In the past three weeks, our calls for a city-wide rent and mortgage cancellation have been ignored. That is, until late last week, when Portland City Council passed on our demands to the governor’s office after weeks of intense pressure from the public. 

Oregon is a large state, and Kate Brown, for many of us, is a distant and faraway figure with no connection to our townships or communities. We cannot see her, she is difficult to hold accountable, and has rarely visited the places we live personally. But if many of our city councils start pressuring her, along with the people of Oregon, she will have to see our demands. We know for a fact Ted Wheeler, Mayor of Portland Oregon, has now asked her to cancel and strike all mortgage and debt payments. 

But she has not responded. 

Governor Kate Brown, your deferred action is killing the people of Oregon. As you and other lawmakers hide in your homes and massive estates, we the people are forced to toil as “essential” workers, making coffee for the elites, dying at cash registers, constructing condos no one will ever live in. Landlords and banks, the same banks that are being bailed out to the tune of trillions of dollars, torment and encircle the poor like vultures, threatening the people with homeless and eventually death. 

The state is absent here, providing almost no schools, no meals, no housing, and little to no healthcare to the sick and old, many of whom are dying in their homes untested.

We demand you cancel all mortgage and rent payments immediately. Should you continue to allow the unfettered siphoning of resources from your meekest residents, you will find yourself surrounded by us at every level of your existence. All lawmakers should take care that the people are spared this violence from profiteers, knowing that should they choose not to act the people will be forced to strike and escalate our tactics to protect our people by any means necessary. 

Do not turn your backs on us.