Portland wants tourists. So much so that the tourism bureau has taken out a full page ad in major newspapers across the country. It’s an ad written poem style. How quaint.

Portland has a full page ad in the Seattle Times today… pic.twitter.com/r5c6WfKKbW

— Heidi Groover (@heidigroover) June 20, 2021

Oh Portland. We’ve certainly heard a lot about your city, and we’ve certainly heard FROM you over the last year. What have we heard about?

120 days of violent riots. 

Buildings vandalized and set on fire

Strobe lights hitting up Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler’s apartment building

People injured and killed during these “mostly peaceful” protest riots

Giving Antifa and Black Lives Matter free reign

And a major push to defund the police while violent crime of all types skyrockets across the city. 

Which led to the Portland’s entire Rapid Response Team to resign.

About 50 members of the Oregon department’s elite Rapid Response Team voted to resign at a union meeting Wednesday, days after the indictment of officer Corey Budworth over the Aug. 18 incident, Fox News said in a report Thursday.

Oh but wait, according to Portland, tourists will experience all that is great and wonderful about the city, and all sorts of new ideas are welcome. Even the curious ones. Curious ideas hmmm? What kind of curious ideas I wonder?

How about the curious idea of blaming the federal government for having the audacity to want to protect their federal building from arson? I mean, who doesn’t want to stop arson in its tracks? Evidently Portland believes that tourists will find this idea curious and worthy of a look-see. 

Consequences for those rioters and misunderstood arsonists? Tourists need not worry about that. The Multnomah District Attorney is ON THE JOB.

Perhaps the most stark outcome of the anarchist entrenchment has been a rift between the police and the Multnomah County district attorney, Mike Schmidt. Elected last year in the middle of the crisis, Mr. Schmidt immediately announced that he would focus on prosecuting cases of violence or vandalism; protesters who simply resisted arrest or refused to disperse after a police order would not necessarily be charged. The police continued to make arrests for those lesser offenses, and Mr. Schmidt kept dismissing them.

Portland wants tourists. Tourists who can be themselves and speak up…however they want. Meanwhile, those still living in Portland aren’t fans of the months of rioting, looting, and damage inflicted while the city and county governments look the other way and hamstring the police. 

Residents in the metro area surrounding Portland, Oregon, say the city’s downtown is dirty, unsafe and uninviting, and they don’t expect to visit as often, a poll commissioned by The Oregonian found.

Residents described the city’s core as “destroyed,” “trashed,” and “sad,” and frequently referred to “riots” in discussing the city’s economic and cultural hub.

That poll was publicized right before Memorial Weekend, traditionally the start of the summer tourist season across the United States. Interestingly, as The Oregonian reports, it isn’t only that downtown Portland is trashed, it’s that homelessness or...”outdoor camping” as The Oregonian terms it, is rampant around the city. 

Portland wants tourists. Says in their poem that tourists can “be yourself” while visiting. 

Look, I get it. Businesses are struggling to survive. In Portland, they had the double whammy of the asinine lockdowns as well as 120 straight days of violence causing havoc across the city. Portland businesses NEED tourists. 

For the sake of the businesses in and around Portland, anyone would want this poem to attract tourists in droves. The problem is, it is damage control that seeks to minimize and sweep under the rug the very real problems the city has experienced over the last twelve months. Crime and gang violence are at levels never before seen in the Portland area. 

The reality of Democrat leadership pic.twitter.com/cXwllOHgLx

— Rob (@_ROB_29) June 21, 2021

If Portland wants to bring tourists back to the city, they should begin with honesty instead of a poem.

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Feature Photo Credit: Portland tourist sign free photos by coffee via Pixabay, cropped and modified