
Portland Anarchist Road Care Fixes Potholes Anonymously (2017) - doener
https://www.citylab.com/equity/2017/03/portland-anarchists-want-to-fix-your-streets-potholes/519588/
======
aeruder
> _They also run the risk of being held personally liable if someone were to
> be injured by the pothole they attempted to fix._

Are they suggesting that the city can be held liable when a pothole they
_haven't_ fixed jacks up my car or its tires? I've not really heard of that
working in practice. From Portland's own website [0]:

> _Most pothole claims are not paid._

Yea, figures - I think I'll take my chances with the anarchist-repaired
potholes.

[0]
[https://www.portlandoregon.gov/bibs/article/629953](https://www.portlandoregon.gov/bibs/article/629953)

~~~
IAmEveryone
It's simply "you touch it, you (might) own it". The same principle applies,
for example, to first aid, which is why "Good Samaritan" laws exist shielding
you from liability. I generally sympathise with your point of view, because I
really don't know how you can actually make a pothole _worse_ by attempting to
fix it. But if someone can make such a case ("they fixed it with road-coloured
cardboard paper and I didn't see the hole below"), then yeah, they are liable.

The city is just giving advice in this case. If someone where to harmed by one
of these fixed potholes, the lawsuit would be between that person and these
"pothole vigilantes".

~~~
hermitdev
> I really don't know how you can actually make a pothole worse by attempting
> to fix it.

My first thought would be using substandard or incorrect materials. Say, using
concrete in an asphalt surface. You quasi cover this with your cardboard part
of the comment. Perhaps an incorrect mix of aggregate to asphalt might have
different thermal properties. If the pothole expanded more/faster than the
surrounding material, it might make it a lot worse. Also, if your materials
are not safe to drive on while setting (like my example, filling a hole with
concrete). You'd also be endangering yourself and others while attempting such
work as you'll be unsuitably marked and lanes won't be properly barricaded for
your work.

------
drawkbox
Reminds me of the "Guerrilla Public Service" vigilante[1][2] from 2001, he
added an I-5 sign notification where people commonly missed the exit.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANFaIeiJ40Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANFaIeiJ40Q)

[2]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Clgl63CWOkM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Clgl63CWOkM)

~~~
Someone1234
I love that story so much.

We all have those "little" things that bug us, that we just wish we could
throw our hands up and fix but naturally never do. The most we'll do is send a
comment/email that will never get action-ed.

------
thelastidiot
“It’s not safe or legal for people to fill potholes on streets that are
maintained by the city,” says Rivera. “They run the risk of being injured in a
traffic crash.... They also run the risk of being held personally liable if
someone were to be injured by the pothole they attempted to fix.”

Not legal? Everything starts being illegal when it's an embarrassment for the
governement. As in capitalism's paralyzie? Let these guys decide if they want
to run the risk to be injured.

~~~
pitaj
I don't know what you mean by "capitalism's paralyzie" but yeah, it seems like
things similar to this should be covered by Good Samaritan laws.

------
falcolas
I put this comment in the Tesla thread, but it applies here as well. Last
summer saw a lot of really bad forest fires that had to be fought. The costs
of fighting those fires had to come from the state in most cases, and many
budgets suffered as a result (a situation made worse by the broad denials of
federal assistance to states). In our case (Montana) the budget that suffered
the most was road maintenance.

