By Dan Handelman

Last month, Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler proclaimed that Saturday, April 21, would be "USS Portland Day" to honor the giant warship that was commissioned on the Willamette River that day. This "amphibious landing dock" has two anti-air missile systems, two 30-millimeter anti-surface guns, nine 50-caliber anti-surface machine guns, and according to Naval Today, an experimental laser weapon. Our Portland-based nonprofit, Peace and Justice Works, asked the mayor to withhold the proclamation seeing as in 2012, Portland City Council adopted a policy for redirecting funds from wars to human needs.

Several of our mayors have supported similar resolutions at the National Conference of Mayors. One resolution passed in 2017 asks cities to direct department heads to consider what they could accomplish if money now being spent on the military were redirected for local use. The resolution called attention to the fact that even "fractions of the ... military budget could provide free, top-quality education from pre-school through college, end hunger and starvation on earth, convert the United States to clean energy, provide clean drinking water everywhere it's needed on the planet, build fast trains between all major U.S. cities."

Wheeler's proclamation states that the USS Portland will "protect our nations [sic] interests but also provide aid during emergencies such as earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes or other disasters." When Iraq was under U.S., and United Nations sanctions, our country refused to let in hundreds of items the Iraqi people desperately needed, including tires for their ambulances. The federal government claimed those items were "dual use" for both civilian and military.

Just as it was a morally imprecise stretch to prevent tires from reaching the Iraqi public because they might be used for military purposes, it is a stretch in the other direction to praise a warship because it may someday be used for humanitarian relief efforts.

A little research turned up the cost of this floating behemoth: $2 billion dollars. The commissioning ceremony itself will cost money, too, and is predictably -- but dishonorably -- supported by dozens of companies who profit from war including Boeing and Insitu, both of which have plants in Oregon, and Wilsonville's FLIR Systems, which makes infrared devices to help target "the enemy."

When warships visit our waterfront during the Rose Festival, we are now met with signs that say "No Trespassing-- US Navy Restricted Area--Use of Force Authorized."

It is unfortunate that the Navy has decided to name such a warship after our city. Given the current international tensions, Portland should refrain from praising military spending when our housing, roads, parks, schools and other critical infrastructure are under-funded and crumbling -- and given the U.S. military's role as the world's largest institutional driver of climate change.

As Martin Luther King, Jr. said, "A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death."

-- Dan Handelman is a founding member of Peace and Justice Works, a nonprofit based in Southeast Portland.