Welcome to Village Portland, neighborhood news & actions in East Portland.
We’re here to bridge the gap between news & civic participation… and to encourage folks get involved with their community and support their neighbors. There are a million voices fighting for your attention, but we want to help you connect with your village, your neighborhood… where your power to connect and make change is the strongest.
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Read more about how to get involved and promote your business or organization below, or you’re an organizer or writer interested in bringing a Village Portland to your neighborhood, contact Andrew Wilkins, Publisher & Editor:
This post will be light on events, but we are very happy to announce a fundraiser for Village Portland @ St. Johns!
It will be held on Wednesday, February 19th at Fixin To, the excellent Southern-themed bar and live venue. We’re proud of our initial work up there and are excited to do more for that special part of Portland.
Creature Party has agreed to play, and we’re looking for one more band. So we must ask: who’s the coolest band in St. Johns??
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What is the best way to tell a story? You have radio, newspapers, television stations… but what I love about the internet is the ability to incorporate all three mediums— and different combinations of each— into our coverage.
But for a debate / candidate forum, what is better than livestreaming? Viewers can ask questions of each other in the moment and the livestreaming host can moderate and pass questions along to those running.
It’s a fabulous engagement tool, and to give credit where credit is due: it’s a technology that Mark Zuckerberg and the folks at Facebook got right.
We stepped up to livestream at the Advancing Collective Equity Candidate Forum on Sunday at Midland Library. It’s a two-part forum, so if you want to watch both go to our Facebook page here.
Hosted by Bernie [Sanders] PDX, the same three candidates attended a forum on Tuesday— with the addition of candidate Cash Carter. We were there to livestream then too.
Do your homework and choose wisely this election season.
“Keep Alive the Dream” is the theme for this year’s Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Tribute.
It’s always been a great way to feel the spirituality that motivated King; a great way for advocates to refresh and reflect on their work.
Highland Christian Center, 7600 NE Glisan St * 11 am – 6:30 pm
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A Montavilla family suffered a tragedy recently when their two young children were swept away and killed by rough seas at the Oregon coast. You can watch the vigil for Lola and Williamhere.
Donate to the family’s crowd-sourcing campaign here.
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If you live in St. Johns, or know someone that does, we’ve been spotlighting some of the push back against services up there through Village Portland @ St. Johns.
Over the years, we’ve tracked multiple conflicts at the neighborhood level— and we hope to contribute to better-informed, better-engaged neighbors in St. Johns too.
“Rejoice! is a Portland-based contemporary dance ensemble led by the bold vision and artistic direction of Oluyinka Akinjiola. Inspired by the folklore of the great African diaspora, Rejoice’s performance repertoire boldly weaves stories of adversity and hope, captivating audiences with their outspoken calls for social change.”
From another generation, Harriet Tubman is another fighter for freedom:
“Based on the thrilling and inspirational life of an iconic American freedom fighter, “Harriet” tells the extraordinary tale of Harriet Tubman’s escape from slavery and transformation into one of America’s greatest heroes.”
Academy Theater, 7818 SE Stark St * show times * $4 for adults, $3 for youth & seniors
William Grimes, saloon keeper (in white apron) and an unidentified man standing in front of Grimes 5-Mile Road House saloon, taken in about 1904. Source: Bud Holland Collection
Given how many watering holes there are in Montavilla today, especially along SE Stark Street, you might be surprised to learn that in early Montavilla there were only two— and then, there were none.
It’s a complicated story, in part a comedy of errors between rival saloon keepers, in part a drama of the “liquor men” versus the prohibitionists, which culminated in a vote to make Montavilla “dry”.
The first saloon was opened in 1892 by William Grimes, who was English by birth, in the Mount Tabor Villa Addition (a tract north of Base Line Road, today SE Stark Street). By 1894, he had relocated to the south side of Base Line, a lot at the east end of where the Montavilla Farmer’s Market (7700 SE Stark St) is now held. This saloon burned down in 1894, and by 1898 he had relocated again to the corner of SE Stark Street and SE 80th Avenue, where the Ya Hala Lebanese Cuisine (8005 SE Stark St) restaurant stands today. This saloon also burned in 1898.