Our roads received the minimum possible care they could receive this winter;
the state just couldn’t afford more.

~~~
hermitdev
And, in the case of the Lolo Peak fire, my parents are one of two households
that are footing the cost of the firefighters major fuck-up of setting the
back-burn that nearly took out an entire neighborhood.

My parents lost nearly everything except 2 vehicles and the pets. The fire
started on federal land, and federal officials set the fire that burned down
my parents' house.

No compensation to them, yet, except from their insurance.

I know back-burns are not precise, but given that the fed took preventative
measures sure as bulldozing a multimile fire line and laying pipe to power
sprinklers, then they set the fire and didn't turn the sprinklers on, feels
like arson to me. Also, that they started it at one of the worst times of the
day. Everyone in Montana knows that winds pick up in the afternoon. When did
they start the back-burn? Roughly 1-2pm local, depending on conditions. That's
usually about the cutoff for regional slash burns. By cutoff, I don't mean
start, I mean, they have to be stopped by then.

Coupled with reports from neighbors, that refused to evacuate, that fire
fighters stood by and simply watched while 2 houses & a neighborhood water
system burned to the ground.

Am I pissed? Of course. I think there was a huge failure of management in this
fire. Will my parents every be properly be compensated? I doubt it. They, and
the rest of my family, have lost a lot due to federal mismanagement.

My parents' house was not lost due to a wild fire. It was lost due to federal
action to combat a wild fire, and they fucked it up.

------
EarthIsHome
> “We don’t think the city should exist; we are only limited by our capacity
> and our imaginations,” says PARC.

Cities are the most efficient way we've discovered to live as humans. They're
less wasteful, they consolidate resources, etc.

> “Don’t get us wrong, we believe that many of these services are crucial for
> society, like healthcare, education, and maintained roadways, but we believe
> that the way to achieve access for all is by deconstructing the state and
> capitalism, as well as other coercive hierarchies that exist in our society.
> It is this driving philosophy that motivates our actions, not only to fix
> the potholes, but to take power back from the state, into the hands of the
> people.”

Centralization and urban living were invented thousands of years ago and has
made these services possible and more efficient over time.

~~~
fsloth
Yeah, it absolutely stuns me these people who dream up of a _better world_
have apparently zero historical insight into how human societies have
organized themselves.

"We are going to offer all the services the state offers now but only _better_
" is the silliest argument ever. You run into the exactly same resource and
distribution problems as the government has, and you are going to start
instituting the same sort of structures sooner or later.

Hierarchical systems are not enforced on people by malificient power hungry
lords. Humans self organize into hierarchical system. If you are planning this
"total-decentralization" you better have a plan on how to negate this natural
"follow-the-leader" instinct most people have.

The second is the historical example. The only time anarchists come to power
is in time of great trouble. Mainly because the dominant political force has
fallen, and everything is in chaos. Another political force has risen sooner
or later, only to install hierarchical power structures. With great misery to
most involved.

Doing anonymous good deeds is one thing.

Speaking of a revolution is another.

~~~
lifeformed
Yeah. I find it weird that when people dream up the "best" social structure,
it's often explained by a simple overarching philosophy. How convenient would
it be that the entire complexity of human society can be ideally governed by a
small set of principles?

It's always "only capitalism" or "only communism" or "no money" or "no
government" or etc etc.

It seems pretty obvious to me that the optimal solution isn't based purely on
some philosophical idea about how things 'should' be (whatever ' _should_ '
even means!), but instead would be a pragmatic, adaptive solution based on
what actually happens and works on a case-by-case basis.

It would be a patchy, ugly system, compared to the perfect elegant algorithm
people want. And indeed that's kind of what we have. We just gotta keep
patching and amending. There are a lot of existing problems, but we have the
framework for fixing them, and no doubt it is a difficult process. But to
insist that the solution is to start over is naive and dismissive of the
generations of sacrifice made to get to this point.

It's frustrating when people argue that all evil is because of capitalism, or
that capitalism is purely good. Can't we just acknowledge that there are good
and bad aspects of all systems, and work to boost the good parts and improve
or attenuate the bad parts? And work in the good parts of other "competing"
systems too? Yes, things don't have to be 100% pure capitalism or not. Hybrid
solutions exist! That's basically what is happening, I just wish people would
stop arguing by simplifying everything into some catchy moral gimmick.

~~~
confounded
I agree with your skepticism regarding people who express a lot of certainty
about what will work, and what will happen in extreme and untested
circumstances.

However, I strongly disagree that principles and morality aren’t essential.
This is because when figuring out, as you say, ‘what works best’, there is no
single definition of ‘best’. In fact, as a general rule, there’s thousands of
competing ones. Principles are how you do a reasonable job of making
consistent decisions towards meaningful change.

