We believe in a democratic organization where members are accountable to each other and it is time that we hold Representative Jamaal Bowman accountable. His actions and statements run counter to our values and our recently adopted national platform. Within the last few months, Bowman has voted in favor of $3.3 billion in military aid to Israel and $1 billion in funding for Israel’s Iron Dome, as well as toured Israel, posting pictures of himself with the leader of an apartheid regime.

These are not inconsequential actions that can be written off as a difference of opinion. As our national political platform states, “as socialists living in the heart of the American empire, we must oppose imperialism and work to address, cease, and heal the harm caused by our ruling class.” In May, DSA also released a statement claiming that it stood “in solidarity with the Palestinian struggle against apartheid, colonialism, and military occupation, and for equality, justice, and self-determination.” However, with his actions, Bowman sides with the ruling class in upholding imperialism.

Bowman’s actions are not abstract. By directly supporting Israeli aparetheid and endorsing Zionism, Bowman condones the continued Israeli settlement of Palestinian land, as well as the forced displacement, genocide, and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people. This is happening in real time —as we see in Sheikh Jarrah and in the open-air prison of the Gaza Strip, for example. This stands in direct opposition to the portion of the national platform that calls for solidarity with Palestinians and “for equality, human rights, and self-determination, including the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement.”

Here in Las Vegas, our chapter has developed a close relationship with Palestinian rights organizations and we count them among our strongest allies locally. To continue to ignore these actions by a national representative of our organization, the face of one of our largest campaigns, compromises our coalition and forces us to betray comrades with whom we have shared struggles.

Las Vegas DSA calls on the National Political Committee to demonstrate a commitment to our organization’s values by standing in solidarity with Palestinians and expelling Representative Jamaal Bowman from DSA.

This reading is part of the Imperialism Study Series put together by DSA Los Angeles and used in our own Socialist Night School study sessions on imperialism. The reading comes from module 2, “America’s Ascent Into Power.”

The excerpted version of “The Specificity of Imperialism” (PDF) by Salar Mohandesi that we are reading for our study series is approximately 8,900 words with an estimated reading time of 32 minutes.

Beginning:

“Imperialism,” David Harvey announced at a roundtable last year, should be seen as a “sort of metaphor, rather than anything real.” This came as quite a shock, not least because it was none other than Harvey himself who wrote one of the most acclaimed accounts of contemporary imperialism, The New Imperialism.

Harvey went on to explain that recent developments in capitalism – such as multinational corporations, technological networks, or shifts in the global division of labor – have raised enormous questions about how we understand imperialism today. What, for example, are we to make of the fact that Latin America is being turned into a massive soybean plantation, with most of the exports headed for China? Or, to take a similar, though even more drastic example that Harvey does not mention, how can we explain the fact that the single greatest U.S. export to China is soybeans, while China’s biggest export to the United States is computers? Does that make China an imperialist power? Is it extracting wealth from the periphery? Is the United States slipping into the periphery?

Reality, Harvey suggested, has become far too complicated for conventional models of imperialism. In fact, the concept of imperialism has become a kind of “straightjacket,” preventing us from really understanding new historical developments.

Keep reading (PDF)

Want to Know More?

The full version of Salar Mohandesi’s “The Specificity of Imperialism” can be read at Viewpoint Magazine. It is about 13,500 words with a 49-minute read time.

Join us for the approval of a resolution in support of Medicare for All Before the pandemic, an estimated half a million Hoosiers we’re living without insurance. This is why […]

Election day was Tuesday and DSA’s 30+ nationally-endorsed campaigns were put to voters. With a nearly 70% win rate for DSA's campaigns nationally, there's much to discuss about organizing for socialism at the ballot box and the rising tensions between the left and the existing Democratic establishment. On tonight’s show,  we'll share provisional election results and an interview with a DSA-endorsed candidate for Somerville, Massachusetts City Council, Tessa Bridge.

 

Here in NYC, Eric Adams has -- unfortunately -- swept to victory as mayor. Adams has publicly distanced himself from the left and socialism, so to extend the courtesy, let us just say that *all* cops are bastards.  How are we going to beat Adams and the bourgeois, capitalist interests he represents? We discuss that question live with our comrade Robert Cuffy, a union city worker and police abolitionist who organizes with NYC-DSA's Labor Branch and Afrosocialist Caucus.

 

We also hear a report from RPM's antifascist correspondent Amy Wilson on the rise of far-right organizing in New York City around the wedge issue of mandates for COVID-19 vaccine.

 

Keep up with the results of DSA's nationally-endorsed races as they develop, thanks to our comrades at Metro DC DSA: https://washingtonsocialist.mdcdsa.org/station-z/dsa-races-2021

 

The Comanche 3 Coal Plant is the largest single source of air pollution in Colorado. It’s a massive generating station southeast of Pueblo where you can see the smoke from miles away. To avert the worst of the climate crisis we need to shut it down as soon as possible.