The photo above shows the new saloon, Grimes’ 5-Mile House, a name referencing the distance from the Portland courthouse. (Some of you have no doubt seen the 5-mile stone post that still stands at the southwest corner of SE Stark St and SE 78th Ave.) Grimes added a second story to his saloon in 1904, an apparent sign that business had been good.
The man standing on the left in the photo above wears a long, white apron identifying him as the saloon keeper, so presumably this is Grimes himself. The photo not only shows us the saloon, but also gives us an idea of what Grimes’s Montavilla looked like: a few buildings, vacant lots, dirt roads, and a streetcar track (far left) ending at the saloon door.
A short distance from the saloon (on the left) is the Montavilla Methodist Episcopal Church, standing where the new church does today. This church would play a major role in the effort to rid Montavilla of saloons.
Saloon keepers who opened businesses in residential areas like Montavilla could expect opposition from reformers who hoped to cure the social ills they believed were caused by excessive alcohol consumption: mistreating wives and children, impoverishing families, etc. Protestant churches were major drivers of the temperance and prohibition movements and in Montavilla there were already budding Seventh Day Adventist, Methodist and Baptist congregations the day Grimes opened his doors.
Alcohol consumption was also opposed by organizations like the Women’s Christian Temperance Movement (WCTU), which began in Portland in 1881, becoming a statewide organization in 1883. At the Multnomah County WCTU convention of 1892, a Mrs. Rix reported on the efforts of the Mount Tabor Villa union to put Montavilla’s only saloon out of business by circulating a petition opposing Grimes’ application for a liquor license.
The law required Grimes to show community support for his saloon by gathering signatures of more than 50% of Montavilla residents who had voted in the last election on a petition. This he did, but the WCTU garnered even more signatures and he was denied a license.
So began the battle of petitions which would prevail for years. As a result, Grimes usually operated sans license and was repeatedly brought into court for serving liquor without a license.
Captain Herman Schneider. Source: The Oregon Journal (Historic Oregon Newspapers)
Enter Captain Herman Schneider.
The social reformers were not Grimes’s only aggravation. By 1900, Grimes had competition, when CaptainHerman Schneider opened a saloon diagonally across Base Line Road from Grimes’s road house. By 1902, Schneider also had a beer garden, undoubtedly a big draw in the summer months.
A beer garden makes us think of Germany, and that is where Schneider was from. The Portland press usually referred to him as Captain Schneider, not because of his service in the Prussian army from 1864 to 1866, but rather because of his rank in the German Guard Fusileers, a private militia, in San Francisco. Schneider was a butcher from 1870 to 1881, but when he moved to Portland ran saloons downtown until 1894. Here, there is a gap in the historical record until Schneider opens his Montavilla saloon in 1900.
Grimes and Schneider were arch-enemies from the beginning. The first evidence of their animosity was reported in Portland newspapers in June, 1901. At that time, the two men, who lived near each other in Kinzel Park Addition (a tract south of Stark Street), got into an argument, resulting in one of them striking Schneider’s wife Katie. Each accused the other of the blow, but Grimes was charged and found guilty of assault.
Grimes’ saloon was also getting a reputation for being a rowdy institution. The Oregonian of November 28, 1901 reported that his saloon was allegedly a disorderly place and “a menace to the peace and quiet of the neighborhood”. Now, the fraternal societies of Montavilla and the Montavilla Sub-Board of Trade joined in the opposition to the renewal of Grimes’s license. Within three months The Oregonian was reporting that almost everyone in Montavilla was involved in the Grimes licensing fight.
Unable to get a license, in 1902 Grimes was charged, tried, and convicted of selling liquor without a license, and fined the minimum $200 amount ($200 less than the license fee).
