Native American reservations are another category of rural majority democrat
Biden protected Bears Ears and Grand Escalante. Navajo country loves him and the dems. Now those National Monuments are fucked again
2 Likes
https://x.com/minakimes/status/1855762366970941872
This. This commercial has been bugging the crap out of me. Why are the kids listening in the first place? Why do they keep listening? What double entendre is āOoh, itās glowingā supposed to imply?
2 Likes
Sheās my wife
Yeah a friend of mine lives there and it seems like all his friends are queer and/or trans and they live openly with multiple social locations and groups
Like thereās at least one gay strip club there. Not that the spaces are all sexualized like that, but just that usually the metro area needs to be a lot larger and denser to have one or more of those
Public school probably goat in Mass whether youāre cis or trans
1 Like
Friend thereās video of proud boys and neo nazis marching in Portland for all of this century
They assassinated a Marxist here in the 2010s at a lefty bar
3 Likes
Like the reason the antifa / black bloc / whatever is in largest numbers here has quite a lot to do with just response to the right wing militias that openly intimidate here
1 Like
Portland was probably seen as like a utopia by George Fuckin Wallace, just read about its 20th century history, and the people responsible for that have not simply vanished
When I first ran away here as a teenager from Alabama there were still business flying confederate battle flags near the center city. Shocked me back then but now I know better
1 Like
Iām sure there is some level of bad shit there (like everywhere) but it has to be a top 10 major metro for a trans person, right?
1 Like
I think it manages to be that (for USA) despite the ālevel of bad shitā being higher than most metro areas including ones in the South
Quotes because thereās obviously a million ways to define that, and in my posts I was talking about very focused/organized bad shit from groups outside the government
1 Like
Like Iāve been part of groups in Alabama, Tennessee, Virginia, and Oregon that tried to stand as shields between nazi marches and the communities they targeted. Shit is a little different in Oregon. The PNW in general. Pre-2016 the PNW is where any of their national meetings were held for quite a long time
2 Likes
Like on almost every day, if youāre close enough to the center of Portland, youāre not going to encounter those types, and what you will encounter is tolerance/embrace and welcoming bathrooms. But thereās neighborhoods still well within the city limits where the cashier at any convenience store is a coin flip to have nazi or nazi adjacent tattoos. And bars where you physically probably arenāt safe, etc
But then thereās bars closer in that have live local country music that attracts at least some portion of acts and audience that believes there is a Trans Menace but you are safe at least at this point in time, because they sort of accept that itās not fully their turf, at least for now
With probably a higher percentage of acts and audience being queer and/or trans than those militantly against it.
1 Like
And the explicitly queer bars have moved away from the city center somewhat, because of gentrification. So like 82nd Ave (locals know instantly what this means) will have a queer bar and a queer-unsafe bar relatively close. And itās where the sex workers all do street solicitation
1 Like
OK Portland sounds a lot less hospitable than LA!
2 Likes
My post-high-school group of ultra-liberal friends all migrated to Portland over 20 years ago, and not a single one of them has moved elsewhere since. Which is probably indicative of somethingā¦
1 Like
Yeah I donāt have the reference for comparison that I do with so many other places. I would have to experience the gritty areas myself to see how they compare, and I havenāt been there since making deliveries to like Hawthorne/Compton/Gardena 12+ years ago
1 Like
Yeah it undoubtedly has a lot to offer in every aspect you could think of, but the point is that itās heterogeneous rather than uniform, and even if the hostile people are outnumbered 99 to 1, theyāre still kinda militant about it
1 Like
Portland has a really disproportionate amount of UP posters so thereās plenty of ppl here to take issue with what Iāve said or to agree with it or whatever else
1 Like
I just got back from a celebration of life at a bar in Portland. Overheard some talk about whoās a real communist and whoās a pretender.
Iāve hung out with my friendās crowd up there before and had some spirited discussions about whether Dick Cheney brought down the Twin Towers and Venezuela is actually a workerās paradise unfairly maligned by US media. I try to stick to the issues we agree on.
2 Likes
I am sure you could find bars in the enormity of LA where the vibes would be off for LGBTQ folks, but I think you would really need to go to the fringes to find places where it was legit not OK.
2 Likes
There is almost nobody Iāve ever hung out with in Portland who wouldnāt think those ppl are batshit insane
But Iāve come across ppl whoād say that stuff when organizing in Alabama and Virginia
1 Like