In addition to a system working well, it also needs to be _understood to be
working well_ by the people that live in it. If some definition of a ‘best’
metric was delivered by a Kafkaesque convoluted system that people found
confusing, one which works well-enough on simple principles might be
preferable.

~~~
lifeformed
I agree. I didn't mean to imply that principles aren't important - surely
there must be some metric to judge progress against. Principles should hold in
a generalized, zoomed-out view of a society. But in practice, there are
numerous exceptions and edge cases. Like, "maximize freedom" is generally a
good rule but not always.

I feel like the principles we come up with are just rough approximations of
what we intuitively know but can't elegantly express. The true moral principle
for society is probably a monstrous concatenation of if-else statements. If
the zoom-out view of society still follows the principles, then I think that
ought to be sufficient for its citizens' concerns about the society's
effectiveness and direction.

------
bovermyer
Ignoring the safety of the people doing the fixing for a moment, how do we
know that these potholes have been fixed in a way that'll last a long time and
be safe? If I want to know the method and materials used, where do I go to
find that out?

~~~
thelastidiot
I destroyed my tire on a pothole last year and I had to change the entire
wheel. I doubt a "fixed" pothole can be more damaging than an unfixed one.

~~~
ceejayoz
It's possible that an incorrectly fixed pothole would a) degrade far more
quickly and b) do so in a manner that expands the pothole more than just
leaving it alone would have.

~~~
throwawayjava
Right. It's not so much about the pothole today, as much as it is the health
of the entire road over the next decade+.

That said, addressing this and other concerns isn't rocket science. The city
could easily publish a detailed guide to filling potholes (what materials are
ok, what materials are not, what process to use, etc).

~~~
donarb
Publishing a guide to filling in potholes seems like it would create
controversy with the public, who would ask why it appears the city expects
citizens to fill in potholes themselves.

It's much easier to just allow citizens to call a number and report a pothole.
Seattle does that and potholes get filled fairly quickly, they even have a
phone app that allows you to report all kinds of problems.

Here's Seattle's pothole map showing where and when they have been fixed.

[http://web6.seattle.gov/sdot/potholemap/](http://web6.seattle.gov/sdot/potholemap/)

~~~
newfoundglory
> Seattle does that and potholes get filled fairly quickly,

We must have different definitions of quickly! Or perhaps different standards
for “pothole”.

------
gadders
People in the UK took a different approach to get potholes filled in [1] -
basically spray painting penises on them to shame the Council into filling
them in.

[1] [http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/article/32448103/mystery-
artis...](http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/article/32448103/mystery-artist-
highlights-bury-potholes-with-penis-drawings)

------
josefresco
Not that it matters really, but I thought I heard this story quite a while
ago, and in fact this article was published: MAR 15, 2017

"They also run the risk of being held personally liable if someone were to be
injured by the pothole they attempted to fix"

This makes me uncomfortable - are municipalities held accountable for injuries
caused by a pothole? Are they held liable for injuries caused by a _fixed_
pothole?

~~~
thelastidiot
I replied at the same time with the same concern. Shouldn't the municipalities
be more concerned about injuries potholes can cause vs. the injuries one could
potentially suffer from fixing them?

------
lettergram
> Don’t get us wrong, we believe that many of these services are crucial for
> society, like healthcare, education, and maintained roadways, but we believe
> that the way to achieve access for all is by deconstructing the state and
> capitalism, as well as other coercive hierarchies that exist in our society

One thing that always struck me, was in a capitialistic society we are
actually all incentivised to fix potholes ourselves... Basically the improved
potholes keep us safe, improve business, etc. I think many are just so short
sighted, that when they think of capitalism they think of the standard "greedy
corporation"

If people actually thought two steps ahead (including said corporation) theyd
be more like Amazon, improve logistics and you improve the world. Literally,
everyone profits. That's the point of capitalism, you can basically do what
you want. These guys are filling potholes for themselves, they said as much.
That's a selfish, capitalism-centric act

~~~
reptantchaos92
People have always worked to make their environment better for themselves and
everyone prior to capitalism. Perhaps you're the one who bought into the
propaganda and claim for capitalism properties that have nothing to do with it
as a mode of production.

~~~
ralusek
You don't need propaganda to value capitalism. Capitalism is the natural
product of freedom. It is not a designed system, it is an emergent system.

