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A very bagel takeover....
Happy June friends!
The rain, and now the sun. I’m here for it. This week we have an exciting guest writer you may know, but first, let me do the campaign email thing!
Friends, I am progressing toward my goal of 250 small donors by the end of June, but I still need 100 more individual donations. Can you help me get there?
Also, I am hosting an event this week in Old Town:
June 15th Lisa Freeman 4 Portland Old Town Kick-off Event
You are invited! RSVP here
A very bagel endorsement:
So often, small businesses are the heart, soul, and anchor of a neighborhood, and these and others employ many hardworking people in our city. They are responsible for so much of what makes Portland, Portland!
It’s the perfect week then to turn the newsletter over to my dear friend, and small business owner, Noah. He and his business partner own the best bagel shop in town, just a hop, skip, and a bridge away from the Fourth District. He’s endorsed my campaign in keeping with his desire to see Portland make progress toward becoming a more affordable and safe place for his staff and customers, and a great place to make bagels. But Ill let him tell you….
Hello friends of Lisa Freeman, thank you being here with me! My name is Noah Bernstein, and I’m one of those Portland small business owners everyone’s always talking about. Specifically, I started Bernstein’s Bagels in 2015, located in a beautiful and historic 1890s brick building on N Russell St.
We talk politics in our shop! Which brings us to my email today. It was painfully clear to me in 2020, in that historic time of unrest, that the special interest groups with outsize influence at City Hall would rather cater to the big multinational corporations than the folks like my business and my employees who are the beating heart of the city they claimed to care so much about.
Plenty of other small business owners saw it too, and a cohort of us began organizing. As a group, we went big for Preschool For All, an amazing win for this City, because too much of our workforce can’t afford to work after having a child in Portland due to extreme childcare costs. And of course, we were HUGE fans of Charter Reform.
Charter Reform! Lightyears beyond five people elected city-wide. Geographic representation! Diversity of backgrounds and opinions! Three people living in your district just a phone call away! This is why I am SO so excited that Lisa Freeman is running in District 4.
Beyond thinking that she is a fantastic person, I do genuinely believe that Lisa is THE UNIQUELY qualified person in this large field of candidates. I mean, she is the ONLY ONE with experience working in government transitions around the world, and with a focus on community safety and resilience.
At the Community Safety Division here at the City of Portland, she worked directly with communities affected by gun violence to address root causes and advocate for alternative, non-violent, and humane responses. Gun violence fell over 20% during her service. I love Portland Street Response; I’ve called them on a number of occasions for help at my shop, and now I can’t imagine not having that resource at the touch of a dial. I want to live in a City focused on community-responsive programming like this, with a government designed to uplift and empower the voices of regular people, where every neighborhood offers security and safety to its residents. Lisa shares these values.
OK, thank you for reading! Hopefully I’ve given you a small window into where some of our “small business owner” heads are at. Hopefully I’ve inspired you to forward this message to your whole email list, or at least like five of your friends who either like bagels or really good City Council candidates. And of course hopefully you will donate to her campaign to get her the necessary contributions for participation in the Small Donor Program! Have a great day and I’ll see you at the next event…
Most sincerely,
Noah Bernstein
About those donations.
I know I mentioned this earlier, but I need at least 100 more individual Portland residents to donate to qualify for the first tier of the program. MANY of you have already donated. THANK YOU. SERIOUSLY. But I still need you! The goal is to qualify for matching funds by the end of June! Help me get over the line by:
1) Asking someone you know to donate $5-$20. Portland voters have said time and again they want big $$ out of their local races. Well, this is how we do it. You can’t buy much for $5 these days, but it will get me that much closer to our goal. At the $20 level it’s matched 9 to 1, resulting in a $200 donation!!! If everyone who has already donated gets 1 more Portland resident to donate, we’ll be at 250 in no time!
2) Replying to this email with 5 contacts you think would like to hear from me personally, and I’ll call/text/email them myself and make the ask.
3) Forwarding this email to anyone you think might be interested in my campaign.
Last but not least, I was on a podcast!
Please join me in moving our beautiful city forward together.
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