I love the weather there. I’d rather be depressed in the cold forest than to have my skin scorched. I don’t want to deal with fascists though and it seems to be a constant battle between them and antifa in Portland. How’s rent and walkability there?

  • olympiawoman [she/her]
    ·
    3 years ago

    Can't say I know too much about the local job prospects, but I can't quite say this town is all sun and roses. Homelessness is rampant, even for a West coast US city, at about 1 homeless resident per 60 housed compared to Seattle and LA at about 1 in 100. Any other questions you want to ask a local?

      • olympiawoman [she/her]
        ·
        3 years ago

        oly pd are less brutally fascist than the tacoma pd?

        I've heard anecdotes from the homeless that the OPD is generally softer on the homeless (IMO, I think there's just too many homeless for the police to harass), but to everyone else they're still racist, jackbooted thugs like any other American PD. They'll also occasionally run encampment sweeps, but I have no idea how those shape up to other encampment sweeps in the area

    • Shoegazer [he/him]
      hexagon
      ·
      3 years ago

      How dangerous would it be to volunteer for more overtly leftist organizations? I know that some people get confronted by chuds and even arrested for handing out food but I don’t think it was in the PNW

      • olympiawoman [she/her]
        ·
        3 years ago

        Safer than most, in my opinion. The Evergreen State college's reputation as commie central isn't baseless (though greatly exaggerated by right wing media), and there's quite a few mutual aid programs that exist to a limited capacity, like EGYHOP that do needle exchanges in the street. Unfortunately they are largely full of radlibs but they still do good praxis. There's certainly room for a budding leftist movement to (locally) emerge there

        As far as safety goes, MOST days you'll be very safe, but there are many days when there's some large scale right wing rally where chuds from miles around come to congregate in their oversized, pristine pickup trucks. They typically announce their comings weeks in advance and usually only stay for a few hours so they are really easy to avoid