Attn: Portland City Council, MultCo Library, and Portland Public Schools, and Blues Festival organizers:

Calling the attention of my colleagues to this public communication given last Thursday: The City council should convene tommorrow, rather than vacating, and use the holiday to do some civic education in lieu of regular business.

Public libraries should feature these documents on display at this time of year; to neglect this, as they have done, is an abandonment of their educational mission, a neglect of fiduciary duty to the public and of official duty-to-care. Perhaps if there is no room among the dozen or more feature displays currently at the central library, they librarians could put some of these foundational texts of our democratic-republic on the display for Juneteenth, which is still present several weeks after the fact. (I don't have a problem with that, per se, but I'm surely not the only would who would like some more historical context given to this Juneteenth season now commemorated by our “intelligentsia” in lieu of, instead of alongside, Independance day.)

The white bourgeois liberals and assimilated others who hold authority in these bureaus and oversight roles, should also consider whether the fetishization of black culture is truly effective as a way of avoiding moral responsibility and/or atoning for ancestral guilt, given their own privelege and the allegedly oppressive means whereby it was obtained. In either case, They should stop drowning out all efforts at critical thinking with a flood of food, drink, spectacle, and mostly meaningless entertainment: this is somewhat unfair to the children and to future generations.

If no representatives of the Library Board, Public teachers unions, AAUP, or Graduate teaching fellows can take enough time away from their Palestine activism to do the historical recollection that is urgently needed here (and there also), then the Portland City Council should assume moral and intellectual leadership (for a change), take the stage, and perform public readings of the declaration at the Waterfront Blues Festival.

If they do not, any citizen or organ of civil society would be justified in picketing or using non-violent means to disrupt this event, in order to host a civic memorial event on the Waterfront park instead. I've been doing this since 2018 and I invite you all to join me this year. Should security guards or police be called to remove them, such viewpoint discrimination in favor of frivolous buffoonery and meaningless consumerism, would violate their right to political speech, expressive association.

Remember what happened in 2020 with the fireworks and the flashbangs in the Portland Plaza? (bombs bursting in air?). This and the plague ended the meaningless consumerism, made the war theatrics a little more realistic and emotionally appropriate to the situation, and was an answer to the prayers of some people who desire these changes. Remember what happened in 2021 with the "fire from heaven" and the heatwave that killed over a hundred in Oregon alone, and hundreds more throughout the region? (I had prayed with a friend that God Almighty would shut down the fireworks and change the status quo by any means necessary, and I'm now somewhat regretful for making that request, and will be more careful with my prayers in the future.) Repentance is much better than judgement, therefore let us repent. In addition to learning our own history for once, perhaps we should invite the indigenous tribes to give speeches, and maybe even have the last word. We could ask them to pray for their own first nations and our nation's welfare, along with local Jews who already do this, knowing full well that America IS NOT the “promised land” as heretofore commonly believed. Nevertheless, it being what it is, and us being citizens thereof, and you all being paid public servants thereof, we all have a civic duty, and it should not be neglected.

Thank you for your consideration.