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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
Story by Pete Shaw I was recently on a train from Denville, New Jersey to Pennsylvania Station (Penn Station as the locals have it) in New York City (The City as those same fellas have it), my balance bent. I grew up in New Jersey, not far from The City, and at least once I…
Story and photos by Pete Shaw The Fennica has left Portland despite the noble and courageous efforts of the kayaktivists and Greenpeace climbers whose blockade cost Shell Oil two days of profits. But while ultimately failing to keep the boat moored in Portland, they showed people that they can stand up to the large energy…
by Peter Shaw May Day, 2015, 2:12 AM Let us sing songs of remembrance Let us praise great people Not the ones in the great books But the ones of the great stories The stories we tell The stories we write The stories we create and re-create My Friend Greg does not have…
Story by Raymond D. Davies Shocking the Portland political establishment, Mayor Charlie Hales announced today his resignation, effective immediately. Hales was expected to run for reelection in 2016, but citing his “frustration with certain elements of city governance, particularly the lack of effectiveness in dealing with the police and people without housing,” he has decided to…
