We love our Veterans “really”.

We love our Veterans “really”.

This Memorial Day as a twenty-year Air Force service veteran I was sitting down missing my Vietnam-era Army veteran brother, Jerry Posey. He died in December 2020 after a long series of injuries attributed to being shot in the Back in Vietnam. He barely survived the war but eventually was overcome by its consequences.

I just want everybody to know that even though your country talks a good talk about how they support Veterans, there is a downside few want to talk about.

After all the ceremonies and hoopla thanking veterans for their service, today sit down and write your public officials, President, Congressional people, etc,  about the following issues on behalf of all veterans:

• Unwilling to inform and accommodate key family members at critical points in the illness
• Lack of communication and individualized treatment plans to share with all involved in treatment efforts
• Uncoordinated treatment access and integrated processes and procedures
• Third-rate treatment facilities at many stages. Some animal shelters might be rated better.
• Enabling additive and harmful pharmaceutical treatment regimens and drug therapy
• Bureaucratic delays and obstruction to timely treatment resources and information
• No sense of service oversite or evaluation of the performance of staff and program outcomes in all program areas.
• No holistic approach to psychological /physiological patterns of behavior of patient as seen by family or recommended and presented by various providers.
• Failure of outcomes not adequately addressed.
• Lack of support for external family members in recovery and healing processes.
• Lack of professional social workers and behavioral professionals necessary to address ongoing and advancing illness.
• No end-of-life counseling or planning for anticipated death consequences.
• No method to provide levels of transparency to families
• A general alienation of family and support groups. Sometimes using intimidation tactics to avoid interventions.
• Financial care resources/benefits are not adequate to provide end-of-life care commiserate with commercial market prices and services. The veteran must be declared indigent to be qualified for inpatient services.
• Oh I forgot, black veterans face persistent ongoing racism into the grave!!!!!!!!

 Yeah, we love our veterans.

NOT THIS TIME JOANN

I knew at some point, I had to address my opposition to JoAnn Hardesty’s reelection for Portland City Commissioner. Since we have only a few days before the May election I had to let our community know my thoughts. Most do not know I served as a fundraising Co-Chair for her last campaign. Let me say at the outset I do not know her opponents well, but my God, they couldn’t be any worse than JoAnn. You would have to be blind not to recognize that all of the City Commissioners are on the hot seat given Portland’s deplorable condition right now.

Besides the obvious, there are several reasons why she shouldn’t be re-elected and they are as follows:

1. She is a stone-cold bully and drama queen and most people know it. Most of us who have personally been in meetings and public conversations with her have to acknowledge these faltering traits. It’s her way or the highway and not to dare promote an opposing point of view. This was in full display in October of 2019 when she bullied her way into the nominating committee chair to elect and install E.D. Mondaine as the President of the Portland Branch of the NAACP following her election to City Council. She was warned that E.D. was a freak and she ignored the facts and proceeded to promote and leverage him throughout government and with other influential people and organizations.

2. She is ruthless and vindictive. What I originally thought was courage, turns out to be the insistence on being right and in control at all costs. If you oppose her you can be guaranteed to be blackballed and ostracized to the margins. If it doesn’t fit into her worldview, it doesn’t exist. If that wasn’t bad enough, she is genuinely toxic, polarizing, and disruptive.

3. She is willing to shave moral principles to get what she wants regardless of who is harmed in the process. She had to know that suing the City and the police union regarding the union’s false report would only inflame the already impaired and degraded relationship with the Portland police. We are all less safe, particularly black males as a result of JoAnn’s unbalance assault on law and order. Stevie Wonder can see how this City is consumed with lawless behavior across-the-board. Her willingness to skirt moral imperatives also showed up in her administration of NAACP business when she was President of that organization. These are items her endorsers would not have a clue about.

4. She has an enormous big head. You have to notice that she is willing to take credit for anything successful she is vaguely associated with. She is always clambering to be in the media and promote her agenda, excluding or minimizing the work of the other commissioners. One would think the City of Portland was her private property and she had some unilateral power to control decisions. In other words, she is a power control freak. She does things like exaggerating her military service. You would think that she commanded a battleship in the Navy when it is clear she was only a low-level secretary type, barely separating with an honorable discharge if that.