A Bad Idea from the Beginning

One of the tragedies of the Comanche Coal Plant is that it was built in 2010. We were already experiencing record-breaking heat waves and other extreme weather events from climate change. It was clear then that building new coal plants was a death sentence.

Yet, Xcel Energy pushed for the project and the Public Utility Commission (PUC), responsible for regulating Xcel, gave the project the green light.

The project cost nearly a $1 billion to build. Since it came on line, not only has the electricity been dirty, but it has struggled to even work. Break downs have cost hundreds of millions of dollars to fix. It’s one of the most expensive, unreliable sources of energy in our state.

It’s criminal that Xcel built this coal plant and that the PUC allowed the project to go through.

Glaring Example of Environmental Racism

The Comanche Coal Plant sits near the heavily working class and Latino city of Pueblo. One out of every ten adults has chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, more than twice the state average. As is so often the case, frontline communities endure the worst harms of running coal while Wall Street investors reap the profits.

Join the Fight to Close the Comanche Coal Plant

Originally Xcel planned on running the coal plant until 2070. After public outcry and determined organizing, that date was pushed back to 2050, then again to 2040 and now finally 2035. However, the science is clear that coal needs to wind down by 2030.

Xcel just proposed its ten year plan to the Public Utility Commission (PUC). The PUC is responsible for listening to public comments and deciding what the final plan will be.

Hundreds of people have already submitted comments telling the PUC to close all coal plants, especially Comanche 3, by 2030.

Luckily, the PUC has new commissioners from the one that approved construction of the plant in the first place. We have a good chance of convincing them to do the right thing, but we need to show an outpouring of support for closing the coal plant to make that happen.

Three ways to help Close the Comanche Coal Plant

1. Write a comment demanding that the Comanche 3 Coal Plant close.
2. Join our DSA Climate Comment & Watch Party on December 2nd
3. Email ecosocialist.committee@denverdsa.org to join us in building power for a Just Transition

 

To those among the Left who dream of a community defense organization in their area, Las Rondas Campesinas may seem like magic. When it comes to finding alternatives to policing, prefiguring the sharing of labor and resources, defending one’s neighborhood against a paramilitary aggression, and commanding autonomy from the state, Las Rondas Campesinas stand as proof that the seemingly impossible can be done. Yet as exceptional as Las Rondas Campesinas are as a community defense formation we know it is no magic which explains their victories. But through a careful study and analysis of the conditions and actions which have defined the movement, we can hope to try to learn lessons from Las Rondas Campesinas to apply in our own anti-imperialist organizing.

A community defense formation can begin just as a simple solution to a problem shared amongst neighbors. The story of Las Rondas Campesinas begins in the 1970s with indigenous cattle ranchers in the Peru highlands. The cattle ranchers were particularly vulnerable to the issue of cattle thievery; these ranchers have been so dependent on the cattles for subsistence that a loss of cattle for any reason is grave, yet they had no recourse to ensure it wouldn’t happen to them. The response was for the ranchers to get together and create and maintain a rotation of nightly patrols to look over everyone’s cattle, which are governed by assemblies, known as rondas. 

And before there was community defense in Cajamarca, there was community. Located in the rural Andes Mountains since before the Incas, these Quechua peoples share a common history, language, and culture. Yet as indigenous, it is not only social traditions which they share but a common political struggle against colonialism. And economically, they had a mode of production not so atomized by capitalism that it would impede a collective solution: with no bosses pitting worker successes against each other or local real estate portfolios for which to edge out your neighbors, it would have made clear and immediate sense to share.

Not only have Las Rondas Campesinas been able to protect their communities from cattle theft but they are able to resolve disputes and crimes matters of all kinds, adjudicating them through their assemblies and enforcing them by the sentencing of community work or occasionally a lashing of the whip. Filling the role left vacant in their region by an often underserving or antagonistic state, subverting a state illegitimized both in the eyes of a colonized people in its commitment towards its supposed citizens, Las Rondas Campesinas engage in self-governance, moving beyond to the judiciary democratically and collectively decision making, to include public works programs to build their own roads and schools.

The defense aspect of Las Rondas Campesinas would be put to a critical test with the internal conflicts of Peru in the 1980s and 1990s. Following an economic collapse, the militant group Shining Path began its guerilla war against the Peruvian state, seizing control of farms and villages as a means to that end. Although often equipped with little more than sticks and whips (they would later acquire some number of small arms from the state), they had their familiarity with the land, the support of their people, and a fully operational patrol-based surveillance network with which to defend themselves. Although the Shining Path would take many lives in their region, Las Rondas Campesinas would successfully attack back, in one case kidnapping and publicly executing a commander. In the end, no guerrilla force could manage to occupy Cajamarca. 

Hostility against the Las Rondas Campesinas took a turn for the worse in 1990 when fascist president Alberto Fujimori was elected, bringing with him consolidated power, crushing austerity, and indiscriminate state terror. In order to try to get rid of the ronderos, Fujimori tried to create a parallel structure paramilitary self-defense committees, but Las Rondas Campesinas had too strong of a foothold, and ultimately Fujimori had to deal with them directly in his conflict against the Shining Path, and in 2000 a law was passing giving legal recognition to the Rondas Campesinas. 

