People For Portland

My community organizational roots ran deep in Colorado Springs and my passion for affecting positive change has taken root in Portland as well. The city we chose to call home nearly six years ago has suffered a drastic decline. My sons are forced to step over needles and trash at their baseball fields in SE Portland, my daughter had to hurdle human feces while running the Broadway bridge last week, my car was broken into last week and my running shoes stolen off my porch, and now an RV is now camping adjacent to our middle school playground. These are a few of the reasons why I've chosen to become involved with People for Portland (P4P), a collective voice for everyone who loves Portland but is frustrated by what it's been allowed to become. Through grassroots efforts P4P is creating greater urgency and demanding bolder action from our elected leaders to solve the biggest problems facing our city: ending unsheltered homelessness, safe streets and neighborhoods, accountability and justice for everyone, and cleanliness, pride, and economic vitality in the city we love. 

So far, P4P has delivered over 300,000 email messages to 36 local elected officials. (It's easy to click this 'keep up the momentum' link to send an actionable letter to elected officials.) They also hosted a public safety Town Hall with more than 5,000 participants that got the mayor to commit to putting body cams on police and hiring 300 more officers! This week 6,000 supporters attended a Town Hall addressing the humanitarian crisis on our streets. 

I hope you are as interested as I am in holding our elected officials accountable with our taxpayer dollars. 

If you are still reading, thank you!!  Here's how you can become involved: 

10 Things YOU Can Do After Joining People For Portland – People for Portland

Oregon's Unreasonable Athletic Mask Mandate

 Dear Governor Kate Brown,

Thank you for revising mask rules for Oregon high school track & field, tennis and golf. Please also add baseball to the list. The one-size-fits-all mask mandate in the state of Oregon for OSAA students competing in outdoor sports is not reasonable. As a mother of four children who compete in sports in the Portland Public School District, the current mask mandate for outdoor sports and vaccinated individuals is detrimental to the health and well-being of our children and Oregonians as a whole. 

Last week my daughter and son, a high school senior and sophomore respectively, began a minimal amount of in-person learning only 2.5 hours a day, twice a week. My children were thrilled to be competing again in sports, and although my daughter could barely breathe as a masked distance runner, the opportunity for socialization out-weighted the cost of respiratory acidosis from competing in a mask. 

Not two weeks into in-person school and my son’s Cleveland High School baseball season, the JV2 team was forced to quarantine for two weeks as a masked player on the opposing Grant High School baseball team tested Covid-positive. The fully masked Cleveland High School team could only have been in close contact with the Grant player for minutes at home plate or another base in the infield. 

Why should students competing outdoors at social distance wear masks, or be subjected to the same quarantine guidelines as a student on the opposing team who tests positive for Covid-19? According to the CDC, you should ‘quarantine if you were within 6 feet of someone who has COVID-19 for a total of 15 minutes or more’. This clearly is not the case in high school baseball, where running the bases takes less than 15 minutes! According to this CDC guideline, close contact in baseball should pertain only to the team who spent time together in the dugout. Quarantining Cleveland’s entire JV2 high school team, per OSAA and state guidelines, with no in-person school and no sports seems a punishment for our youth who were outside in masks and not in close contact with the other player. 

Thankfully my daughter can breathe distance running while my son, competing in sports for the first time in over a year, continues his ridiculous ‘online sentence’ without sports or socialization until May 6^th. What will be the long-term social and mental health effects of ‘online socialization’ and quarantine on Oregon’s student population, as compared to states who have managed in-person learning and sports all year? 

Our children deserve better! Governor Brown, please revise state mask mandates for outdoor sports, to include baseball, so that the state of Oregon and the OSAA align with CDC guidance. Thank you for your time and consideration.

Sincerely,

Kristen Downs

Dear Mayor Ted Wheeler, 

I'm emailing to urge you to take the pledge to enact the #8CantWait Use of Force policies. I live in Portland, OR in the Sellwood neighborhood and I believe our city would benefit from these policies. The #8CantWait policies are simple, common sense and would make our community safer. Portland, OR has five policies that are part of the #8CantWait pledge. Can you commit to enacting these additional policies listed below right now?

1) Ban Chokeholds and Strangleholds - Law enforcement officers should not use chokeholds, strangleholds, Lateral Vascular Neck Restraints, Carotid Restraints, chest compressions, or any other tactics that restrict oxygen or blood flow to the head or neck. In a Minneapolis case last month, officer Derek Chauvin used his knee to apply pressure to George Floyd’s neck for more than eight minutes. As Floyd lay on the ground, he pleaded, “I can’t breathe.” His words echoed the last pleas of Eric Garner, an unarmed man who was killed in 2014 when a New York police officer placed him in a chokehold. Both African-American men died as a result of police officer chokeholds or carotid restraints stopping their ability to breathe.