~~~
Crye
You are thinking of markets. Capitalism requires the state. Property rights do
not enforce themselves.

~~~
dnautics
These days sloppy use of the word capitalism by both its proponents and
critics means that colloquially capitalism == free markets, vs "the
acquisition of capital as its own virtue"

------
luckydude
I organized a crew to do this in the Santa Cruz mountains last year. I did it
after losing two tires in the same car to the same pothole. That gets
expensive.

I tried to work with the county to make it official, the idea was to form a
group of trained, careful people that would be to public works what the
volunteer fire department is to Cal-Fire. Then we could be insured, etc.

The county wanted no part of it even though their budget, at the time, was
about $1M/year for 600 miles of roads (that's pathetic and the roads show it.
The road I'm on hasn't been paved or screened for decades and it's falling
apart, just like many others).

I was hoping we could pioneer a model that other states/counties could
emulate. Still am but don't know how to get there. We can bring way more
people to the table than the county can. For example, they fill potholes with
2 people, one guy driving a pickup, one guy on the back shoveling patch. We
did that (as you'll see below) with 7 people and two trucks (my flatbed and my
1/2 ton). Our protocol on busy roads was to park the flatbed facing into
traffic, lights on, flashers on, safety LED flashers up high on, then cone off
a buffer behind and in front, put two people with slow/stop signs just inside
each cone zone, a person at the middle that directs traffic (everyone had
radios on them), a driver for the flatbed (used to tamp in the patch) and
shoveler. That's 7 people where the county had 2. We were dramatically safer.
We could do that because we all volunteered.

That's a lot of man power for free, it's less risky, it still blows my mind
that the county can't get behind that. Someone decided it made them look bad.
Personally, I think _not_ using that man power makes them look bad but what do
I know?

[https://www.mercurynews.com/2017/03/17/mountain-
vigilantes-t...](https://www.mercurynews.com/2017/03/17/mountain-vigilantes-
tackle-plague-of-potholes/)

~~~
jjp
Devon, county in England, has a similar problem. They look to be embracing
getting local community to do the work, providing materials and who after
training are then covered on liability.

[https://new.devon.gov.uk/communities/casestudy/100000-fundin...](https://new.devon.gov.uk/communities/casestudy/100000-funding-
to-roll-out-community-road-warden-scheme-countywide)

~~~
luckydude
That's great news, I'll pass that on to the county. Thank you!

------
avoutthere
Rather than getting defensive, municipalities should support these groups much
in the same way they do volunteer fire departments.

~~~
icebraining
Right, and have a strike (and possibly lawsuit) on their hands for promoting
unpaid labor. And frankly, I wouldn't blame the strikers.

~~~
avoutthere
Are you familiar with the function of volunteer fire departments in the U.S.?

~~~
icebraining
Not in the US, is there anything special them?

If not, I'd say they have a different pattern of activity than almost any
other municipal work: plenty of downtime with unpredictable peaks that might
require huge numbers of people at a very short notice. This makes hiring
professionals a huge waste except in large cities, because they'll be
twiddling their thumbs most of the time.

~~~
dawnerd
> This makes hiring professionals a huge waste except in large cities, because
> they'll be twiddling their thumbs most of the time.

Fire depts are not sitting around twiddling their thumbs. Plenty of work to be
done. To respond to a lot more than just fires too FYI.

Volunteer firefighters are there to help out in areas not served by
firefighters such as being out in a super rural area or when theres a big fire
and there simply isn't enough staff, like wildfires. They're not volunteering
to take away someones job. Some of them are just retired firefighters or
veterans that want to look out for their community.

~~~
icebraining
_not served by firefighters such as being out in a super rural area_

Right. But why are those areas not served by a professional team? _Because
there isn 't enough work to keep them busy_.

Same thing with wildfires; you might need 20x more people during a wildfire
than the rest of the time. It's not like you couldn't hire 20x professional
firefighters to handle them - it's just that it would be a huge waste the rest
of the time, as I said.