But in addition to the physical violence, the economic violence of Fujimori’s neoliberalism and privatization was exceptional. Through a series of laws, Peruvian indigenous land was declared open season for mining interests. The General Mining Law legalized prospecting throughout the country, while another law mandated that in sales of land that mining companies be allowed the first offer. In the new Fujimori constitution, land protections granted by the 1979 constitution were abolished and the state could take possession of any land it deemed to be abandoned. Stories emerged of farmers given the ultimatum of selling away their land or having it confiscated by the State from them.

It was from this context that when the Yanacocha and Conga gold mining projects came to Cajamarca, Las Rondas Campesinas were already organized to oppose it. It was an environmental struggle because it was a fight for the preservation of the land and the condition of their water supply threatened by the mining operations, a struggle against capitalism because capital was being invested to extract resources which did not rightfully belong to it, a struggle against fascism and neoliberalism because of Fujimori’s laws which enabled the seizure of lands for mining, a struggle against imperialism because there were mining companies owned by the World Bank and the United States, and a struggle against colonialism because this was an indigenous community fighting for the rights to their own land. And as we saw in the case of the cattle thefts that Las Rondas Campesinas started with, the people were agitated to act because this was an existential threat to their way of life, only this time, not as threat to individual ranchers, but to the people as a whole.

As the people of Cajamarca protested the mining underway in their communities, already feeling the impacts from farmers forced off their land by the state and a mercury spill which poisoned the local water supply, the state responded further by tear gassing the public, conducting illegal arrests, and burning houses along the water. The people responded by conducting region-wide strikes, electing a Communist as regional president, and forming Los Guardianes de las Lagunas (The Guardians of the Lagoons). 

The ronderos who patrolled for cattle thieves and guerrilla fighters now patrolled mining sites and rivers, the assemblies that the people looked to pass judgement in the case of crimes in their communities now passed judgement on the theft of the mining companies. 3,000 people gathered in Celendín to march over 600 miles to Lima in what was known as the March for Water. As they stopped from town to town and people learned what they were doing, people gave them food and water and other supplies and others joined them in their march. By the time they reached Lima they were a force of 40,000.

A second regional strike was called which lasted for months against brutal repression from the state. There were massive rallies and protests, and soup kitchens to keep people focused and prepared. The police fired at the protestors from helicopters and then raided the vigil that was organized after. Rondas Campesinas caught soldiers attempting to rape the local women and girls and kidnapped the officers so as to deliver judgement. When the police burned down the house of a family who refused to sell their land, Las Rondas Campesinas rebuilt it. Although there were numerous brutalities imposed during the time of the Conga mining project, the people were eventually able to overcome it: in 2016 the Conga mining project was ordered to be stopped, citing the environmental impacts, but in no small part due to a united people organized to fight for their lives by use of any means they had available to them. And earlier this year, Keiko Fujimori, Alberto Fujimori’s fascist daughter, was defeated in Peru’s Presidential election by Pedro Castillo, a former Rondero patroller, campaigning on rewriting the Fujimori Constitution.

The concepts of community defense and self-governance can seem like a dream, but that is exactly what Las Rondas Campesinas have been able to achieve. While formations like the ronderos clearly still have the revolution ahead of them it is evident that they have a piece, in the form of radical and organized working class power. When it is they who build the roads, they who defend themselves against armed oppressors, they who ultimately decide what happens to the land they live on, we see that promise of community organizing. It can happen with a community, situated along political struggle, solving a simple problem amongst neighbors with collective action, growing into a dedicated organization in service of each other, united in putting their lives on the line when necessary. And it can stop extraction of resources of the most powerful economies in the world.

References

• “People in defence of life and territory: Counter-power and self-defence in Latin America” Raúl Zibechi
• “Las rondas campesinas, garantes de la justicia ambiental frente a las políticas extractivistas en Perú,” La Revista Ideele
• “Shining Path Rebellion in Peru 1980-Present,” OnWar.com
• “La masacre de Lucanamarca: el día que Sendero Luminoso asesinó a 69 peruanos,” Enterarse
• “¿Qué son las rondas campesinas, la organización de la cual proviene Castillo?” Sputnik
• “¡CONGA NO VA! LOS GUARDIANES DE LAS LAGUNAS: DEFENDIENDO LA TIERRA, EL AGUA Y LA LIBERTAD EN CAJAMARCA, PERÚ,” Ana Isla
• “Conga Project,” Wikipedia
• “Castillo elected president of Peru: Socialist teacher defeats daughter of fascist dictator,” Liberation News

AN OPEN LETTER TO DSA’S NATIONAL POLITICAL COMMITTEE FROM MADISON AREA DSA

On multiple occasions since his election, Representative Jamaal Bowman has used his office and public stature to work against the political positions of the Democratic Socialists of America and the principles of socialist internationalism. Bowman has demonstrated that he is unfit to be a DSA member and spokesperson for our organization. The role of a socialist elected official is to be a tribune for the working class and oppressed, to project our movement’s politics and attract wide layers of our class. Representative Bowman’s recent actions and statements run completely counter to this role and are grounds for expulsion from DSA. Madison Area DSA requests Bowman’s removal as a member of DSA and by extension as a representative of our organization.

