Iran Forum

Portlanders met in Elliot Chapel at the same time as OS Bridge was going on, in the came Elliot Center complex, part of the Unitarian Universalist campus downtown.  We had a panel of speakers and celebrated the lives of commitment of the Huntworks to bettering Cascadia's relationships with Persians.  Here's what I posted to Facebook:

Portlanders gather in a church with Peace Corps vets to strategize regarding Citizen Diplomacy twixt Cascadians and Iranians. The Huntworks, a local couple now deceased, spent a career building connections. Their memory is being honored at this event. Shiraz and Portland have ties. The relationships are strengthening as political leadership is increasingly seen as subservient to tiny psychopath minorities with wars in mind.

OS Bridge (a geek fest) is happening in the same building. Geeks and Peace Corps vets have some commonalities. We know how to collaborate outside of political channels. Engineering is about longer term plans than those concocted by next-term-seeking vote getters who must pander to peoples' basest fears and most negative emotions.

Truckers for Peace has no brochures here. That's like Peace Corps for truckers who wanna get into the Citizen Diplomacy game. Chinese Peace Corps might provide more details regarding opportunities in the Iranian context. OBOR is about infrastructure improvements, including in human relationships (necessary for collaboration).

Swamp City (WDC) is these days quite hostile to the idea of improved relations between itself and just about anyone who doesn't want its weapons.

Swamp City's Banana Republic, a holdover relic, is pretty good at alienating Cascadians these days.

Those of us more interested in people skills have to learned to count on continued clod-like opposition from the Swamp.

Fortunately, the clod-like are pretty awkward.  The more adept find ways to counter the warlord mentality.  Should Portland and Shiraz become sister cities?  We'd need something from our Mayor's Office to make that official, and from Shiraz naturally.

OS Bridge, some might recall, was organized in the wake of OSCON's leaving Portland for San Jose. OSCON later returned, then went to Austin.  This year:  back in PDX.  OS = Open Source (or Operating System in some lexicons).