For some years, I have taken groups of people for walks along Linnon’s historic waterfront or as close to it as we can get. We wander down dirt roads to places where we can look out at the Portland Harbor. It is spring and there are many boats with people hoping to catch a Spring Chinook. There are also tugboats and large ships with cargo coming in and out of the port. More frequently now, there are barges and tankers with shipments of fossil fuels. We discuss the cleanup of the superfund contamination buried in the soil both in the river and onshore. The chemicals left behind by industry that cause cancers and health problems for mothers and children.
Decades ago, when the state land use laws were written, they said that municipalities needed to assure access to the Willamette River, in what is called the Willamette Greenway Plan. The Greenway stretches all along the bank of the river, from Eugene to where it reaches the Columbia. Despite the law, the only stretch of river trail for most of Portland’s western bank of the river is void of river access. The exception is 1600 feet on Linnton’s historic waterfront. The community was given the funds to make the trail accessible but it remains blocked.
Foolishly, I believed that once the funds were given to the community, the trail would be built. Full of excitement, I showed the trail to professionals who build trails. It was then and with tours, that the intimidation began.
We notice, at first, that when we arrive for a walk on a public street, that machinery is being driven by us, that was not in use a moment before. Large piles of steel are dropped near by. Trucks circle round and round the block, showering the students with dust.
Welding equipment is moved to a spot steps away from us and the fires blaze in our direction, as my guests laugh in disbelief.
We did not walk by men who were welding. The welding equipment was moved to us.
Yesterday, when walking with a group of college students, a man in business clothes, comes outside with a dog and walks up and down the road where we are walking. The dog is on a leash and is young. The man walks towards us with the dog and then turns and walks back. He is joined by another man and they look down the road at us with a dog. All day long, I try to tell myself it was a coincidence. The man simply brought his dog to work and by chance took it for a walk when we were there. I am imagining things. But the sum total of machinery and trucks and welding fires and piles of metal dropped at my feet have built up. I can not shake the image of a dog coming toward us.. The dog did not stop to say hello or even head to the bushes to go to the bathroom. Up and back. I try to engage them in a conversation; to establish that we are strangers meeting on the road. But I cannot.
I try to ask myself all day, why it was so upsetting to me. Perhaps because of our collective history of the use of dogs when people try to exert their rights. My mind flashes to the use of dogs in the Civil Right Movement. I see the priest in Haiti with his guard dogs next to a birth center. It is never the dog. It’s the owners. We were not and are not supposed to be down there. Despite it being a public street, we are not welcome.
There are other tools. There are piles of railroad track piled along and in roads, where we are meant to walk. The few old houses that exist are surrounded by creosote weeping into the road and river. Keep-out signs are placed by the trail. No parking signs are placed where families, using the community center park for celebrations.
We walk down the road to the Kinder-Morgan tank farm. Built in 1935, to replace the East Indian community that once occupied the space. Barb wire, piles of dry, flammable bushes, pipelines and dirt. It is hard to breathe. A house, built by its owner years ago, is boarded up. The man has been evicted. This is still another tool. Intimidate the elderly, the poor, and the marginalized until they are forced to leave.
The tank farms do not exist and can not have been built without all the tools of intimidation. Children are hit by trains and trucks. Fathers are shot while sleeping in bed with their children. The Greenway Trail is put on Highway 30, where no one dares walk.
The man with the dog does not smile or greet us. it is their goal to work until not one piece of the riverfront exists. Roads will be eliminated. Creosote and dust and aging tank farms blend with pipelines and boarded-up houses.
I take the students to see the baby chicks at Linnton Feed and Seed to show the joy of this once-riverside community. I try to shrug it off but it has gone deep into my heart and for a time I am broken.