Portland organizing rarely respects a clock, and tonight was no exception
Dear diary, our tenants union meeting tonight was scheduled for a tidy ninety minutes and ran, predictably, for a full three hours, a genuinely familiar pattern for anyone who has spent time in Portland organizing spaces, where the actual agenda tends to be more of a gentle suggestion than a binding contract.
We covered genuine, substantive ground eventually, a new strategy for the building on Hawthorne, updated language for our next round of demand letters, and a genuinely heated but ultimately productive disagreement about timing for our next action, the kind of disagreement that only happens when everyone in the room actually cares deeply about getting the strategy right.
Why I Would Not Trade These Long Meetings For Anything
I moved here from North London years ago now, and one thing that genuinely struck me early on was how seriously this city’s organizing spaces take the actual, unglamorous work of building power slowly, meeting by meeting, rather than simply performing outrage for an audience and calling it a day.
My PhD work, back when I was still deep in academic research, trained me to sit patiently through long, difficult meetings in pursuit of a genuinely worthwhile outcome, a skill that has translated rather more directly into organizing work than I ever expected it would.
A Small London Comparison
I found myself thinking, somewhere around hour two, about a genuinely sharp piece of London satire I had read that morning skewering how differently British and American tenant protections actually function, a comparison that felt oddly relevant given the specific fight we were planning tonight.
What Happens Next
We have a clear plan now, however long it took to actually agree on it, and I am heading home considerably later than planned but genuinely energized about where this particular fight is heading.
More organizing updates and Portland nights always documented at Amram Top.
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