On July 28th, 2021, Bowman voted in favor of $3.3 billion in direct military aid to Israel. Again eight weeks later on September 23rd, 2021, Bowman voted with the majority of the House to approve $1 billion in funding for Israel’s Iron Dome air defense system. In last summer’s bombing campaign, the Israeli state murdered at least 256 Palestinians, including 66 children, destroyed residential building complexes, and displaced over 72,000 people. Bowman’s votes allow these crimes to continue and extend further. 

If actions are not enough, his public statements reveal his thinking. On Monday, October 18, Jamaal Bowman tweeted in response to the death of George W. Bush’s Secretary of State Colin Powell: “As a Black man just trying to figure out the world, Colin Powell was an inspiration. He was from NYC, went to City College, and rose to the highest ranks of our nation. Sending love, strength and prayer to the family and friends of Secretary Powell. Rest in power sir.” These comments legitimize one of the top architects of the criminal invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan, who in turn is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Afghans and Iraqis, the plight of countless refugees, and the many working-class veterans killed, disabled or driven to suicide. Bowman’s comments here and elsewhere demonstrate a conscious commitment to reinforce the political order and ingratiate himself with its rulers.

Career aspirations should not be allowed to compromise DSA’s strong stance of support for Palestinian national liberation. Our conventions, platform, and national working groups have repeatedly placed us in solidarity with the Palestinian people, and in favor of the tactics of boycott, divest, and sanction. A statement released on behalf of DSA on May 13th made this explicitly clear. We have no reason to expect different from Bowman in the future, and this is simply not compatible with our aims in DSA.

Madison Area Democratic Socialists of America calls for the revocation of Jamaal Bowman’s membership as demonstrative of “substantial disagreement with the principles or policies of the organization”. Bowman’s further association would only serve to misrepresent our politics as democratic socialists and move us away from our political goals.

In the summer of 2021, as the city council considered renewing the Clean & Safe contract, Portland DSA and the rest of the End Clean & Safe coalition published the following content as a series of emails meant to educate the public on the deeply flawed system of enhanced service districts. Despite the vociferous objections of numerous community members and the opposition of Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty, the rest of the city council voted to renew the contract for another five years. But the fight is not over 一 Portland’s other two enhanced service districts will soon be up for contract renewal, and the city council can vote to terminate or renegotiate the Clean & Safe contract at any time. Join our mailing list so we can keep you in the loop on future efforts to end the cruel and dangerous sweeps of our houseless population carried out in service of wealthy business interests without accountability to the people of Portland!

Table of Contents

1. The Secret City Within the City
2. The Haunting of Downtown Portland
3. The Case of the Missing Oversight
4. The Curious Case of the Bait Bike
5. The Map of the Secret City Within the City
6. A Journey Into the Belly of the Beast

Chapter 1: The Secret City Within the City

Between the clanging streetcars and sizzling griddles of food carts, a shadowy syndicate stalks downtown Portland’s streets.

While they’re out there, no one is safe. Houseless residents endure harassment and displacement. Homeowners, city agencies, and businesses watch, bewildered, as it siphons their resources for its own private ends. Day by day, the group lays claim to more public space, amassing an armed and unaccountable police force to keep us out of places that only yesterday belonged to everyone.

What is this monstrosity taking over our city?

Like any seasoned con artist, it goes by many names. Business Improvement District. Enhanced Service District. Polite society refers to it by its legal title: Clean & Safe.

Beneath its polished exterior, Clean & Safe is a dirty and dangerous operation. Since 1994, Clean & Safe has contracted with the City of Portland to privatize services like trash collection and security. Each year, Clean & Safe rakes in more than $5 million in mandatory fees from every business and property owner in its 213-block district to fund these “enhanced services.” However, there is little to no oversight or transparency in how those funds are spent.

In its tax filings (2018), Clean & Safe reported that 80% of its $5 million budget was managed by one independent contractor一the Portland Business Alliance. Of its total budget, the group spent:

• 40% on patrolling public space
• 16% on cleaning services
• 13% on holiday lights

This September, Portland City Council votes on a 10-year renewal of its contract with Clean & Safe. Time is running out…and only we can stop them.

Join us as we pry off a manhole cover and descend into this secret city within the city. Over the next few weeks, we’ll release new chapters of this mystery and shed light on the dangerous path this shadowy syndicate is leading us down.

Who really runs Downtown Clean & Safe? What do they spend $5 million on each year? Will City Council stand with Portland residents or the Portland Business Alliance? Do twinkle lights and armed, uncertified security officers make a city clean or safe?

Chapter 2: The Haunting of Downtown Portland

Content warning: This chapter references police violence, gun violence, and death.

