Story and photos by Pete Shaw
I felt a bit like a broken record in last year’s “Giving Thanks” when my lede was almost exactly the one from 2023. This time it’s the same record, but a slightly different tune. While Covid remains, I gained the confidence of my better 99% that I would take the proper precautions in the outside world. And indeed I wore my mask, I kept my distance, and I washed my hands often. But as can often happen, defeat was snatched from the jaws of victory, this time due to a hit-and-run rock whose vicious assault upon my person left me with a fractured foot. Throw in some other issues, including a cancer scare that thankfully did not pan out, and before I knew it I was humming The Kinks’ song “Summer’s Gone.”
But figuratively and literally I got back on my feet, and much like last year, and the years prior, I am looking forward to getting out and about and covering some of the good work that good people are doing.
Times look awful, but it is important we remember that times have looked awful before, and throughout history people have organized and fought back, and many times they have won. People are organizing and fighting right now as you read this. And as I recently said to a neighbor who was telling me how scared he felt about the state of things, the antidote to fascism is Community. Fascists and their various enablers want you to feel powerless and alone. You are not.
And so once again without any reference to the greedy and bloody origins of this colonial imperialist holiday, here are some things I am thankful for over the past year.
Last year on November 28, over 1,100 New Seasons Market workers from 11 Portland area stores held a one day Unfair Labor Practice strike. Parking lots were near-empty despite the strike occurring the day before Thanksgiving, a day that usually sees grocery stores packed as people get ready for the holiday. It was a strong showing by the New Seasons Labor Union (NSLU). Two months later, workers at the Arbor Lodge store walked off the job a few days in a row in protest of New Seasons’s unjust firing of Randy Foster who had stood up for his fellow worker and union member, Mikey, who workers believed was slowly being pushed out of his job by management.
But after that I heard little about the NSLU save for the grim announcement that one store’s workers had chosen to leave the union. Otherwise, silence. As it turned out, it seems the NSLU decided it needed a new approach. The workers of the NSLU are now affiliated with the United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers of America, and they remain in contract negotiations with New Seasons management. Recently, the union announced that it may go on strike on December 4. Please check with the union’s website for updates.
Thank you to the NSLU for keeping up its fight.
When Volume II of the Trump Administration came along, there arose among predominantly white folks an outpouring of worry that fascism had arrived. While that was perhaps true at their doorsteps, Black and Indigenous folks, and other people of color often had generations of experience with fascism in the United States. So too to varying degrees anyone else who did not snugly fit into the white, straight, and Christian male category. Consequently, to varying degrees, these are also the people who have experience in organizing and fighting back against fascism. My Friend Walidah Imarisha has often noted that Black people’s survival in this land that was never made for them is nothing short of a miracle. We can learn a lot from such miracles.
And while resistance may not qualify as a miracle by many theologies, I always find it invigorating. In late January I found myself invigorated at the release party for Memory & Place in Black Portland, a collection of photographs, essays, and poems by Portland State University (PSU) Black Studies students who are incarcerated in Oregon State Penitentiary. Ten months later, I still cannot say enough about the book. It stands as an elegant rebuke of the idea promoted by the likes of New York Times columnist David Brooks that “we” have gotten away from a common narrative of the United States, and if we could only go back to a time when we all understood this common narrative, all would be seashells and balloons. It is a vapid thought based on a vapid and bigoted understanding of history. What Brooks and his ilk mean is that they wish we were back in a time when the dominant narrative of US History, one of, by, and for white, straight, Christian males, stood on what they saw as more sure footing.
That dominant narrative has always been challenged by those who bear its brunt. The pieces in Memory & Place in Black Portland resist the dominant narrative of the gentrified Albina district, once the beating heart of Portland’s Black community. With their work, these PSU Black Studies students reclaim their and their ancestors’ history, resurrecting a past that as William Faulkner might have it, was never past, while setting new roots for a culture that refuses to lie down.
Thank you to all who made this book possible, most of all, the PSU Black Studies students whose memories help keep alive the past and offer a more just future.
…and then I broke my foot, and as noted above, found myself dealing with other health matters. But from afar I was buoyed by all the forms of resistance that sprung up across the country. There were the protests outside of Tesla dealers because of Elon Musk’s DOGE nonsense. One of my relatives took part in these, the first time they had demonstrated since the US invasion of Vietnam. Doctors around the country and medical associations such as the American Academy of Pediatrics refused to be silent about Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, Junior’s assertions and actions promoting the debunked theory that vaccines cause autism spectrum disorder. And huge numbers of people, despite threats from Trump and his fascist apologists, gathered for No Kings rallies.
As well, the Republican Trump Administration began federalizing national guards and invading US cities, as well as sending out masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to kidnap people they perceive as migrants. As befits a crew so actively dedicated to whiteness and white supremacy, Trump and his enablers clearly define migrants as non-white. At first we were told that only criminals were being snatched off the streets, but it should have been no surprise that this outfit would equate migrants with criminality: when Donald Trump announced his first presidential candidacy in 2016, he declared all Mexicans to be rapists and drug dealers. Now US citizens are also being taken in because they don’t look like citizens, which is to say they are not white. The numbers overall seem staggering. Over 65,000 people have been detained, and 73% of them have no criminal convictions. Locally, the Portland Immigrant Rights Coalition hotline has received 304 reports of detention this November.
