of a sudden about racism? Where did you people come from?
If I see another MF homeless. I will run him or her over.
F you ACLU and all of you F. liberal idiots.
Most of the homeless I see, and my partner works near the Marginal Way tent city, are white. So, does that mean only some sweeping is racist?
But, lets look at the other Portland, San Fran, Seattle, L.A. at their homeless situation. They also don’t want to offend anyone or call anyone racist. And, for the first time ever in history the media is literally saying “San Francisco is dying.” The homelessness and drugs are running the cities into the ground, but nobody is offended!! Here? We don’t have a chance. Who is going to want to see Portland, Maine, where you too can see live outdoor sex shows and drug action, and not feel safe to walk around, just to gawk at some seagulls and lighthouses?
I have a friend in NYC who came up to visit. He said he wouldn’t do that again as his family didn’t feel safe. He lives in Manhattan and was freaked out by our homeless situation here. So, this is what these protesters want. The destruction of Portland … but as long as nobodys feelies are hurt.