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WW kicked off last week’s Pride coverage with profiles of people bucking the recent demographic trend and moving to Portland because it offers asylum from states with anti-LGBTQ policies (“They Arrived,” July 5). About 4 in 10 transgender people say they’ve considered moving to avoid oppressive policies. WW spoke to five families who packed their things and headed for Portland. Here’s what our readers had to say:
@pearwaldorf, via Twitter: “I saw the headline and started crying. I’m so proud of my hometown. It has lots and lots of issues, but its heart is in the right place on this.”
tenehemia, via Reddit: “Has been for quite a while, it’s just that the threat that drove people here wasn’t nearly so visible to people outside the community. I know a ton of trans folks, and almost all of them came here from elsewhere. Mostly from places like Montana, Idaho, rural California, etc. This city has been known to be one of the safest and most accepting places for trans people for 20 years or more. People fleeing places like Florida and Tennessee might have more claim to the ‘gender refugee’ label than someone who left Montana for Portland a decade ago, but only because people are going out of their way to see this as a new phenomenon.”
j, via Twitter: “I think it’s important to point out that what they call ‘war on LGBT people’ usually means things like skepticism about medical transition of minors, concern for women’s sports, etc. So there’s a lot of framing going on here. Still, self-sorting may be inevitable at this point.”
Anita Bath, via wweek.com: “Weird that an article filled with robust data chose to gloss over any effort to quantify how many people actually have moved here. Feels disingenuous, like it’s either an agenda-based article meant to promote an idea that doesn’t exist in fact or it’s done as clickbait. The stories are real and, I suppose, have a place to be told, but using their story to revise the current state of things doesn’t feel honest.”
Michael DeLuca, via email: “Thank you for the great article and telling these stories. It’s heartening to know we are evolving from a state founded in discrimination and exclusion to a beacon for a little understood and vilified people.”
LEGACY OF THE ORGAN GRINDER
Thank you for writing the piece about the Organ Grinder building, and for including the full history and the comments from Mr. Hedberg [”Organ Donor,” WW, June 21; Dialogue: “Chasing Ghosts Leads to Monkey Business,” WW, June 28]. So many of my best childhood memories are associated with that place (I was 4 years old when it opened, and our family attended regularly until I moved to Corvallis for college in 1987.)
When I learned that it was closing in 1996, we drove 100 miles through a snowstorm just to see it one more time. Today, I’m a videographer, web/app developer, and amateur musician. (Keyboards and pipe organ, of course! The Organ Grinder was so influential.)
I’ve tinkered for years with creating my own custom digital organ, and I’ve even taken it to Burning Man, doing live performances in the desert. (Photo of the current incarnation of the never-finished instrument attached—yes, that’s me with the hair.)
Bob Richardson
Portland
MAY WE NEVER HAVE TO DO REAL WORK
Good to know that you, alongside other WW staffers, don’t have to conduct actual journalism and that you can just get paid for being Big Pharma’s mouthpiece [Murmurs: “Portland Podcaster Teams Up With RFK Jr.,” July 5]. It would break my heart to think your job might require ethics, bucking the system, or critical thinking beyond the false “us vs. them” or “wokeist” paradigms that Portland slavishly echoes.
May you never have to do real work with that programmable piece of fat between your ears. We all know how uncomfortable it is when we don’t properly entertain our puppet masters.
Kevi Keenom
Southeast Portland
LETTERS to the editor must include the author’s street address and phone number for verification. Letters must be 250 or fewer words. Submit to: P.O. Box 10770, Portland, OR 97296 Email: mzusman@wweek.com