For a Portland August, it’s a little too hot. The sun downtown is a little too bright, so you linger on a shady sidewalk. Through the haze of the heat, a figure approaches. Could it be a Portland Police officer? No, that’s not the right uniform. Anyway, you’re not doing anything wrong, just trying to catch a moment’s rest. As the figure draws closer, you can make out a badge and a gun. The armed guard demands you move off the sidewalk. Your heart races as you watch the hand stretch menacingly toward the holster. If this isn’t the police, who could it be?

Last month, we lamented a loss of life in Delta Park. A man named Freddy Nelson, Jr., fell at the hand of a private armed security guard — not licensed to carry a weapon, but commissioned by a wealthy developer to police a BottleDrop.

Not long after, Old Town property owners copped to signing contracts with a hodgepodge of private security firms, turning the Entertainment District into a Wild West town. As late night revelers swarm, armed vigilantes prowl our streets with assault rifles. “We’re kind of running an underground government,” a hotel owner boasted, “to keep things safe.”

It’s almost more than you can believe. Almost.

Peer through the doors of any shopping mall or grocery store and you find them there, too: private security guards endowed with the power to turn lives upside down. We’ve taken consolation in the notion that their authority meets an abrupt end at the property line.

But what happens when property owners no longer observe the line between their private holdings and the public way? What if they set their goons loose into our streets?

By now you’ve heard about Downtown Clean & Safe, the Enhanced Services District (ESD) controlling 213 blocks of downtown Portland. Each year, Clean & Safe extracts more than $5 million in special fees from the homes and businesses within its borders, whether they like it or not. An eye-popping 80% of Clean & Safe’s multi-million dollar budget is managed by the Portland Business Alliance (PBA), a lobbying group that represents some of the city’s largest businesses 一 and, in turn, the interests of Portland’s wealthiest crooks.

In 2012, the PBA inked a deal with the Portland Police Bureau (PPB) to fund, and have a hand in choosing, four of the six officers assigned to patrol the Clean & Safe district. But the racket doesn’t end there. PBA is also in league with Portland Patrol Inc (PPI), a private security firm that deploys its minions across the city, including the transit mall, Smart Park garages, and even the Apple Store.

You read that right — the Apple Store. For PPI, there’s no clear boundary between its public and private clientele. In a 2020 meeting with the City Auditor’s office, PPI’s owner, John Hren, boasted about offering “umbrella services,” which empower his employees to cross property lines however they see fit.

But the PPI umbrella stretches even wider yet. Hren told the Auditor that, in a private security scene that he called “incestuous,” his officers will lend a hand when other firms call in a favor. (Adding to the incest, Hren himself is a retired PPB commander.)

What does all this mean? When a Clean & Safe officer responds to a call, we don’t know who’s going to show up. It might be a PPI guard assigned to a Smart Park garage, or one of the six officers on loan from PPB, or a lackey from another private firm. Without access to PPI records, it’s hard to say. Hren told the City Auditor that, as a private contractor, he “doesn’t have to provide data or any information.”

As PBA and PPI blur the lines between private and public space and obscure crucial reporting data, we lose control over our own city. Meanwhile, the goons who haunt our streets answer only to the whims of a shady syndicate of wealthy business owners. You might begin to wonder if that whole 213-block zone of public sidewalks, streets, and parks hasn’t been carved right out of the city and given over to private hands. You wouldn’t be far from the truth.

While Clean & Safe operates, there really is an “underground government” at work — a secret city within the city.

Who exactly are Clean & Safe guards accountable to? Without access to their incident reports, how do we monitor their activities? Do Portland officials have any power to rein them in? Who’s calling the shots, and whose voices are being ignored?

Chapter 3: The Case of the Missing Oversight

The Central Library is buzzing with activity, but you don’t have time for distractions. In less than one month, Portland City Council will vote on extending its contract with Clean & Safe, the shadowy entity sicking armed thugs on the streets of downtown.

You look back down at the pages of the city auditor’s report, fanned out in front of you. This is, admittedly, the first audit you’ve ever read. But after that encounter with the armed security guard, you’re rattled. You can still see the officer’s gun glinting in the hot summer sun, the slight smile on his face as he orders you to keep moving. All you did was ask who he worked for.

After the incident, you nosed around on the streets to see if anyone had more information. One woman told you he was private security — “Clean & Safe,” she said.

“They don’t tell you where they’re from, you have to ask for their agency. At the beginning of COVID, people were getting kicked out from under bridges, even as people had nowhere to go with the shelters closed. It’s almost like they wait for folks to fall asleep to move them.”

Hearing her story, you felt the anger growing hot in your chest. What kind of city would allow its residents to be treated with so much malice?

But she was helpful. She was the one who hinted you should visit the library, where you found the blistering city auditor’s report. As you pore over its pages, you can hardly believe how the City of Portland neglects its oversight responsibility. The City has never received or reviewed annual reports or audits from Clean & Safe, and Mayor Wheeler has never received or reviewed incident reports from the private security contractor.