In April 1903, The Oregoniandescribes a strange sequence of events involving pro-Grimes and pro-Schneider factions as well as temperance crusaders who formed a local Anti-Saloon League.
Rev. George A. Learn. Source: Oregon Daily Journal (Historic Oregon Newspapers)
The purported sequence goes something like this:
Grace Baptist minister Rev. George A. Learn and Methodist minister Rev. Andrew Monroe gather 175 signatures on a petition opposing the renewal of Grimes’s license.
The friends of Grimes are unhappy with this and hire a lawyer to test the validity of Schneider’s license. A petition calling for Schneider’s license to be revoked is filed in County Court.
A mass meeting is called to create a local Anti-Saloon League, a national federation of temperance organizations created in 1895, with the aim, as its name implies, of abolishing saloons. The Oregonian claims that the friends of Captain Schneider organized the League to deprive Grimes of his license. If true, this was a rather foolish move.
Finally the reverends take control and go after both saloon keepers.
Those must have been strange meetings with Grimes-supporter W. C. Aylsworth singing “Throw Out the Life Line” and another Grimes-supporter D. W. Butler, giving a 30-minute harangue about the evils of intemperance, and yet saying Captain Schneider was the one they were after.
In fact, the prohibitionists were after both and they would gain the advantage when Oregon voters approved the initiative and referendum process on the 1902 ballot. With these new direct democracy tools, the Prohibition Party drafted an initiative that was placed on the November 1904 ballot. Measure 3 provided that a majority vote in each precinct within a county could determine whether that precinct would be dry or wet. Montavilla voted dry.
By 1907, Montavilla was joined by several other precincts, indicated by the shaded areas in the map below. Montavilla is Precinct 74 (formerly Precinct 66), on the far right.
The Dry and Wet Areas of Portland (shaded areas are dry) Source: The Oregonian June 23, 1907 (Historic Oregonian Newspapers)
This should have been the end of the Montavilla saloons, right? But, no. Grimes and Schneider continued to serve liquor, apparently skirting the new law with customer password orders, such as “soft cider” for beer and “hard cider” for whiskey.
In January 1905, the first violator of the new prohibition law was charged: it was made against Captain Schneider. He contended that his license was extended to June. However, the new law provided only a refund for the unexpired period. The jury found Schneider guilty, yet his lawyer pressed on with a series of defenses based on technicalities.
Meanwhile, Grimes continued to serve alcoholic beverages until he too was hauled into court in June, 1905.
Finally both Grimes and Schneider gave up the fight when they were threatened with jail sentences for a second violation.
Here’s a final irony: according to The Oregon Daily Journal of October 4, 1905, they probably still could have gotten away with serving alcohol “had not the jealousy of the rival roadhouse managers established a system of espionage that made it impossible for either to sell liquor without getting caught.” (There’s a lesson in there somewhere… )
And yet, the Anti-Saloon League’s gain may have been Montavilla’s loss. The Oregonian reported in 1904 that Grimes knew everybody in the community, that he was a progressive and that he was “foremost” in building up Montavilla.
Some apparently wanted to see Schneider’s saloon and beer garden reopen and prohibition was put to a second vote in 1906. However, the Montavilla “drys” prevailed again. On the same ballot, they voted in favor of Montavilla’s annexation to the city of Portland. Interestingly— ironically?—the celebration banquet for annexation was held in the beautiful garden of Captain Schneider, who was apparently a forgiving and civic-minded man. There was music, there were speeches and Montavilla’s famous Mount Hood cider was served.
Postscript:
You may be wondering what happened to William Grimes and Captain Schneider after they closed their saloons. Grimes and his wife Emma sold their Kinzel Park property in 1910; from there the historical trail runs cold. Schneider and his wife Emma sold their four lots on Base Line Road, including the saloon building. They built a 10-room house in Seaview, Washington, which they rented out in the summer, and Schneider went back to being a butcher.
