“Where’s evil? It’s that large part of every man that wants to hate without limit, that wants to hate with God on its side. It’s that part of every man that finds all kinds of ugliness so attractive.” …
As American as Cherry Pie
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Category: Essays & Letters
Down in the Flood: Vanport’s Living Memory
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Lord, I’ll tell the world the water, Done crept through this town. …
Walidah Imarisha’s “Angels with Dirty Faces” Explores Themes of Justice, Redemption
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Story and photos by Pete Shaw There is an odd moment at the end of the first section of Walidah Imarisha’s Angels with Dirty Faces (published by AK Press), that only reveals its peculiarity in retrospect. While visiting her adopted brother, Kakamia, who is in prison for conspiracy to commit murder, Imarisha meets a man…
A Meditation on Malheur and Meaningful Organizing
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Story by Pete Shaw When the healthcare law debate was raging a few years back, there was a rally at which people were urging Senator Ron Wyden to support the “public option,” something that perhaps would have more rapidly led to single payer health insurance system. If memory serves, the precise point of the rally…
Giving Thanks
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Story and photos by Pete Shaw The late, great Townes Van Zandt once said, “Aloneness is a state of being whereas loneliness is a feeling. It’s like being broke and being poor.” Thanksgiving is a day that begins a six or so week stretch that reminds many of their aloneness more painfully than usual. So…
New York Fight for $15 Now! Delivering Big Results
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Story and photos by Pete Shaw New York is big. New York is loud. It is bombastic, boasting, and even overwhelming. New York is not Portland. Last week I was in The City, part of a trip to visit my family. A few days before departing, I realized I would be missing the rally in Portland…
Public Support Welcome at Wednesday Trial of Community Activist Aguirre
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Story by Pete Shaw Francisco Aguirre, the immigrant and labor organizer who is being persecuted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Department of Justice (DoJ), will have a trial this Wednesday, October 21, at 11 AM that will determine if he is guilty of illegal re-entry into the United States. The case has…
Portland Police Campaign Takes Shot at Black Lives Matter Movements
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Story by Pete Shaw The Black Lives Matter movement, which sprang up in the wake of the acquittal of Trayvon Martin’s murderer George Zimmerman, exploded into a major ongoing human rights struggle a little over a year ago with Michael Brown’s murder by Ferguson, Missouri police officer Darren Wilson. The revolt has been instrumental in…
An Afternoon on the Willamette River Dredges Up New Horror Faced by the Houseless
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Story and photos by Pete Shaw Anne Christopher of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and I have a few things in common. We are both from New Jersey, and thereby, as the joke would have it, we both are intimately knowledgeable about toxic waste. Now, 3500 miles away from our roots, we are again sharing…
Ahjamu Umi’s “The Courage Equation” Probes Race, Violence
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By Pete Shaw Frederick Douglass once stated that power concedes nothing without a struggle, and history certainly bears that out. The struggle to wrest power away from those who hoard it in vast disproportion is a story that is given short shrift in US history textbooks, the preferred narrative being a combination of the myth…
