Somebody rambling on the mic under a cloudy moon. Not many people here. There's almost as many press and motorcade as protesters.
They blowing bubbles.
There's a speaker at PPA talking about how the revolution is being white washed by both so-called leaders who condemn violent action, and those who blame radical action on a white fringe element.
Dude that drives the dope Charger is on the mic talking about how he was arrested the last time he was here (at the PPA).
Says he has 10 to 15 tickets from this.
Ohhh... Activist John is back from Salt Lake City.
I wonder if he be flying back and forth or driving... 🤔
Richard is on the mic talking shit about Joe Biden and the liberals sitting on their ass. Bless his heart.
A guy in the crowd wears a BLM cape. Better photographers than myself take notice.
A Black woman hops on the mic. Talks about being tired of being depressed and tired. Says she's bothered that the crowd shrunk so much.
@MariahMacaronio asked white passing ppl to stay off the mic, thanked people for showing up, disparaged those who only come out when it's trending and...
Say Her Name!
Dmitri of votingequalspower.com is really out here on the regular. Daytime events with kids and nighttime events with gas. Much respect to the consistency.
LRAD making threats. Says not to throw rocks at the building... 'Quit Your Job' chants break out.
Random white man jumps on the mic and says nothing.
Activist John hops on a megaphone and chants 1-2-3-4,5-6-7-8-9-10-11 fuck 12.
Ashanti bangs slaps on the corner.
MedicBloc stays ready.
The crowd lets a semi through on Lombard, he honks his horn supportively as he goes by.
Cops just gave a dispersal warning over this.
Here they come.
🎵 Mr Officerrrrrr...
Just a gang of chuds with badges, taking pictures of graffiti and burn marks with a 30 man detail.
A white man throws marigolds at the police. When an officer says something, he quickly yells back, "They're flowers, dude." 🤣
Sitting here hungry, thinking about the first week of the 2020 protests when I tried to catch a gas canister off the first bounce and it ended up being a flashbang.
I ran around deaf and half blind for a while minute. Shout out to the homies.
We were real traumatized out there. Some of us have yet to recover.
It's hard to explain how watching our nightmares unfold from the hands of our city, state and federal government radicalized us and left us distrustful of everyone.
I truly thought I was going to be murdered by a LEO before I turned 40. And I was OK with that.
Betsy Johnson has the support of the cops, big timber, the PDX business community and Nike. And when I say "support", I mean she has around $5M in campaign funds and no one else in the governor's race is anywhere near close.
Where is the resistance?
Betsy is a Joe Manchin style Democrat-turned-Independent.
Low scores on labor, environment, gun control, etc. Not a Republican in name, but for reasons unbeknownst.
Ever heard of People for Portland? The right-wing dark-money group who wants to ban homelessness by herding undesirables into forced shelters?
America: Where everybody is ready to fake fight over things that don't actually matter instead of focusing on making the very obvious changes that are within reach.
America: Where everyone knows the fight is a ruse but we play along anyway because the alternative is actually fighting.
Abolishing police without constructing and using publicly accepted restorative justice practices IN REALITY simply leads to increased public support of policing and vigilantism.
We have to create the alternative we want to see. We have to communicate it. We have to model it.
People keep asking where leftists collectively lost the carrot and its right there.
Why do mostly white anon leftists attack leftists of color? Because leftists of color typically work in actual physical communities where RJ is used in praxis.
So they call us all apologists.
For a lot of the Twitter-left, this is a show. Stirring up mess is the fuel for their ONLINE engagement, so they prioritize gossip as real work. Then they log off.
But if we look at this behavior through an restorative justice lens, what space is created for change? Zero.
Far worse things have happened since, but I hadn't thought about that in a while and it popped out as the moment I stopped fucking with people.
It was also an early example to me that white people def understand restorative justice when it comes to themselves.
The boy who pushed me never faced any consequence. Later that year, I quit school to homeschool. I don't recall how much this had to do with it. Might ask my mom.