Here at Woodlawn Park in scenic Northeast Portland, where a bunch of folks in black have gathered in socially distanced small groups. This is the twelfth week of BLM #PDXprotest. It is officially dark at 9. Joe Strummer is on the stereo.
The call was for 8pm assembly. At the moment, about 150 folks here, with more arriving. In week 12, protests against racist policing are operating on the same timing rules as a house show. @/herbsforactivists (on insta) is here with salve and tea!
@PolitiQuill is also here tabling. They’re helping folks send postcards to convey their feelings on law enforcement in Multnomah County and Oregon State.
“Hey everybody! I think it’s time to kick this shit off, what do you think?” The crowd seems to agree. Bikes assembled, folks getting hooked up with water and snacks.
Jacob Blake’s story is being told over the megaphone. “Cops in Wisconsin shot him in the back 7 fucking times! We’re not gonna let this shit stand!”
Richard has the mic! He want to know where all the white liberals are. “We can’t wait until November!”
And the crowd is on the move. Sounds like Trumpet guy is here?
Neighbors come out and clap in support as the march moves into the neighborhood.
And there is a new name. “Say his name! Jacob Blake!” Killed by police today in Kenosha, WI by 7 shots to the back.
Correction: Jacob Blake is currently alive, and in critical condition. Kenosha is burning. google.com/amp/s/www.insi…
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Doesn’t take much imagination to figure out why two white dudes are running to unseat Hardesty- she’s the only Black lady to ever serve on city council, and the only PPB critic of the bunch.
So save your imagination for the question of “what is Vadim hiding in his mouth?”
look at those eyes. That’s not a smile. That’s not what he’s doing with those teeth.
He might be trapping a small, feebly struggling rodent in there, but he’s definitely not smiling.
Could be worse: he could have zero public experience and the enthusiastic endorsement of the Portland Police Association wweek.com/news/city/2022…
As school starts in a few days, it’s easy to get mad at PPS for their safety protocols, because they are BAD.
However the bigger problems are the directives from the Oregon Health Authority (OHA) and the Oregon Department of Education (ODE). So let’s take a look:🧵
First, we have the PPS “Swiss Cheese Model,” which PPS diagrams as shown. It’s a system that relies on a series of nested and hopefully redundant layers. But if only a few layers are holding up the whole mess, then it’s going to fall apart, and there’s going to be outbreaks. 1/
The big thing to know about the PPS Swiss cheese model is that, however insufficient each layer of protection is in this plan, ODE has also removed a bunch of allowed layers, & PPS’s covid plan is bad precisely because it only meets the state’s minimum covid safety standards. 2/
Once upon a time, Perdue Pharma spent decades convincing doctors that the best medical science supported getting the whole country hooked on opiates.
Anyway now people don’t trust doctors when they say “this new vaccine is the only thing that helps covid, don’t take horse paste.”
Weird how a Byzantine medical system of grotesquely unethical for-profit firms, with wildly unequal access & outcomes, where life-saving care is regularly and arbitrarily withheld, would engender this kind of mistrust in the midst of a devastatingly mismanaged pandemic.
It sure doesn’t help that the main website that the Horse Paste People are getting their info from looks as legit as the Mayo Clinic or WebMD, or that it links to a bunch of seemingly legitimate medical studies that are difficult to parse or evaluate without a medical degree.
Apparently Ted would like to address the multitude of problems facing Portland by asking residents to “Choose love”. I’m not shitting you. That’s his opening speech.
Just to be clear: 1 year after George Floyd's murder & the burning of the 3rd Precinct, after the mayor vowed to permanently preserve George Floyd Square as a memorial & city council voted to disband MPD, the city cleared George Floyd Square & shot someone dead on the same day.