And So It Goes

(This post needs a better title but I can’t edit it after publish and I’m too tired to copy and paste into a new post.)

I did not anticipate this. It’s nearly July and most of us here in Portland are still meant to be in some form of isolation.

I had a whole thing about the coronavirus outbreak - oh, 2020 - but frankly we are on day 27 of ongoing protests here in Portland and everything is wild. I know we’ve seen weeks of protest before, certainly before my time in Stumptown, but this FEELS different. It’s still bad, and I don’t think it gets better easily, but I’m starting to see actual movement on restructuring city budgets to remove things from the police department that the police shouldn’t be responsible for. I’m seeing a lot more of my white friends step up to dig into the work of anti-racism. I have the tiniest glimmer of hope that our Black friends, neighbors, and colleagues might one day not feel the boot of systemic racism and violence quite so heavily on their hearts and necks.

That sentence is fucking depressing for the truth of it.

I’m no expert but here is something that’s been impressed to my brain in the past month: Find the people already doing the work you want to support. (I promise you, they are out here.) Show up, ask them how you can help, then fucking step up and help. Wash your hands, put on your mask, and do whatever it is that you can do with your current resources. People are dying because white folks are letting them die. Because WE are letting cops get away with murder, and because we haven’t demanded change in our local, state, and federal government.

Real talk y’all: I haven’t been close to my family in a long time, but you better believe if someone was killing my cousins I would be all the way up in that DA office looking for some fucking arrests.

If you need somewhere to get started, search the internet for a Black Lives Matter organization in your town. Write or call your local government. Local Mutual Aid networks have been surfacing, too.

All the usual stuff applies: Take care of yourself. Tell the people you love that you love them. Wash your hands, put on your mask. Black Lives Matter.

I’ll leave you with something more light-hearted in case anyone actually sees this. It’s a reminder that everything may be grim, but Portland will still be Portland. Oh but first I should tell you maybe don’t open this at work or around the babies, eh? Naked Protests