You read that right: no one tasked with monitoring Clean & Safe is doing their job.

Reading the audit, you start to notice a deafening silence: where are the voices of the houseless community? You notice that neither Portland Business Alliance nor Clean & Safe have houseless representation on their boards. If that weren’t bad enough, opportunities for input from the community are basically nonexistent, and those that exist are inaccessible. Only one of PBA’s recent listening sessions on the Clean & Safe contract renewal gave community members the option to testify in person 一 all others required access to the internet and a digital device. And while PBA hosted an exclusive session for business owners, they never sought the voices of residents who are houseless, even though many have the most contact with Clean & Safe officers. These closed-door policies have one effect: no one outside the Clean & Safe cabal has any say in the training, qualifications, or standards of the private security force.

This is doubly dangerous because private security targets those who are already marginalized in our community, including housed people of color and houseless people of all races. (Communities of color 一 specifically Black and Native American communities 一 are represented at disproportionately higher rates in Portland’s homelessness population.)

By the time you finish your reading it’s dark. The library is about to close. Looking down at page after page of notes, covered in arrows and question marks, you wonder: who is the PBA? How much are they spending on private security? If they aren’t spending their entire $5 million budget on security and attorneys, where could the rest of it be going?

Chapter 4: The Curious Case of the Bait Bike

You push through the heavy doors of the library and into the darkness on SW 10th. The cool fall air sends a shiver up your spine; you pull your coat a little tighter. These days, the library feels like one of the last truly public spaces left in town: a place where anyone can come in from the cold or use the bathroom 一 simply be a human 一 without having to pay a fee.

You’ve had a fruitful night of research. Now you know the Central Library sits just outside the boundaries of Clean & Safe, an Enhanced Services District (ESD) where private armed security officers freely roam the streets with no oversight from the city. In that sense, Clean & Safe is the opposite of the library: Instead of opening its arms to neighbors seeking shelter, the ESD forces out people who have nowhere else to go.

The bell of the streetcar clangs, pulling you out of your reveries. You rush on board towards your next destination. After a few stops, you hop off and hurry inside a dingy brick building. Down the hall, light streams through a frosted glass door emblazoned with the words “CRIMINAL DEFENSE.”

You nudge the door open. Behind a desk littered with stacks of paper, a woman in a Stetson fedora punches notes into a battered typewriter. A cigarette dangles from her lips. Maybe she’s leaning a little hard into this Maltese Falcon bit. Then again, with everything you’ve learned about Clean & Safe, you’re starting to feel like you stepped onto the set of a film noir.

“Ah, come in,” she says, clearing a seat. “I wondered when you’d come to see me. They say I’m a criminal defense lawyer, but I’ll tell you what: the real criminals aren’t my clients on the streets 一 they’re the ones working in swanky high-rises downtown.”

You came to her office on a tip from your contacts on the street. She’d taken on pro bono work for houseless folks who had run-ins with Clean & Safe security. She says, “The sweeps are traumatizing and inhumane. They’re also criminal: City contractors steal the belongings of houseless community members and take them to the dump. In at least one case, they stole a woman’s medication, leading to her death!”

But sweeps are just the beginning, she explains. ESDs increase resources for policing, which in turn increases criminalization. Within ESDs, houseless people are arrested 22 times more frequently than in other parts of Portland. ESD resources may even create crime where it doesn’t otherwise exist: Clean & Safe and its private security contractor recently bought the Portland police a “bait bike,” a $2,000 bicycle equipped with GPS tracking, to ensnare people into theft.

Even worse, some ESDs pay for extra staff members in district attorneys’ offices to speed up prosecution. Pre-pandemic, ESDs also funded and operated community courts that could sentence people who were arrested to clean the streets under the supervision of ESDs 一 all for the crime of being poor.

“Those DAs in their $3,000 suits and air conditioned offices love to prosecute people for the terrible offense of napping in public,” she snorts.

You’re starting to connect the dots. Under the guise of Clean & Safe, private businesses are building their own security forces, increasing arrests, funding prosecutors, and sentencing houseless people to do their bidding for free. They really are running a secret city within the city.

As the lawyer finishes her story, she says, “If you want to get to the bottom of this, you’ll need to look into who runs Clean & Safe.” Suddenly, she leans forward and points a shaking finger at you. “But if you do, be on your guard. Powerful people are wrapped up in this … and they’ll do anything they can to keep their grip on this city.”

Stepping back outside onto the foggy streets downtown, you can’t help but wonder: Who is really the criminal in this case? Who are the puppeteers pulling the strings? What’s their agenda? Who really runs Clean & Safe … and the streets of downtown Portland?

Chapter 5: The Map of the Secret City Within the City

Last night was too much to take in — a secret city within the city?!

Who would believe that?