2) Exhaust All Alternatives Before Shooting - In the middle of the night on  March 13, 2020 Louisville police officers used a no-knock warrant to crash into the apartment of Breonna Taylor, an African-American emergency room technician who was sleeping. They fired several shots, striking her at least eight times. Had the police identified themselves and exhausted the skills and abilities that would've allowed them to resolve the confrontation without resorting to the higher levels of allowable force, Breonna would've lived to her 27th birthday this past week. 

3) Ban Shooting At Moving Vehicles - In 2018, a Texas jury sentenced a former police officer Roy Oliver to 15 years in prison for the shooting death of an unarmed 15-year-old African-American Jordan Edwards in a Dallas suburb. Officer Oliver fired into a car full of teens in 2017, saying he believed it was moving aggressively toward his partner. In 2019 two L.A. County sheriff's deputies fired 34 rounds killing Ryan Twyman, a 24-year-old African American and father of three, as he slowly drove his car in reverse Iin a parking lot. No gun was found in either Edwards' or Twyman's car.

Require Police Body Cameras - Police body camera footage plays a crucial role in convictions for the three policies mentioned. As incidents of police brutality make headlines nationwide, major police departments must implement use of body cameras to provide transparency and accountability. 

Mayor Wheeler, as a concerned citizen and mother of four children in Portland, I ask that you implement the three policies listed above in fulfillment of Portland's #8CantWait pledge and require police body cameras. The list of needless deaths at the hands of police is much longer than the few names provided above. Research shows more restrictive use of force policies can reduce killings by police and save lives. Thank you for your time and consideration.

Sincerely,

Kristen Downs

Fear and Mass Legislative Inaction

February 15, 2018

To All It May Concern:


We must demand our U.S. legislators enact stricter background checks and ban assault weapons, high capacity magazines and bump stocks now! Mass shootings in America will only end if this action is taken. Prayers and inaction are no longer acceptable solutions and legislators who accept contributions from the gun lobby in return are no longer welcome to serve my country.

As a mother of four children who has been personally affected by gun violence I live in fear that statistically it's only a matter of time before my innocent children are victims of gun violence. Like many parents, I kiss my children and send them off to public school hoping tragedy does not affect our lives. Volunteering in my son's unlocked portable classroom today I startled whenever the door opened, prepared to react. Frankly, I'm tired of conversations at the dinner table instructing my children to hide in their school classroom cabinets, run in a zigzag pattern eluding a mass shooter, or God-forbid, hide under a dead body for safety. My teenage daughter is growing numb to the online news highlighting mass shooting incidences as common as teen social media posts. As Americans, we shouldn't be forced to live in fear or have adult conversations with our children regarding mass shootings!

As mentioned in my last plea to Senators and Representatives (Gun Control Legislation), gun crimes involving assault weapons statistically declined following America’s 1994 Federal Assault Weapons Ban. This expired assault weapons ban significantly decreased the frequency of deadly massacres that occurred in our country, while allowing firearms for recreational hunting purposes. Moreover, assault weapons and high capacity magazine cartridges are weapons for destruction and for use by the military in war zones, not hunting; when they are used in a mass shooting, more than twice the number of people are shot and killed, than with handguns.

Australia and the United Kingdom have both enacted strict gun control laws. There has not been a single massacre since the 1996 assault weapons ban in Australia.  The United Kingdom passed the Firearms (Amendment) Act in 1997 banning all cartridge ammunition handguns and there has only been one mass shooting since 2010. However, not a day goes by that there isn’t another shooting of innocent American civilians.

Mental health is certainly a component of gun violence (Gun Control Legislation), yet in February 2017 President Donald Trump signed a bill into law revoking gun checks for people with mental illness. Ironically, today he answered cries for tighter gun restrictions by encouraging Americans to report the behavior of "mentally disturbed" people to authorities. For the love of God and American citizens, please reinstitute stricter background checks instead of excuses, prayers and condolences!

I promised my children I would write another letter today to my senators and representatives demanding gun control now, "We must persist as a nation!" I exclaimed. There is no better use of our time as citizens. Inaction is not an option when our safety and that of our children is at risk.

I stand by Gabby Giffords and her petition I signed today. "I promise you that if we cannot make our communities safer from gun violence with the Congress we have now, I will use every means available to make sure we have a different Congress, one that puts communities' interests ahead of the gun lobby's. I will Vote Courage in November and support candidates who will stand up to the gun lobby and take action to make our communities safer."

I encourage everyone to sound their voice to their legislators, borrow my words, write now (Contact Congress Link) and vote for candidates who enforce stricter background checks and take action to ban assault weapons, high capacity magazines and bump stocks for the safety of all Americans!

