THE GREAT TRIP TO THE GLORIOUS AMERICA

Part 5 - Portland

by BRAHIM EL GUABLI, special guest writer
Ouazazate, Morocco

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The plane started lowering its height. The pilot said that we had started descending. The environment was very green with a very white mountain standing in front of us like a huge landmark for spotting Portland. I cannot remember how many miles or how minutes we went through this green paradise. It was a huge forest. Endless and limitless. Very green, with both old and young trees. It felt as if Oregon was greeting us with the best it had to offer; green, beautiful forests and a mountain full of snow defying time.

When we got to Portland, our driver was waiting for us. He was a 55-year- old white man. He was had a small beard on his chin and a long mustache. He looked like a German philosopher of the nineteenth century. He was very calm and meditative. We greeted each other, put our luggage in the trunk of the car, and headed off to the Holiday Inn downtown.

The striking thing about Portland is its cleanliness and greenness. We were teasing each other imagining our cities and neighborhood being as clean and as green as the streets and gardens of Portland. Abdul and Said have the most vivid sense of humor in the group. They would always come up with a joke or devise a new trick that would send everyone to laughter. I was scanning everywhere, but I could not see any trash. I could not see any black plastic bags. And I could not see any dry earth. Everything was green and clean.

Later on, I told a Greek man that the city was really clean and beautiful. I wondered if a lot of people were moving from other states to live here in Portland; I was surprised by his answer.

‘We are very protective about our city! We are not over-mediatizing it so that other people won’t come to over-populate it. We are proud of our city and we are very possessive of it.’ I could feel the love of his city in his words. I could feel that he meant every word he uttered. Who would not be protective of such a natural gift? Who would not be honored to be living in such a green heaven? Who would not be intoxicated with the love of the gardens, flowers, and such nice people? Who would not be proud of living in one of the best cities that nature clad with the most beautiful ornaments it could ever offer?

Our hotel was situated near the tramway and the train, and it had a huge parking lot in front of it. Our hotel also hosted a sleep lab! What a weird thing to have near one’s room in a hotel! I told Said about it, and made a joke that he would hear someone talk to him in his sleep, and he discovered that the lab was not far away from his room. From my window I could see the train, the river, the millennium trees, and a huge bridge, but we were far from the shops, ambiance, and liveliness of meeting people and interacting with them.

Portland could easily be called The City of New Immigrants within the country of immigrants. There are a lot of Asian people, from China to Japan and from Vietnam to Malaysia. We met people from Somalia, Chad, Mali, Morocco, Poland, Norway, Egypt, and Sweden. Their stories interlace and interweave to make a checkered carpet called America. They work in NGOs, hotels, cabs, bars, shops, schools, and universities; they all share the dream of immigrants, which is the belief in a better future.

One of the most interesting stories was the story of a man I will call Victor, whose pains started in his civic commitment to human rights in his sub-Saharan country. He was the president of that country’s human rights organization when they issued a report about torture and repression in their country. The President of the small, desert country decided to imprison all of them; four of the members were already living abroad. Victor was about to get arrested when he was helped by some people, allowing him to leave the country and seek political asylum in the U.S. He has become a citizen, and he told me that he had to live in fear and always hide from people he did not know. He was living with his fear. He said that he would never overcome the fears of his life and family being threatened. But instead of vanishing from public life and hiding in a secret place with a secret identity, he faces the dictatorship everyday through helping other refugees and political asylum seekers everyday. That is what he called positive action; it is building the ability and the will in others to act and not just react. I could see some seeds of sadness in his eyes and I asked him what he missed the most since leaving his country seven years ago. His reply was not being able to say things in his native language. I asked him what it was like in his home country since he had left, and he said that the situation was getting worse. I joined the fragments of his story with the story of the governor I met in the plane from Casablanca to New York. They were from the same country and they spoke the same language. The governor said that as long as the old ‘rockified dinosaurs’ were present in that country’s politics, nothing would change. Victor told me that they were waiting for hundreds of refugees and that they were providing legal advice for illegal immigrants whose kids were born in the U.S. They were also providing services for refugee communities. A lot of the people working at this NGO were from the African Horn countries.

The police and civil society cooperation is a successful story in Portland. From a small organization of three people, Joanne boasts the fact that she has managed through time to bring the police, parents, and children together. She was 22 when she started the organization with an annual budget of a few thousand dollars. Now she is 45 and presiding over an annual budget of millions of dollars. She has the support of all the most important people in the city, who all endorse her initiatives and request her lobbying abilities. The idea is simple: it is a project to create civic commitment by bringing police and young people from difficult neighborhoods together so that they can converse, discover each other, and sensitize youth to the legal dangers that they face when they commit crimes. It is also a way to bring the police and the youth together to play football, chess, and basketball, and attend workshops. The results have been great and the crime rate of the young people has diminished greatly. Her's was one of the greatest projects I have seen in America.

