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"Can't you two just get along?" my mom yelled at me and my brother after we broke a dining-room chair fighting over who actually won the mini-hoop dunk contest. And yet somehow the "discussions" my brother and I had when we were 10 and 12—which often led to bloodshed and tears—were more civil than a lot of the discourse in this country over the past four years.
As a new president takes office—one who spoke for 20 minutes on Wednesday about coming together and lowering the temperature in the room—Willamette Week tries to find out what, if anything, people on opposite sides of the political spectrum can agree about.
In this week's cover story, Rachel Monahan and Nigel Jaquiss sat down with Multnomah County Commissioner Susheela Jayapal and Sandy Mayor Stan Pulliam to discuss a variety of divisive topics: impeachment, COVID-19, protests, antifa, and Gov. Kate Brown. Jayapal, a Democrat in Portland, and Pulliam, who runs a mountain town 45 minutes southeast, don't agree on much. But for over an hour, they tried to find common ground—or at least understand why they disagree.
News editor Aaron Mesh joined this week's Dive podcast and talked about how the conversation came about, why such discourse matters, and whether comparing antifa to the mob storming the U.S. Capitol is a false equivalence. We also play a clip that was left out of the article. The whole thing is uncensored, frank, and level-headed.
If you haven't read any news this week, we got you covered. If you came just for the music, we have a new banger by Heather Whitney. If you are unemployed and want to know about the hottest industry in Portland, we give you a tip. It's 18 minutes of fun, intrigue and news. What do you say?