In Persistence,
Kristen Downs

Gun Control Legislation

October 3, 2017

To Whom It May Concern:

Now is the time for strict background checks and effective gun control legislation, including a ban on assault weapons and high capacity magazines, and a gun buyback program to ensure a safe America.

In 2013 the gun debate became personal for me when an anonymous note was found in my child’s Colorado class naming 3 boys to be killed.  Until then, our family had discussed the tragic killings in the Aurora, Colorado movie theatre and Newtown, Connecticut school as rare terrible losses, yet tragedy struck again as our hometown of Colorado Springs, Colorado experienced two more mass shootings in a span of 3 months in late 2015.   Again, gun violence resonated in the early morning of June 2016 in my family’s hotel in Portland, OR, where we were living during our relocation.  Shots were fired in an adjacent hotel room right outside our window.  With each occurrence I have pleaded with my congressional legislators for stricter gun controls, as I couldn’t live with the regret of inaction.

I sit numb today as the Las Vegas death toll rises from the deadliest shooting in America to date.  Every threat of violence needs to be taken seriously, and as a mother of four children personally affected by gun violence, I live in fear that it’s only a matter of time before our schools and my family are riveted again.

In 1996, Australia passed a law prohibiting the ownership, possession, sale and importation of automatic and semi-automatic guns, following a brutal massacre that killed 35 innocent people.  Australia’s 1996 reforms not only reduced the gun related suicide rate, but the homicide rate as well.  In the 18 years before the 1996 reforms, Australia suffered 13 gun massacres, causing a total of 102 deaths.  There has not been a single massacre since the 1996 assault weapons ban in Australia.  However, not a day goes by that there isn’t another shooting of innocent American civilians. 

Mental health is certainly a component of gun violence, yet in February 2017 President Donald Trump signed a bill into law revoking gun checks for people with mental illness.  Mental health professionals are often unaware of the premeditated massacres, and the Obama-era regulation revoked by President Trump would’ve made it harder for people with mental illness to purchase a gun.  I have personally lost two family members to suicide (one gun related) and can testify that in both cases, mental health doctors were unaware of their intent.  Criminal punishment for gun massacres does not seem to be a deterrent in our society where news is sensational, violent images are readily accessible, and the perpetrators of gun violence are rarely caught alive or convicted as sane individuals.  As such, common sense backed by statistics dictates that strong legislation making it difficult for those with mental illness to purchase a gun would reduce mass shootings.

Overall, background checks and gun registration need to be more stringent, states need to share information and there needs to be a campaign for responsible gun ownership.   This, however, will never address the illegal ‘iron pipeline’ of weapons being smuggled into states and ending up in the hands of owners who do not legally submit to background checks.

The 2nd Amendment was written to provide for the common defense and the general welfare of the United States through the ability to bear arms to raise and support militias using muskets, bayonets and rifles.  I believe we can reasonably uphold the 2^nd Amendment for recreational hunting purposes, rather than arming militias and providing self-protection with assault weapons. Assault weapons and high capacity magazine cartridges are weapons for destruction and for use by the military in war zones, not hunting; when they are used in a mass shooting, more than twice the number of people are shot and killed, than with handguns.  Gun crimes involving assault weapons statistically declined following America’s 1994 Federal Assault Weapons Ban, however, it expired in 2004.  Such a ban significantly decreased the frequency of deadly massacres that occurred in our country and other countries, while allowing firearms for recreational hunting purposes. 

Only a “government sponsored weapons buyback” program of targeted guns in conjunction with an assault weapons ban and high capacity magazine ban will remove guns of mass destruction from our streets and significantly reduce the rate of massacre in our country.  Gun buyback programs have been proven to mobilize communities and incentivize gun owners to surrender their weapons around the world, without persecution.  Guns retrieved are destroyed, decreasing their accessibility while putting cash in the hands of consumers.  Nearly 4,800 guns were collected during an August 2017 New Jersey gun buyback, including 129 assault weapons at the highest payout of $200 each.  More guns were collected in this two-day gun buyback event in 3 New Jersey cities than across the state in a single year through law-enforcement arrests and seizures, at a state cost of $500k, according to the Courier News.  A small price for life, if you ask me!  

Additionally, a “Campaign for Gun Safety for the Protection and Freedom of America’s Children” could be initiated to raise at least $2 for every dollar raised by the NRA.  This would fund the election of candidates for stricter gun control and lessen the power and influence of the NRA as a political lobbying force; allowing elected officials to vote with their conscience rather than their campaign coffers.    

Nothing worth doing is ever easy!  What will your legacy be?  It’s time that our country took a bold stance on gun control; this should not be a political election issue.  The reduction in gun violence is an American bi-partisan issue spanning many decades.  Acts of domestic terrorism are occurring with increasing frequency all across our country.  How long before your family is personally affected?  As an American I demand congressional action now for stricter gun control legislation.