Posted on 03/24/2016 7:51:16 PM PDT by hiho hiho
A group managed by the Portland Business Alliance plans to replace a controversial downtown billboard that critics argued stereotyped homeless people as drug addicts.
The billboard, at Southwest Fourth and Morrison, shows a person holding a cardboard sign that reads "Your spare change funds my addictions."
The sign was put up March 1 by Clean and Safe, the nonprofit overseen by the Portland Business Alliance. It is part of an ongoing campaign by the chamber of commerce to discourage people from giving to panhandlers, whose presence can hurt businesses when they set up outside their doors, the chamber said.
The decision to replace the sign comes after mayoral candidates Ted Wheeler and Sarah Iannarone spoke out against it, and after a petition asking the chamber to remove the sign garnered nearly 1,000 signatures.
In a statement posted on the Portland Business Alliance's Facebook page Wednesday, Clean and Safe Chair Mark Schlesinger said the group plans to change out the current billboard message and image in the coming weeks. (Last week, Clean and Safe Executive Director Lynnae Berg said the billboard would stay up for months unless the Clean and Safe board of directors agreed to remove it.)
In his statement, Schlesinger said the group was pleased with the attention the billboard brought to its outreach efforts. The campaign's purpose, it says, is to encourage people to donate to social service providers instead of handing cash to panhandlers. He also pointed out that most homeless people do not panhandle.
Chamber officials have said they chose to address addiction on the billboard because a 2013-14 survey of Portland panhandlers showed many used donations for drugs and alcohol, and because of the negative impact of addiction on the community.
In an interview with The Oregonian, Schlesinger said he didn't think the billboard's imminent replacement is a response to the petition, but part of the campaign's evolution.
"We've agreed that it's time to move on to the next phase of the program," he said.
The current sign was the campaign's first billboard, he said. Schlesinger said the content of the replacement billboard is being reviewed by a committee, and the new sign will be up within a month, as soon as it's produced. He declined to share what the next billboard would say, as it's still under review.
Either way, petition author Mary Nichols is pleased the current message has an expiration date.
"It's a small but powerful victory," she said.
Portland is a “safe space.”
And even worse, you teach them to associate people with food. I learned that at Yellowstone.
You mean freedom of the press is not allowed in Oregon? Is the New york Slime next?
I have family in the Portland area. The normal ones live in Hillsboro, the weird ones live close to downtown.
If you would like more information about what's happening in Oregon, please FReepmail me.
Please send me your name by FReepmail if you want to be on this list.
Stop offending the addicts!!! Hrumpf! Hrumpf!
"Speaking the truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act."
- George Orwell
“A group managed by the Portland Business Alliance plans to replace a controversial downtown billboard that critics argued stereotyped homeless people as drug addicts.”
Agree - many, perhaps most, are drunks. It’s not fear to call them druggies.
I hear Hillsboro has really gone down hill....my dtr lives right smack in Portland in an older area that she says is in the up and comers neighborhood...she paid a lot for her little house....
The next billboard will advertise for rickshaw-pullers.
And have a bucket of screws loose to boot. You can thank the libtards for taking TNT to the foundations institutionalization after a handful of places had genuine scandals. Nevermind that for every one person who was genuinely wrongly put away in a Bedlam House, there were THOUSANDS who were badly in need of a straightjacket and a padded room...now they’re roaming the streets.
How can you say that - it’s just people ‘down on their luck’...well, according to the media, that is. Hard to believe how easily the public was DUPED.
If it’s true, and it most certainly is, what’s the problem?
Not that hard to believe in a nation that elected Obama twice and is probably going to pick a laughably fake white nationalist and scam-runner or a card-carrying socialist.
@ronnie raygun
Yeah Geraldope’s ‘reporting’ was catalyst for it all. My father told me about seeing the idiocy unfold firsthand and remarking that it was a prime example for why some scandals don’t need to be made public...namely that the public is stupid, overreacts, and ends up with a solution 100x worse than the problem and on a much larger scale.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.