My point is that firefighting is not like pothole fixing - there's no such
thing as a wildfire of potholes. Which is why municipalities supporting
volunteer firefighters makes sense, whereas supporting volunteer pothole
fixers doesn't, in my opinion.

~~~
dawnerd
I suggest you actually come out and visit us as you clearly have no idea what
its like. We do get "wildfire of potholes" after every major rain season -
exactly what the article was talking about. Last year was records for us.

~~~
icebraining
Will people die if the potholes aren't handled in a few minutes? Do potholes
spread to nearby homes?

No, you get a lot of potholes. That's annoying, but nobody will die if the
fixers take a few days to fix them.

~~~
dawnerd
Again you’re showing you don’t understand the problem here. It doesn’t take
them a few days. It takes them years. But whatever. No point in arguing with
someone that doesn’t live in the pnw

~~~
icebraining
It takes them years because they don't have enough people. My only point is
that they should hire more people rather than support volunteers as avoutthere
suggested.

My knowledge of the pnw pothole situation is irrelevant to my point.

------
TheMagicHorsey
Its strikes me that these people don't know what capitalism is. I think they
think that corporatism is capitalism.

In any case, you can't have an anarchist society ... its always going to turn
into an anarcho-capitalist society. People are always going to join together
into mutually beneficial joint-enterprises ... and they are going to want to
share in the proceeds from such enterprises ... and that is what capitalism
basically enables.

~~~
wasx
>Its strikes me that these people don't know what capitalism is

In my experience Anarchists are some of the most well read community of
political activists around. May I suggest that you don't know what capitalism
is and should spend some time actually reading some theory? Or perhaps engage
in conversation with some anarchists? I think you'd find their views and
philosophy much deeper and valid than you've conceded in your post.

~~~
TheMagicHorsey
Explain to me how anarchy doesn't immediately lead to anarcho-capitalism?

They only way it doesn't is if you define capitalism to be some sort of
corporatism ... which means you aren't "well read" as you put it.

~~~
wasx
In your other comment you made this point

>What do you need to make a modern enterprise? You need tools and you need
labor. Some people provide labor, and others provide the tools. Some people
who can provide tools, don't necessarily want to provide labor. They are
shareholders without being workers.

But the thing is, this only needs to exist this way in a capitalist society.
In all your points, you seem to not grasp that the underlying economic system
of an anarchist society would in no way resemble the current state of affairs.

In much the same way the economy under a feudalist society does not resemble a
capitalist society, and yet fields were tilled and walls built without
shareholders.

The fact is that if you abolish capital (by returning collective control over
the means of production to the workers) there is no section of society, no
"other that provides the tools". The people who provide the tools are other
workers, working in other fields, and they supply the workers in the field
which uses the tools with the tools. There is no unproductive segment of
society such as there is today which lays claim to the wealth without doing
any of the labour. This means that there cannot be the accumulation of wealth
that we see today, as instead of being horded and spent on the whims of a few,
it is immediately pumped back into society.

The state and capitalism are symbiotic. The state only exists to keep
capitalist enterprise in check, that is why the state perform functions that
we do not believe should be performed for profit (why so many countries have
welfare systems, healthcare systems and militaries to maintain the states
primacy).

Otherwise everything would be performed by private enterprise (i.e. your
anarcho-capitalist ideal) which would very quickly lead to corporate feudalism
and private armies.

There is no way for the state to not exist and capitalism to exist at the same
time, and seeing as both structures are the root cause of many issues in
society, the abolition of both is necessary through decentralization and
worker led confederations of labor, rather than the current system of
capitalist led governments and businesses.

~~~
hashberry
> The state only exists to keep capitalist enterprise in check.

John Locke would disagree. The state exists to protect the rights of people
and the public good. "Wherever Law ends, Tyranny begins."

~~~
wasx
The state exists in it's current form _because_ we don't trust private
enterprise to perform those functions, otherwise we would. So you're agreeing
with me, although I could have phrased it better.

~~~
TeMPOraL
And we don't trust private enterprise for good reasons. They're known under
many names - tragedy of commons, coordination problems, collective action
problems. One possible solution for all those, towards which all societies in
history gravitated so far, is the state.

