LETTER: Oregon’s vote against Measure 118 hurt the vulnerable

Published 9:22 am Thursday, March 20, 2025

Oregon’s vote against Measure 118 hurt the vulnerable

My favorite man ever and father figure for all time, Robert Bly, pointed out in his wisdom-wealthy 1996 book “The Sibling Society” that “citizens vote down a proposition and somebody’s child doesn’t have a place in the classroom.”

I’m living that heartbreak now too since this past November when my fellow Oregonians crushed Measure 118 by over 75%. This measure would have given the poorest and most vulnerable Oregonians, including me, a 56-year-old long-COVID-debilitated single woman, around $150 per month (approx. $1,800 annually) to survive the current brutal, also crushing, American corporate dystopia.

Thanks to our total lack of community and concern for each other, I now have to attempt to survive six years penniless until my Social Security, which may get stolen in the meantime by the Trump administration and his pathologically narcissistic billionaire buddies.

I pray that my fellow Americans, who love more than anything to sit on their comfy couches watching the world go by, cozy up to old Unsolved Mysteries Lost Loves episodes on YouTube to help them remember what true human beings with hearts and souls were like and did.

This could help them understand all that we’ve lost and what we’ve become: Americans who deny their own human failings and frailties and so are at war with the vulnerable all around them.

Linn Groves Nelson

Southeast Portland