To clear your head, you pass the early morning strolling the waterfront. Pausing to watch the waves tease the boat moored north of the bridge, you continue south towards Salmon Springs. For a moment it seems the fog is starting to lift. You shake out your coat, relieved at the promise of a sunny morning. But you’ve only caught a gap in the fog — it hasn’t lifted at all. And is this fog, or is it something else? What fog carries such a pungent, chemical stench, the way that cities used to smell? You wipe your eyes with your sleeve and tell yourself you’re overtired, it’s nothing, you’re imagining things. But you can’t shake this sense of something nefarious rolling through the city.

You turn and head back across SW Naito, when a yellow-gloved hand beckons you down a parking ramp. The man wears the jumpsuit of a janitor and draws your attention to the cameras overhead. “Stay close,” he warns, “we don’t have much time!” Through heavy doors and down dark corridors, he delivers you into a windowless room and flips the switch. When your eyes adjust, you can make out a giant corkboard with printouts in haphazard array, with yarn anchored to the sheets with pushpins.

And that’s when it clicks.

“This can’t be real,” you insist.

The man stands straight, radiating confidence. “Oh it’s real alright.”

You protest that it looks like a meme. This draws a laugh. “Don’t you know what building you’re in?” His rubber-gloved hand taps a sheet in the corner of the board bearing the now-familiar mark of Downtown Clean & Safe, his eyes flashing with conspiracy. “These business types,” he goes on, “they’ve got plans for this town.” There’s a sudden shift in his demeanor — one yellow glove extending back to the switch while the other reaches for your sleeve. “This way,” as he tugs you out the door. “Make it quick!”

Back on the surface, you sprint home with a burst of energy and a food cart tofu wrap in hand, running what you’ve just seen against what you already know. As your shoes clap the pavement you rehash the basics: Clean & Safe is an Enhanced Services District (ESD) covering 213 blocks of downtown Portland. Every business and homeowner with an address inside the district pays a mandatory fee (on top of other taxes and fees). These fees furnish Clean & Safe with more than $5 million each year.

Unlike with the city budget, ESD ratepayers have no say in how their money gets spent. There is no public budget process they can shape — no votes to cast, no commissioners or representatives to contend with. Decisions take place behind the closed doors of the Portland Business Alliance (PBA), a group that speaks for some of the city’s wealthiest businesses.

You turn the lock and settle in at the table, not bothering to hang up your coat, and start to diagram your findings.

First, you write down City and the letters ESD and draw a short line between them. From ESD, you draw a line down to PBA, the primary contractor for Clean & Safe. The PBA lays claim to 8 of Clean & Safe’s 12 staff positions, and three-quarters of Clean & Safe’s Board of Directors represent PBA member organizations.

From PBA you draw a three-pronged line connecting to PPB, PPI, and CCC, each one representing a subcontract the PBA holds with another agency.

PPB: Clean & Safe gets six officers from the Portland Police Bureau for its patrols (you draw a dashed line between City and PPB), and the PBA gets a say in which officers are assigned to Clean & Safe.

PPI: The six PPB officers work with the armed guards hired by Portland Patrol, Inc., a private security agency (a solid line between PPB and PPI) whose owner made it clear to the City Auditor that he answers to PBA, not to the City. You rummage through your files for your copy of the Auditor’s interview and tape it to the wall next to the sheet with your diagram, running a length of yarn between the pages.

CCC: The “Clean” in Clean & Safe, Central City Concern receives around 20% of the budget. What’s more, those arrested by the ESD’s private security officers and convicted in the ESD’s private court system have served out their sentences with CCC.

You step back to think through a hunch. Of the millions of dollars that Clean & Safe extracts from zoned-in businesses and residents, just over $1 million pays the salaries for staff, most of whom are PBA staff. And these staff work under the direction of a board effectively controlled by PBA members. Does Clean & Safe exist solely to benefit the Portland Business Alliance and its members?

A quick google lends credence to your hunch. According to Willamette Week, PBA’s CEO, a recent Brooklynite named Andrew Hoan, confirms the intermingling of Clean & Safe and the PBA: “It’s better for both organizations.” What’s more, the same article reports, “Audit results show that he and other administrative staff spend more than 50% of their time on Clean & Safe issues.” You print it out and tape it to the wall, using an old shoelace to draw a line between the sheets.

But wait a minute — more than 50% of their time? What issues could these be? You have the private police force, the paid-for positions in the district attorney’s office, the “community” court system, the branded garbage cans and sanitation teams? And why this scheme to get the City to assent to shaking down those 213 blocks of separate businesses and homes? Couldn’t PBA’s wealthy business owners raise their own $5 million? It’s like they really are constructing a whole other city — a mirror image of the legal one — from the inside out!

Worse still, PBA staff routinely violate lobbying rules and campaign finance regulations. In May, Hoan contested the Auditor’s finding that the PBA failed to disclose at least 25 interactions with city officials, levying the office’s second-ever fine for PBA’s undisclosed requests for “access, funding or action.” The Auditor also fielded campaign finance complaints against PBA board chair Vanessa Sturgeon and chair emeritus Mike Golub, whose individual contributions to Mayor Wheeler’s reelection campaign far exceeded voter-approved contribution limits.

