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Effort to control sidewalks sidesteps civil liberties

Street Roots
by Street Roots Staff | 13 Mar 2013

Street Roots editorial

Oregon statutes are filled with preemptions, those law-of-the-land overrides on local government.

They have their supporters and detractors, depending on what side of the argument you’re on, but in the best of matters they can be protections against the whittling away of civil rights that we hold self evident.

One such preemption is that if you’re going to get removed from a public sidewalk for being a nuisance, the people removing you had better have a good reason. The burden of proof that you intended to be a nuisance is on them.

That’s been a thorn in the side of Portland’s sidewalk laws for years. Locally, sidewalk laws have tried to prohibit people from sitting and lying on public thoroughfares, but they get tripped up when the state says you can’t just wholesale remove or harass people just because you don’t want them around. Freedom of expression prevails.

The first significant chip in this civil liberty is winding its way through the State Legislature now. It’s a bill that would change state law to prevent it from preempting a city’s authority to regulate or control the public’s use of its sidewalks. The Portland Business Alliance is pushing the bill, with the less than veiled intention to ban sitting and lying on sidewalks entirely, homeless included. In other words, Oregon — on this issue — keep those pesky civil liberties off our sidewalks.

To be sure, there is illegal behavior on our sidewalks, and aggression and violence should be met with police enforcement, just as our laws currently allow. And indeed, sidewalks are intended to facilitate pedestrian traffic, which our laws protect as well. In addressing violations, the onus is on the police, where it belongs. Extending prohibitions on sitting and lying on sidewalks beyond this is to target people not intentionally breaking any laws or blocking a single step. And history bears out that the people caught up in this net are predominantly homeless.

Street Roots wants to see a thriving business community. We want safe sidewalks, and we want individuals and organizations to respect one another and work in partnership toward a better tomorrow. With a $25 million shortfall in our city’s budget, and 10 percent cuts hitting our most vital services for sheltering our city’s thousands of homeless men, women and children, we should be rolling up our sleeves looking for ways to work better together, not slipping through back doors to grab the upper hand. The House should kill this bill.

Oregon’s founding fathers crafted a constitution that, like its federal counterpart, makes paramount the protection of free speech, but with even broader strokes:

“No law shall be passed restraining the free expression of opinion, or restricting the right to speak, write, or print freely on any subject whatever; but every person shall be responsible for the abuse of this right.”

To that we say, hear, hear. And here, too, if you please.

For Street Roots news coverage on this issue go here.

Tags: 
Street Roots Editorial, sit-lie, sit-lie ordinance, Oregon Legislature, politics, poverty, civil liberties, Sidewalk ordinance, Portland Busienss Alliance
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