5. She has some personal life skill control issues well documented in the media. If you can’t manage personal business issues, how can you be expected to manage the City’s business? We can’t afford another four years of her insane drama. Character Matters. While she tries to associate herself with Avel Gordly, in truth she is the polar opposite.

6. We have to take another critical look at her previous background and positions of influence; the NAACP, ACTION, former State Legislator, and private business experience. There are dysfunctional patterns on display and the broader media needs to tell the full story, especially WW.

I won’t criticize her for being poorly educated because of the racist history of the miseducation of black people in America.  And we know the supposedly highly educated are making fools of themselves too. Nevertheless, I find myself struggling to oppose a black woman in a most prominent position, but the truth is the truth and she must go for the sake of the entire community.

Dr. King’s Legacy is Shamed

I could not sleep the last few nights. Now that the MLK holiday is over I could not stop thinking about how over the years so many organizations, politicians and systems have been “Pimping” Kings’ legacy. I am emotional about it but I know Dr. King must be turning over in his grave. We have desecrated his name by allowing others to steal his purpose and compromise his mission. You have to ask yourself, would Dr. King be satisfied or approving of what we have accomplished since his death? I think not.

In Portland, we have an opportunity to realize part of Kings’ vision. But our leaders are still tinkering and sputtering and spouting empty plateaus even when the economic equity path forward is plain as day.

I wrote this about Dr. Kings’ holiday, hoping some local media outlets would print it. The Oregonian printed a short revised version which I appreciated but you need the full context. I would recommend all who see substance in this post would contact your local politicians and tell them to let us cash this check:

Portland Desperately Needs a Leader on the Rose Quarter Project

By: James Posey

Nothing is rosy in the City of Roses. Our house is on fire and our commissioners are nowhere to be found, nor have we heard of a plan to boost jobs and economic security in Portland.

Where’s the leadership from our government officials?

We are at a historic moment to capitalize on the largest federal infrastructure investment in our nation’s history, yet City of Portland bureaus have been told to withhold permit applications on the I-5 Rose Quarter Improvement Project.

Contractors of color throughout the city have much to gain from the project, small business owners who have never worked on a government project will have a shot to grow their business qualifications, increase capacity, and create better-paying jobs right here in urban Portland, the historical core of the black community.

We need our governments as well as private industry to take responsibility by putting their money where their mouths are and uplifting our community with the opportunities, skill-building, and dollars that help to create and sustain intergenerational wealth.

Puttering is on the ballot this year, and it’s not a winning strategy. Those who talk intergenerational wealth and sleep while implementation opportunities languish should know they will be held accountable.

The Call

Leadership is admired by many, yet few actually live up to its status. Leadership is more than speaking up for a quick sound bite or news clip.

Leadership is taking a chance and trusting your intuition. Doing what’s right, not popular.

Where are the leaders in this town?

Mayor Wheeler, Portland commissioners, METRO, Multnomah County, we need you back at the table.

Governments officials from Oregon all the way to Washington DC have been peppered in words like “restorative justice” and “racial equity” when promoting infrastructure packages.

But what impacts do these words really mean for Black families in our region who have been locked out of economic opportunities for generations?

To the young climate activists, I hear you loud and clear, but you are reaping the benefits of generational privilege. Black people are disproportionately unemployed and struggling to make ends meet since the start of the COVID pandemic.

The 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom is alive and well.

Never has a project of this magnitude, overseen by ODOT, had a workforce advocate tasked with proactively identifying, recruiting, and helping place formerly incarcerated individuals and people of color with employers actively hiring. We found this innovative opportunity, on this project, with this contractor (Hamilton Sundt, in association with Raimore Construction). This aspect alone will prove the most meaningful in fulfilling the long-held promise of equal opportunity for living wage jobs.

In fact, 90 homicides, many young Black and Brown men and women, were reported in 2021 in Portland, a new high overshadowing the 70 homicides in 1987. I argue that this is also a real climate issue.

Ultimately what our children need right now are jobs, hope, and opportunities.

In his last speech before his assassination, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. left us with these parting words, “But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. And so, we’ve come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice.”

The Rose Quarter Project is one of those checks, and it’s time to cash it.