A Mayor for the Occupy Set

American Prospect:

“They don’t film a lot of episodes in my part of town,” says Smith of IFC's Portlandia. Other candidates talk about the city’s failed promise to East Portland, a once largely rural and suburban area mostly annexed in the '80s and '90s that lacks central Portland’s public-transportation infrastructure, including bike lanes and bus routes. Smith, his wife, and their dog actually live there. ”I need an East Portlandia,” he says. As he sees it, as goes the relative racially, ethnically, and economically diverse East Portland, so goes Portland, eventually. “We’ve got to get the full city to make a commitment that this city has to work for everyone.”

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