Story and photos by Pete Shaw Exactly one year after 12 year old Tamir Rice was fatally shot by Cleveland police officer Timothy Loehmann in a public playground on November 22, 2014, 50 people gathered in Portland near the corner of SE Madison and 11th for a vigil in Rice’s memory and to demand justice…
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 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 Pete Shaw In 2013 local filmmakers and activists Jodi Darby, Julie Perini, and Erin Yanke produced Safe and Sound?, a short video to educate people about police violence, not as the product of a few rogue officers, but one that is inherent to the current system of policing. The film, which was…
by Eric Iseman “If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget…
This story is part of our feature about the many protest events on May 1, 2012. Visit the feature page to see more. by Victory Woodhull Hello there, My name is Victory and I participated in the unpermitted march on May Day. I wanted to offer a critical perspective on the effectiveness of the day…
By Kendall These are sound-bites from a discussion among eighteen people who met at Reflections Coffee House and Bookstore on the morning of March 31, for the first of six discussions of Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow. “I’m appalled that people are appalled about Trayvon Martin and not about Keaton Otis. Everybody’s real concerned…
by Jeremy Brecher Based on a talk by Jeremy Brecher to Occupy University, Zuccotti Park. Last December, Occupy Los Angeles proposed a General Strike on May 1 “for migrant rights, jobs for all, a moratorium on foreclosures, and peace – and to recognize housing, education and health care as human rights.” The idea has spread…
by Sandy Polishuk The spark that ignited the social and political activism of young people in the decade known as “the 60s” flashed on the campus of the University of California at Berkeley in 1964. The Berkeley Free Speech Movement grew out of the Civil Rights movement of the previous decade, and from resistance to…
