I’m not talking about a full blown attack but more of the Oklahoma type shit. I’m sure as a outsider looking in I have less insight as to how this will play out. Hopes and prayers
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The rural urban divide is a real thing in Oregon. This is a story about how an attempt to turn an abandoned rail line into a trail that would draw tourist money into a rural economy became a right wing touchstone that not only divided the community but normalized kkk-style terrorism.
To understand the state’s urban-rural divide, start by looking at Yamhill County’s proposed walking trail.
www.hcn.org
When the Yamhelas Westsider Trail was first conceived, the county’s three commissioners supported it. Locals loved the idea; one winemaker donated $16,000 to the cause. The state gave the county a $1.5 million grant to help purchase the right of way, and the commission hired engineers to build a bridge outside Yamhill that was needed to develop the trail.
An early phase would span 2.8 miles, connecting the towns of Carlton and Yamhill, two communities linked in many ways: The schools share the name Yamhill-Carlton, and the entire area is deemed an AVA — an “American Viticultural Area” — for the loamy soil that allows grapes to flourish here. There is no Yamhill without Carlton, and no Carlton without Yamhill.
And yet the towns differ widely.
Though timber built Carlton, wine revived it: Nearly every Main Street storefront now houses a wine-tasting room. A bakery sells mushroom truffle gougères and complicated artisan breads. Gardens behind white picket fences burst with tulips like spring fireworks.
In Yamhill, most of the storefronts stand vacant, and yard signs and flags project a different vibe: “Blue Lives Matter” and “Don’t Blame Me, I Voted for Trump.” A billboard next to a red barn yells: “The United Nations is Not Your Friend!”
LAST YEAR, TWO WOMEN RAN for the single open seat on the County Commission. One issue dominated the race: the trail.
Candidate Barbara Boyer was a well-known farmer in her mid-50s who co-founded the local farmers market. She has accolades from the state Board of Agriculture, the Agriculture Heritage Commission, the local Soil and Water Conservation Board. She preached compromise and conversation, and waved away political drama with a smile and big laugh.
Boyer’s opponent was a 40-year-old Arizona native and Republican political consultant named Lindsay Berschauer. She has long brown hair and big eyelashes, and often wears power suits. She is known for her willingness to stir the pot. “I would consider myself a consultant who likes to push the limit,” she explained at a forum in 2016. She had worked for Oregon Transformation Project, an organization fueled by anti-Portland rhetoric, which poured tens of thousands of dollars into conservative political coffers, exhorting voters to halt “Portland Creep.” Congestion, density and crime, its billboards warned, were coming for outlying areas.
Until recently, Berschauer lived in a spacious waterfront home on the Willamette River, according to public records. But during the race, she presented herself as a working-class candidate who idolized the Oregon logger. During the election, Berschauer wore a Carhartt vest and jeans.
The story goes on with Bershauer poisoning the community with Trumpian lies and distortions. She joined forces with the County Commission Chair who founded "Oregonians for Life" an anti abortion PAC. As described in the article, as Trumpism evolved, so did the racist and violent rhetoric from the two right wing commissioners.
And there is a racial component to the Yamhill County story, too: Two months after Republicans walked out of the Statehouse and Timber Unity made its grand political entrance, Commissioner Starrett was fighting diversity training for county employees. She questioned whether white privilege was real, drawing on myths about Asian Americans, saying Asians “have better credit scores, they have more wealth. … We could talk about Asian privilege.”
She was opposed and her attempt at stopping a two hour training session was defeated by the community. But damage she caused was permanent. Fast forward to the end of the article. Kulla, the lone not Trumpian commissioner is receiving death threats. The state Rep from southern Yamhill County was the one who opened the locked doors to Proud Boys during a closed session in Salem where lawmakers were debating mask mandates during the epidemic. Rioters got into the building and were eventually pushed back in violent confrontation with the police security officers. This just a month or so before the Jan 6 insurrection. The lone Hispanic city councilor in a nearby town, Sal Peralta, of McMinnville has been targeted and trash dumped on his front lawn.
One morning this spring, he found a toilet in his front yard. “I don’t know if that was Timber Unity,” he said. “I also have a Black Lives Matter sign in front of my house. I don’t know why it happened, but I can tell you I have been singled out clearly and deliberately so many times that it wouldn’t surprise me if it was deliberate.”
So the US is becoming one big urban-rural divide. The analogy of a US Taliban is not wrong. The Taliban live in a rural tribal homeland part of which is within Pakistan's borders but not governed by Pakistan. The other part is in Afghanistan. From the Taliban homeland comes terrorism and they even conquered Afghanistan. They are violent, dogmatic fundamentalist religious bigots and extremely conservative in their culture. This is, of course, not the US but there are echoes of the Taliban in places like Yamhill.