Only the project ‘Do the Right Thing’ in Freeport had some similarities. Quency, a great, ever-smiling police officer, was in charge of the project when our delegation visited Freeport. The idea is simple: every child from elementary to middle school is summoned to report any little positive thing that they did inside and outside school to their teachers. The teachers then send their candidacies to the committee in charge of choosing the best girl or boy who did the right thing. If you find the pen of your friend at the school yard, you should report it; if you see that your little brother was playing with a knife you should take it away from him; if your little brother or sister is trying to smoke you should tell your parents and so on. The result is that little children are encouraged to be positive elements in society. Quency said that he was satisfied with the results, and so was Joanne, even if they work hundreds of miles apart and in different conditions with different means.

One of the best things that happened to us in Portland was meeting a Moroccan who holds a very important academic job. We were invited to dinner with a professor of Sociology at Portland Community College, and the Moroccan man was among those invited. He was very happy to meet people from his country in this side of America, where very few Moroccans have elected to start a new home. The exchange was warm and the dinner was delicious; the American barbecue filled our bellies with delicious salmon. Mr. Majidi is originally from Morocco and he worked at the PCC. The next day, he took us in his van to do some shopping and visit some of the beautiful parks of Portland. It is a very common trait for all the Moroccans abroad to be ready to serve their co-citizens. It has happened to me in France, in Spain, and in Belgium. They do their best to make you comfortable and to help you enjoy your stay among them. Mr. Majidi did a good job taking everyone in his van between these huge shopping malls in Portland.

The state of Oregon does not have sales tax on products. It is a way to foster investment and enhance buying abilities in an effort to develop the consuming power of the inhabitants of the state. Some people agree with tax exemption and some do not. Each camp has its own reasons for agreeing and for disagreeing. This is from an article by one of the defenders of taxation in the state of Oregon:

“Now, the obvious rejoinder is that a sales tax will hurt Oregon retail businesses. First, I don't think that elasticities will be that high to cause much of a reduction in revenues, but whatever reductions there are could easily be offset by a business credit. However, I don't really think this will matter that much in the end to businesses. Look at all of the states that have sales taxes, some go as high as 9% and over, and I don't see much correlation in the health of the economy, the presence of retail businesses and such with the tax rate. To put it another way, do you think that Oregon would look much different today if there had been a sales tax in place 50 years ago? Perhaps we would have better schools and such, but I doubt the retail climate would be much different. But I will search for evidence of the effect of sales taxes on businesses and report what I find when I do a post just on sales taxes soon” (1).

I only understood the difference when I did my shopping. I could see how different the prices were from the prices in all of the other places I have visited. There was a very big difference between the prices I saw in New Orleans and Washington, and the prices I was witnessing in Oregon. The result was that in a matter of hours we were about to buy computers, digital cameras, and a lot of Nike shoes, the symbol of American liberalism.

Consumerism entered our hearts, too. I would never have spent as much money in Morocco as I did in the US. We have a saying that he who has lived with a people for forty days becomes one of them; but in our case, it did not take more than two weeks to give way to our consumer lust. I am wearing my Nike shoes in the cold winter of Ouarzazate, and I feel sorry that I did not buy more!

To finish my insight from Portland, I would like to mention the little conversation we had with Mr. John Damis, head of the department of North African and Middle East Studies. He heard that a delegation from Morocco was visiting the university and he came to greet us.

He greeted us in very correct Arabic and said, among other things:
“ I have heard that you are coming from Morocco and I came to say hi. I had a very great, personal experience with Morocco and I always visit it. It is great to be able to exchange with you even for a short time. I have written a book about ‘The Movement of the Free Schools in Morocco.” He was talking piously and with a lot of happiness in his eyes to have met people from a land he cherishes.

These are fragments of a lot of happy moments spent in a very beautiful city called Portland. The port whose gates are open to the Pacific, flirting with the Asian winds. Whose people co-habitate to make the most beautiful mix of lives that the winds of immigration brought together to share the same shelter of happiness under the protection of the American constitution.

The trip was short and coming to an end. Chicago and Freeport were already calling all of us to new adventures in the city of Al Capone.

(1) http://oregonecon.blogspot.com/2007/12/time-for-tax-reform-in-oregon-is-now.html