------
alex_duf
There's this amazing story by 99% invisible about Guerrilla Public Service
which I find both fascinating and funny at the same time.

I highly recommend that episode: [http://pca.st/YLdD](http://pca.st/YLdD)

------
Spooky23
We could use these guys in our city. Power to the people.

The city’s approach is “see no evil” until you submit a see click fix ticket.

But you need to submit them for individual holes. My street looks like a lunar
landscape, but the crew will show up and fix the single hole pictured in the
ticket.

~~~
IAmEveryone
I believe their point is that _you_ should be that person for your city, not
them...

In any case: fixing potholes is just about the least inefficient government
service possible: it's a guy/gal making $x per hour, plus some extremely
commoditised materials.

Meaning: it's extremely hard for anybody to screw this up. If your city isn't
fixing potholes to your liking, it is almost guaranteed to be the result of a
general lack of funds. With the perennial bogeyman of "wasteful spending",
governments in the US have simply been starved of resources.

The behaviour you're describing makes perfect sense in this situation: moving
on to the next pothole that someone complained about is simple prioritisation,
even if it's slightly less efficient long-term to drive a block or two for
every pothole instead of fixing a whole street at once.

~~~
jessaustin
_If your city isn 't fixing potholes to your liking, it is almost guaranteed
to be the result of a general lack of funds._

Have you ever lived in a city? I cannot reconcile this proposition with my
understanding of any municipal situation I have ever seen. Cities certainly
have enough money to patch potholes. They already have a compactor and a dump
truck, and asphalt is cheap. If any city is not fixing potholes, it is a
question of priorities. There is probably some byzantine explanation of e.g.
why potholes on this street are fixed while those on some other are not, but
that can't be simplified to "we don't have enough money".

------
crankylinuxuser
I've seen the converse by using grafitti and drawing obnoxious penises around
potholes.

Sure, it defaces public property, but it's with the goal that the potholes
will be taken care of quicker. Unsure how true that is in practice.

~~~
reycharles
They mentioned that in the article and link to another article about this.

------
bsimpson
SFMTrA is a similar group that adds protection for SF bike lanes when the city
can't be bothered to do it:

[https://twitter.com/sfmtra](https://twitter.com/sfmtra)

------
vondur
Back in my day, Anarchists destroyed public property, not fix it! Kidding
aside, this is pretty cool, but really sad that the city can't somehow fix
them before property damage or someone gets hurt.

~~~
Viper007Bond
The winter of 2016/2017 was really bad here in Portland and caused an
unbelievable amount of damage to our roads. Whole portions of streets came up
from the freeze/thaw. It was nuts and they're STILL in the process of fixing
them, not that the roads in Portland proper were ever that great in the first
place.

------
wolfi1
this seems to be from 2017. do they still mend the potholes?

------
chris_wot
It would be far worse if they not only fixed the pothole, but then made a new
pothole near the house of a government official.

------
ourmandave
Wait, are these guys Individualism or Collectivism Anarchists?

Rewind 2000 years...

Wait, are these guys the _People 's Judean Front_ or the _People 's Front of
Judea_?

------
fzzzy
(2017)

------
IAmEveryone
Most people don't even shoulder their share of household chores, even though
fair sharing is enforced by informal yet powerful social mechanisms. So I'm
not optimistic regarding widespread peaceful anarchy for _services_.

Fixing potholes yourself also takes a (few million) step(s) backward in time:
it's the bartering of public service, forgoing the awesome benefits of
specialisation and cooperation.

But you know where this sort of anarchy basically works: taxes! Almost all
people send in their tax returns without a fuzz. It's almost as if they agree
that everyone should chip in for shared endeavours, and that money is an
excellent medium for coordinating it all.

(yeah, I know there's the threat of criminal law lurking if you don't pay your
taxes. But taxes are probably the world's most universal policy, and only a
select few lunatics and presidents seem not to get the concept)

~~~
patrickmay
Taxes enforced by the state are the absolute antithesis of anarchy. The
difference between coercion and voluntary organization is profound.

