Something called “Aryan Fest” is apparently in town — somewhere or other — today. It sort of crept past the awareness of the city permitters, with the work of misleading paperwork on the part of the “Aryan Fest”ivalists. Electronic news reports chime in with the idea that “They say they’re non-violent racists, but those two words don’t really go together.”

I google and see that it’s a concert. I’m having trouble understanding what can be misleading in turning in the paperwork — if they called their get-together “Aryan Fest 2005”, and they put it on the paperwork, what’d be the confusion. Perhaps they neglected that part of the equation, and called it a concert for “Non-violence”. (And another google search shows that it’s an annual concert. Aryan Fest 1988 figures highly in the biography of Tom Metzger, who I suppose I could include as a “Portland celebrity”. Also, the photographs for the 2004 event are quite comical — I swear it’s an audience of two dozen.)

Racial tensions seem to have risen here in Portland. And we get this comment about the recent downtown spate of club violence. Also, we get observations that violence has long been a problem in North Portland (which is where Portland’s fairly small black population reside — and mind you, Portland historically is the most segregated Northern city), and yet Mayor Tom Potter and the police chief are making a special deal about the violence downtown. This, though, is not directly racist but business-related — they’re protecting businesses and profit more than anything else.

Though the Aryan Fest pretty well lives in a bubble.

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