The summer of 1970, a year filled with anti-Vietnam War protests across the country, was headed to a climax with the American Legion’s national convention opening in Portland on August 30. The Oregonian newspaper reported that Richard Nixon was to address the gathering. Portland had witnessed its share of demonstrations; this could be the mother of them all. The FBI informed Governor Tom McCall that the so-called Peoples Army Jamboree was organizing to bring 50,000 protestors to disrupt the convention. (Later, evidence showed the FBI had made up the number. Some things don’t change.)
Republican Governor McCall responded by announcing the first and only, before or since, state-sponsored rock festival. McIver State Park southeast of Portland was to be the site of “Vortex I: A Biodegradable Festival of Life,” coinciding with the American Legion’s convention. Tens of thousands young people, attracted by music and law enforcement’s looking the other way from drug use and nudity – well, maybe not looking away from nudity – gathered by the Clackamas River instead of the streets of Portland. (Matt Groening, creator of “The Simpsons,” attended Vortex with his father, Homer.)
If you were of a certain age in the Northwest at the time, you might remember the names Notary Sojack, US Cadenza, Portland Zoo, Brown Sugar and others.
Fast forward to 2014 and the gentrified Alberta Street, aka “Alberta Arts District,” in northeast Portland. Sean Davis, a Purple-Heart veteran of the Iraq War, is the new Commander of Post 134. American Legion national membership, peaking fifty years earlier at 3.3 million, now was down to 2 million. Only 30,000 members were under age forty. Davis decided to do something.
He began by inviting veterans he had served with in Iraq to 
join and help rejuvenate Post 134’s leadership. He went further, with plans to make the post, a fixture on Alberta Street since the 1950s, an active part of the neighborhood. The Legion building hosted indie-rock shows, sexual-assault-survivor groups and trivia nights catering to gay, lesbian and transgender people, veterans or not. Typically, the bar serves more non-veterans than veterans. During the recent freezing weather, when four people died on Portland’s streets, more than seventy-five homeless people found shelter inside the Post’s building.
Davis made an unsuccessful run for mayor in the recent election.
The inevitable happened in January this year. Sean Davis received a letter from the Legion’s state leadership threatening to shut down Post 134 for not being, well, American Legion enough. Davis later told news reporters not to worry; it was simply a misunderstanding. The Legion’s state leadership is just conducting an audit, not an investigation.
