City Council Entrance Interview: Angelita Morillo

Seeks to represent: District 3 (Southeast Portland)

Age: 27

Job: Policy advocate and legislative strategist at Partners for a Hunger-Free Oregon

Fun fact: Won nationals with the Lincoln High School Constitution team in 2014

For a little less than a year while attending Portland State University, Angelita Morillo says she bounced between sleeping in a park and in stairwells and couchsurfing with friends. Now she’s running for City Council in District 3 because she doesn’t want anyone else to fall through the same cracks.

At just 27, Morillo is one of the youngest candidates running for City Council in the fall. It’s her first bid for public office.

“I am running because I want to make City Hall a place where everyone is heard, regardless of who they are or where they come from,” Morillo told WW in a phone interview.

After graduating college, Morillo spent three years in City Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty’s office, fielding calls and emails from constituents. She now works as a policy advocate at Partners for a Hunger-Free Oregon, and serves on the Portland Rental Services Commission.

Morillo is perhaps best known for her presence on TikTok, where she has over 34,000 followers and criticizes elected officials. WW spoke to Morillo about her campaign. The interview has been lightly edited for brevity and clarity.

WW: What are your top three priorities if elected?

Angelita Morillo: Sanitation, housing and homelessness, and transportation.

I’m really interested in creating a centralized sanitation bureau. Our garbage is managed by the city, county and Metro. We have a pretty inefficient bureaucracy that is extremely hard to navigate. If we can clean up the city a little bit more, we’ll reduce the animosity between housed and unhoused people.

For housing and homelessness, short term, we need to make sure that we have autonomous shelter, where you have houseless folks also involved in the decision-making process. I want to specifically make shelters that are for folks who are experiencing domestic violence issues, or LGBTQ youth. For long-term solutions, we need to focus on zoning changes.

In District 3, I would love to create a rapid transit bus line on Sandy Boulevard and a bike lane. I also want to find areas of the city where we have existing bike paths and actually add hardened barriers to protect people.

What aspects of the city’s current approach to drug use and overdose deaths do you support and what would you change?

I don’t really think the city has a very comprehensive approach. We don’t have enough detox centers or treatment centers for people. We’re not addressing the root causes of why people are turning to drugs. To me, the biggest reason why people are doing drugs is because of poverty. We do not have any affordable places to live in the city.

Would you change the Portland Clean Energy Fund and, if so, how?

I think the Portland Clean Energy Fund is one of the most wonderful programs the city has created thus far. I do not think it should be used as a slush fund for the rest of the city’s bureaus because that’s not what voters intended. So we need to make sure that all of that revenue is still being used toward clean energy projects.

Which current City Council member do you and your policies most align with?

Commissioner Carmen Rubio. I think her approach is very collaborative.

Is the city doing enough to bring back downtown and economic development? If not, what should it be doing that it’s not?

We have a tendency to only focus on downtown as the economic strong point of our city. But I know that during the pandemic, a lot of the small businesses within these other districts and neighborhoods actually contributed a lot to our city. I would love to see a renewal of Fareless Square to get people to come downtown.

You are endorsed by the Portland Association of Teachers. Do you agree with what the union has done in its advocacy for Palestine?

I support all people’s right to organize against the mass murder of civilians that’s being funded by our tax dollars, and I am confident that PAT leadership, their members, and the community they serve will work together to address the issues that arise in a timely and respectful way.

See the other Portland City Council Candidates here!