![]() ![]() Portland’s contemporary status as a progressive stronghold among American cities may be well-earned, its “livability” a function of its grassroots, neighborhood-based activism, environmentalism, mass transit, and Urban Growth Boundary and other legacies of the 1960s and ’70s what Donnelly’s narrative provides is an important corrective to notions of the city as a timeless, untroubled oasis of liberalism.ĭonnelly situates his story at the intersection of multiple streams of national experiences, including the histories of American cities, the intertwined relationship of organized crime and labor, and the specifics of Portland itself. What emerges from his narrative of the city’s struggles with organized crime – and the local business and political leadership’s complicity with it – provides a stark contrast with Portland’s current mythology of itself as an urban utopia. Thomas Donnelly focuses on this era of Portland’s disreputable past in his analysis Dark Rose: Organized Crime and Corruption in Portland. ![]() In February 1957, two reporters inaugurated the Senate Select Committee on Improper Activities in the Labor or Management Field by exploding the reputation of Portland, Oregon instead of the sleepy frontier city people had imagined – if they had any conception of the city at all – the Portland that emerged from the testimony was infested with prostitution and gambling, overseen and coordinated by a craftily constructed alliance of organized crime, the Teamsters Union, and local politicians. ![]()
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