Text and photos by Pete Shaw October 17, 2018 Dear Cyndy and Josh, La memòria és important. Plaça de Sant Felip Neri is where a piece of canvas comes to life. Nearly two weeks ago we were in Madrid’s Reina Sofia, a former hospital turned modern art museum. It houses Picasso’s “Guernica,” that masterpiece of…
Text and photos by Pete Shaw October 12, 2018 Dear Margaret, I speak Spanish. This is a truth. An even greater truth would be to say that I speak it poorly. Languages are not my thing. I never got down programming a computer. I can’t read music. And I took seven years of Spanish to…
Text and photos by Pete Shaw October 6, 2018 Dear Dad, Spain makes a lot of olive oil. This I have known, but now it is something I understand to my core. Halfway through this four-point-five hour bus ride between Madrid and Granada, nearly every spot of land that is not residential is an…
Story and photos by Pete Shaw National Cheeseburger Day, while not an official holiday, is doubtless an important one to the restaurant industry. Anything to get customers to spend their money on your product, and it is fair to assume that most restaurants serving burgers had Tuesday September 19 circled on their calendars. But as…
Story and photos by Pete Shaw Tenants of Holgate Manor launched a rent strike on August 1 in an effort to preserve the affordable housing at the apartment complex located around the 3500 block of Southeast Mall Street. For over 40 years, Holgate Manor has been a sanctuary for a wide-ranging mix of immigrants, refugees,…
Story by Pete Shaw On Saturday August 4, Portland’s anti-fascist community held its Stop the Hate rally, bringing together a wide swathe of Portlanders and people from the metropolitan area opposed to white supremacy. The event, organized by the group Popular Mobilization (POPMOB), was called in response to the white supremacist organization Patriot Prayer’s rally…
Story by Pete Shaw When considering how to spend a Friday night, particularly a sultry one in late July, likely not high on most folks’ list is attending a talk on Pan-African organizing. But even if my Friend Ahjamu Umi of the All-African People’s Revolutionary Party (A-APRP) was not the featured speaker, the title…
Story by Pete Shaw “See my friends playing across the river” –Ray Davies Spend any reasonably lengthy amount of time with me, and you will come to know in deep detail how much I love the music of The Kinks. Music is the art through which I best interpret and understand this world and…
Story and photos by Pete Shaw The locally grown Burgerville Workers Union (BVWU) now holds the distinction of being the only formally recognized fast food union in the United States. After two days of voting on Sunday and Monday overseen by the National Labor Relations Board, the workers at Burgerville’s store on Southeast 92nd and…
Story by Pete Shaw The students at Ockley Green Middle School are getting an education. Fresh off Spring break, a crowd of over 200 students and parents gathered outside Ockley Green Middle School on the morning of Monday, April 2 in support of social studies teacher Chris Riser. He was placed on leave last month…
