I don't think this story is specific to Portland, but at least in my mind it is one that I can relate to the most. Portland, a city that I have never been to, was filled with violence and constant protest during the Trump Presidency and they also experienced some of the harshest lockdown regulations during Covid. This was quite common in most large liberal cities and now here we are a few years later and places like Portland have seen a large amount of people permanently leave the city. While the reasons could be varied, there is no denying that people probably don't like to live somewhere that riots and homicide are regular occurrences. Despite what they might say publicly about their decision to leave, they probably don't like the idea of living somewhere unsafe or volatile.
Other big cities have noticed people leaving permanently as well, but Portland is the one that people focus on the most because it is the one where it seemed that the government was actually helping the people create chaos and it at least appeared as though this was intentionally done to try to make it look like Trump had lost control of Portland, as if he had any control over that.
I don't remember exactly because I wasn't paying that much attention to it at the time and have a profound lack of trust for media reports, but I want to say that there was more than 50 days of rioting, looting, and burning that was going on in Portland. If I was there and had the means to get out I would have done so as well.
Unfortunately for Portland, most of the people that decided to leave the city permanently were rather affluent ones and when they leave, they take their taxable income with them. I went to college with a guy who was living there in 2020 and even though he is extremely, sometimes annoyingly liberal, he left pretty quickly and quietly as well. He now lives in Nevada where riots aren't just part and parcel of living there.
According to something I read the other day, Portland on its own has lost over a BILLION dollars in taxable income from people fleeing the city since 2020 and they are one of the few large cities whose birth rates are actually outpaced by their death rates. I can't imagine any sane person actually wanting to move there either but will admit that I am biased because I am conservative, don't care much for big cities, and don't want to live somewhere that riots can just happen and you are not allowed to defend yourself or your property when it happens. If you do defend your self, your family, or your property, the police will likely come after YOU instead of the people who instigated the problem in the first place.
In stark contrast, we here in North Carolina have Castle Doctrine, meaning that you can legally protect your self and your property with lethal force. Almost everyone I know is armed, and we have very low crime rates. I'm sure there are a number of other factors involved such as the fact that New Bern is not anywhere near as populated as Portland, but we also have more of a community bond that doesn't appear to exist in places like Portland. When those people were rioting and burning stuff, I don't think they really paid any attention to who the property even belonged to. Busting out windows at Starbucks seemed to be kind of silly since that is basically a liberal stronghold shop anyway. You wont find may people in my part of the country paying $6 for a coffee.
I recently discovered that Portland is the 26th most populated city in the United States and that has nothing to do with this story other than the fact that I didn't know that before now.
Although I have never heard the song, Try that in a Small Town is pretty popular and kind of epitomizes how I feel about the safety of New Bern and other cities like it as opposed to places like Portland. If people started running the streets burning random cars the police would get involved to stop it but honestly, they wouldn't have to. Something about a population having a very high percentage of the population legally armed with firearms has a wonderful deterrent impact on this sort of behavior. This isn't to say it is the wild west out here even though it is very common to see people open carrying on the streets.
It's quite the opposite actually. People here are not afraid of guns because they are used to seeing them. The people I know that carry everywhere they go - and I am one of them - are some of the nicest people you will ever meet and they have absolutely zero desire to harm anyone. However, they do know how to use their firearms and know that they are legally entitled to do so if things get ugly.
The type of things that happened in Portland couldn't possibly happen here and while I know the "gun debate" is a hot topic that gets under the skin of a lot of people, especially those who are not American, my city is living proof that an armed society is a peaceful one. I can't remember the last time we had any sort of violent incident here outside of a schoolyard scrap between a few teenagers.
For me, I would never live in a big city like Portland but I still don't with the people that do live there any harm. I get no enjoyment out of the suffering of others. It is kind of difficult to not look at this situation and not think that, to quote Joker "you got what you fucking deserve."
How can Portland and other large cities pull it back? Should they even try? I think that only once the brain drain happens due to talented individuals leaving the city and the departure of many industries happens will be the only time that some places will actually learn and by then, unfortunately, it will likely be too late.