City Council Candidate Rene Gonzalez Uses Occupy ICE Photo as Example of Portland Homeless Camps

A Feb. 15 campaign email from City Council candidate Rene Gonzalez solicited contributions by using a photo showing trash and remnants of tents strewn about an entire block of Portland’s South Waterfront.

In the email, the challenger to Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty pledged he would “clean up our city.” Gonzalez described a dire scene: “Homelessness and littered streets have spiraled out of control under Joann [sic] Hardesty’s watch,” he wrote.

There’s just one problem: The photo, which appears to have first run in The Oregonian in July 2018, depicts a protest blockade that formed around a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement office on the South Waterfront, not a homeless camp. The trash-strewn street was the aftermath of a police raid on the protest camp.

Gonzalez campaign manager Shah Smith says it was not aware of the photo’s context.

“It has been removed from our stock and was definitely included in error,” Smith says. “The difference in context is important, and matters.”