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If you have stories to share about the library, old photos of it or stories about other historic Montavilla people, places or events, please contact me at pat.montavilla.history@gmail.com.
Learn more about Patricia and read all of her “Montavilla Memories” articles here.
In the modern Age of Information, there is so much data that the average person can get their hands on. However, one way of getting information is often underutilized by the public yet is well known to journalists and reporters, and that is a FOIA request.
Rachel Alexander of the Society of Professional Journalists says that “public records are often mistakenly thought of as just a tool for journalists.” As Alexander says, “there are broad applications,” for the use of public records “from research and academia, to a lot of activism and community organizing, science, and advocacy.”
FOIA stands for Freedom of Information Act. In 1967, the US Congress passed a law mandating that any public citizen may request records from a federal agency. The law also requires regularly requested and “certain categories of information” to be regularly posted online by certain agencies, according to the website.
This law also applies to state and local governments, which helps citizens understand what the government is doing.
This is how a community outreach or service group may collect data that they can use to determine what type of services are needed, and for whom. It can also help citizens advocates hold government officials accountable to the law and how taxpayer funds are spent.
How to file a FOIA request
I was curious as to how difficult, or easy, it might be for someone to request information from the City of Portland if they were not a well-known name, so I did it myself.
First, I’d need to know what to request, and to which office I needed to make the request. A quick online search can help you find the correct government office, or official, to send your request to.
I decided that the current hotbed issue of houseless persons would be ideal, since the topic is of great interest to those living in Portland, housed or not. I also knew that I should be as specific as possible as to what information I was requesting, and be sure not to word it too broadly or vaguely.
During a rainy, windy Thursday afternoon a group of around 30 to 40 people assembled in front of Portland‘s City Hall for a protest rally calling for the city to stop sweeping houseless encampments. The group states that the practice of sweeps is highly traumatizing to the houseless community which is already highly vulnerable.
According to a flyer handed out during the rally, there are several entities endorsing this movement including but not limited to: Street Roots, Portland Tenants United, Montavilla Emergency Warming Shelter, Symbiosis PDX, and the medical clinic Outside In.
Sweeps are where work crews accompanied by officers go through heavily encamped areas and remove people’s belongings and tell people to move on. While advocates and the unhoused community call this practice “‘sweeps” the city refers to them as “clean-ups” and insists they are conducted in the most humane way possible.
Despite the City already spending around $2 million of taxpayer money contracting work crews there is a vote planned for January that would increase the amount spent on sweeps to around $4.5 million annually for five years. The City also expects with this annual increase for these work crews who have shown a history of misconduct and mistreatment of the houseless community to become outreach workers.
The demands by the Stop the Sweeps PDX group are a complete stop of the practice of sweeps in accordance with the 9th District Court decision of Martin v. Boise. That decision ruled it a violation of the 8th Amendment to conduct sweeps of houseless individuals when there aren’t sufficient shelter beds provided by the city. Since that court decision, it seem the City of Portland has actually been conducting sweeps unconstitutionally.
We visited a training for the Montavilla Emergency Warming Shelter this week. They in need of supplies and volunteers, if you’d like to learn more about the training, here’s our story.
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If you heard me and Cory Elia on KBOO this morning talking with Paul, and Sara and Jonathan from Portland Assembly (hear the show here), here are the two videos referenced.
Expect a look at a new Stop the Sweeps campaign and a story about how neighbors can file requests for public records. We all need to demand accountability and transparency from our public servants!
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And if you haven’t made it to The Grotto for their Christmas lights and music, it’s well-worth a visit. The music schedule is here, and I can only imagine the organizing effort it took to schedule so many choirs.
The Grotto is closed Christmas Day.
The Grotto, 8840 NE Skidmore St * 5 pm – 9:30 pm* general admission – $12.50; senior (65+) / military: $11.50; children (3-12) – $6.50
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 21ST
Photos with Santa:
Santa Claus is coming to DB Dessert Company on Glisan! Bring your own camera and come ready for cupcakes!