But people are organizing resistance, fighting for these people who are our families, our Friends, our Neighbors, and our Communities. Residents of Charlotte, North Carolina recently drove ICE out of their city. All around the country people are getting trained in how to spot ICE and report them, and more importantly, how to protect their neighbors whom ICE is looking to kidnap. It is slow work, but it is working.
Joe Strummer was one among many who have noted that the future is unwritten. Some of the forms of resistance mentioned in the above paragraphs, as well as numerous others–see Portlanders dressing up as frogs outside the ICE prison off South Macadam Avenue–were subject to some derision as performative, meaningless, or whatever else other than what they were: Resistance. We simply have no way of knowing the effect of the wide array of tactics people have engaged in and will engage in. But it is certain that doing nothing will only result in things getting worse. And if this leads to more people getting more deeply involved in organizing and fighting for greater justice, then that is a victory unto itself. A diversity of tactics, indeed.
But the US government’s support of this particularly overt form of fascism is nothing new in its foreign policy. The United States continues supporting Israel’s genocide of the Palestinian people. As I type, there is supposedly a ceasefire in place…which the Israeli government has violated 500 times in 44 days, according to Jewish Voice for Peace. Support for Justice for the Palestinian people remains vibrant, and support for Israel is waning around the world as governments are now being forced to catch up with their citizens who understand that Zionism is simply a particular form of fascism. Even in the US, bipartisan support for Israel, once ironclad, is on the wane as more people see is not any different than the Nazi Holocaust of the Jewish people. It is only the “Who” that has changed, while the “What” remains constant.
Anti-semitism too is fascism, and it always seems to be bubbling under the surface, embraced across the political spectrum. Anti-Zionism is not anti-semitism, but much of the conservative turn against Israel has been at least partially based in anti-semitism. As well, anti-semitism has a history of a home on the Left. We must organize and fight against all of it.
Thank you to all those who are standing up against fascism, national and international styles, and doing what they can to try and make sure things don’t get worse.
We lost some stalwart members of our activist Communities this year. Malcolm Chaddock passed away in March. He was as Good and Kind a person as I have ever known, and I am proud to have crossed paths with him. He seemed to be everywhere, and he was one of those people who if he was where I was, I knew I was in the right place. He was a stalwart activist for Peace, and he was clear which side he was on. The last time I saw him, my better 99% and I were heading to a movie, and along the way we spotted him near the east side of the Burnside Bridge, on a corner waving his Palestine and Veterans for Peace flags. I will carry that memory for all of my days.
We also lost Dan Handelman. The man was a walking encyclopedia of police misconduct, and when I read some of his obituaries, I at first was shocked by how complete his dedication was toward police accountability. But on second thought, that he never missed a City meeting involving police accountability made sense as did all the memories of his work. I remember after some gathering asking him about his life when he was not dealing with police stuff. Dan told me about working as a stage hand, and I want to say we talked a little about baseball, or rather, my appreciation of listening to baseball on the radio. I was not at all surprised that he was a completely pleasant and humble person. His loss is devastating, but his work remains and will be built upon.
Thanks to Malcolm and Dan, and my condolences to their Loved ones who carry on.
I was able to get my health back in reasonable order and get back in decent shape toward the end of Summer. It was just in time to take a trip to France with my better 99%, and as a bonus, my old Friend Howard graced us with his presence for the first week, in Marseille and Tourettes-sur-Loup. I had a wonderful time whether wandering around and talking with random people or meeting up with old Friends and making new ones. I could not have made the trip without the help of many medical folks and their collective Wisdom. My thanks to all of them.
I hit the ground running upon returning to the US. On October 12, a little over 15 years after the Portland police murdered Keaton Otis, a memorial parklet was dedicated to him and is father, Fred Bryant, at the corner of NE 6th and Halsey, the sight of the monthly vigils for Otis that were begun by Bryant on June 12, 2010. The dedication of the many people involved over the years that resulted in this parklet has been immense, and the organizing around it–and for finding justice for all victims of police violence–has been a privilege to behold over the years.
Thank you to everyone who in some fashion, from attending a vigil here and there (or just here or there) to organizing around the creation of the parklet, and all of the many points in between. Your efforts are a testimony to the power of persistence.
Prior to heading to France, I was able to squeeze in a few days with my brother and sister-in-law, as well as a few Friends I have not seen in too long. As ever, I am thankful for a brother who has always had my back, for a sister-in-law who has always had his and mine. And I am thankful for what always feels an unearned abundance of Friends who keep an eye on me. I Love you all.
Finally, as always, my thanks to my better 99%. I could know every word in the dictionary and still not have the words for her. But as I often say, referencing four of the most beautiful songs I know, she is my Blue Sky, my Waterloo Sunset, and still after all this time, and God Only Knows I’ve never known magic as crazy as this. Thank you, my Love.