By now your wall is looking like the corkboard that yellow-gloved janitor revealed. Your head begins to spin, your tofu wrap-fueled boost is fading, and the late nights are catching up to you. Before giving in at last and crashing on the bed, you turn your gaze back to the window, the fog still rolling through the streets like a smokescreen.

What future does this “secret city” portend for those who live here? How deep does PBA influence run at City Hall? What can Portland city government do to stop it? Who’s really pulling the strings here?

Chapter 6: A Journey Into the Belly of the Beast

Morning comes too soon, and you blink awake at the sun in your eyes. On your wall, the documents that spell out the truth to the secret city in the city. With all you’ve pieced together, you should feel proud. Except that what you’ve found is a deeply ineffective system that hurts people. You no longer want answers. You want to stop Clean & Safe and protect your community. The flood of adrenaline is almost better than coffee. Almost.

Per the city’s contract with Clean & Safe, it’s the City of Portland that’s supposed to monitor annual reports. You pace around your desk, find a copy of the Clean & Safe audit, and confirm your hunch: the City’s Revenue Division did not review any reports. Neither did Mayor Wheeler, the police commissioner charged with reviewing any reports regarding private security within the enhanced services district (ESD).

You can’t be the only one angry about this, you reason, so you dress and hurry outside to compare notes with your contacts. The woman who sent you to the library to learn about ESDs is sipping a cortado, her bright expression turning thoughtful once you explain that you’re searching for others who want to stop the ESDs. Now she points you towards City Hall, describing a press conference held by activists making exactly that demand.

You hurry over, stopping only for an oat milk turmeric latte. When you arrive, the press conference has just begun. You hear from Barbie Weber, who says that her camp was once swept ten times in a month: “Living outside, you lack the resources to properly store your belongings and it’s a constant battle. You want to be comfortable. And what is wrong with comfort? What is wrong with wanting that blanket that your granny made you?”

Other speakers detail the harms of the ESDs, still others talking about the ways they’re pushing back. You learn that even though the auditor’s office released their ESD report more than a year ago (and even though the End Clean & Safe coalition has been speaking to City Council members about the audit for weeks during the open comment period), the City has never publicly acknowledged the report, let alone taken action on its recommendations. When coalition members stressed the importance of a transparent, open contract renewal process, the City denied them: it refused to share draft contract language. Even worse, City Council let the Portland Business Alliance (PBA) hold inaccessible virtual hearings, the first two targeted only at housed community members who live or work inside the ESD. Only one hearing was held in person, allowing for the attendance of individuals who may not have easy internet or computer access. Despite this, the coalition members say, the feedback from community members was overwhelmingly negative towards the renewal, sharing their concerns that it was undemocratic and harmful. You swell with pride and gratitude for your fellow Portlanders.

At the end of the press conference, organizers remind you that the Clean & Safe contract will be up for a vote on September 23 at 2 PM. You note the date and start brainstorming testimony, doodling a chart in your notebook not dissimilar to the one on your wall, marking down phrases like, “no democratic process” and “brutality from private security” in the margins. As the page fills up you’re hit with a wave of anger. You can’t wait until the hearing on the 23rd. You turn on your heel and head towards City Hall.

To your surprise, the doors are unlocked. While it appears that the building is lightly staffed, you spot a bored young man at a desk behind a glass door labeled “Mayor Wheeler’s Office.” You head through the door.

“Can I help you?” the young man politely asks. You tell him you’re there to comment about ESDs. He looks confused, so you explain a little.

“Oh yeah, that,” he says, clicking his mouse for longer than seems reasonable. “Yeah, it’s up for a vote on the 23rd. Of course, PBA was just here, and they told us that there’s really nothing to worry about. It’s just a routine contract renewal.”

You stand there, taken aback by his blind faith in the PBA. He appears to not notice the expression on your face, and continues tapping away at his computer. At that moment, you see the door open, and a middle-aged man with the look of a washed-up surfer emerges. He begins barking orders at the young man, who starts furiously taking notes, when he notices you and stops short.

“Sorry, I don’t have time for you. I have a meeting,” he states, brushing past you.

You start to explain that you’re concerned about the Clean & Safe renewal, how it will continue to hurt houseless Portlanders, how it doesn’t help anyone, and he turns back to you and cuts you off.

“You know, I’m so sick of you activist types coming in here and telling me how to do my job. The community loves Clean & Safe. It works great! Don’t you know there’s a homeless crisis?” He looks you up and down, taking in your coat with its missing button and worn shoes with a sneer. “By the way, I don’t have to listen to you. You’d never donate to my next campaign.” He storms off, slamming the door behind him.

In the glow of that warm reception, you pause to collect yourself. Finally, you head out of City Hall. You know that there’s only one option left if you want to stop this renewal, and that’s to get as many people as possible to tell City Council to vote the renewal down, or at least to pause the vote. You begin calling your contacts as soon as you leave the silence of that strange building. Clean & Safe can be stopped … but stopping it will take everyone’s help.