I love the weather there. I’d rather be depressed in the cold forest than to have my skin scorched. I don’t want to deal with fascists though and it seems to be a constant battle between them and antifa in Portland. How’s rent and walkability there?

    • Shoegazer [he/him]
      ·
      3 years ago

      Of course I’ll be doing more research’s and it’ll be a long time before I actually move, but what are the current job prospects over there? Currently doing STEM in college lol so there’s gonna be a lot of us

      • communism_liker_69 [he/him]
        ·
        3 years ago

        There's definitely STEM opportunities in the PNW. I came to Washington from Florida in 2012 to go to school and I much prefer it here over fucking Florida lol. It took a few years to really adapt to the winter, but it's pretty mild compared to a lot of the interior or north eastern US. I've lived on the east side of the Cascades and west side and it's def more conservative and trumpy on the East. West of the Cascades you get hicks up in the hills but the towns are mostly full of libs. Like anywhere in the US it's pretty varied, overall less conservative than Central Florida I would say.

        The real Nazi/fascist/white separatist hotspots are in places in the interior like the Idaho panhandle and western Montana. I think Spokane is pretty politically fucked but I've never lived there so I don't know specifically. I think the Xtian Dominionist that got elected to the state legislature came from Spokane valley, which is basically a conservative suburb district.

        • Shoegazer [he/him]
          ·
          3 years ago

          Idaho

          I keep forgetting that Idaho is in the west. My day is ruined

      • olympiawoman [she/her]
        ·
        3 years ago

        Can't say I know too much about the local job prospects, but I can't quite say this town is all sun and roses. Homelessness is rampant, even for a West coast US city, at about 1 homeless resident per 60 housed compared to Seattle and LA at about 1 in 100. Any other questions you want to ask a local?

          • olympiawoman [she/her]
            ·
            3 years ago

            oly pd are less brutally fascist than the tacoma pd?

            I've heard anecdotes from the homeless that the OPD is generally softer on the homeless (IMO, I think there's just too many homeless for the police to harass), but to everyone else they're still racist, jackbooted thugs like any other American PD. They'll also occasionally run encampment sweeps, but I have no idea how those shape up to other encampment sweeps in the area

        • Shoegazer [he/him]
          ·
          3 years ago

          How dangerous would it be to volunteer for more overtly leftist organizations? I know that some people get confronted by chuds and even arrested for handing out food but I don’t think it was in the PNW

          • olympiawoman [she/her]
            ·
            3 years ago

            Safer than most, in my opinion. The Evergreen State college's reputation as commie central isn't baseless (though greatly exaggerated by right wing media), and there's quite a few mutual aid programs that exist to a limited capacity, like EGYHOP that do needle exchanges in the street. Unfortunately they are largely full of radlibs but they still do good praxis. There's certainly room for a budding leftist movement to (locally) emerge there

            As far as safety goes, MOST days you'll be very safe, but there are many days when there's some large scale right wing rally where chuds from miles around come to congregate in their oversized, pristine pickup trucks. They typically announce their comings weeks in advance and usually only stay for a few hours so they are really easy to avoid