This issue includes critical information about what happened at Oaks Park on Labor Day, Doctors Without Borders, A Peace Rally coming up, Homeless Action Day, commentary on the Twin Towers, Keaton Otis Vigil and much more...
by Bette Lee pictures by Bette Lee
What an awe-inspiring, daring and utterly breath-taking direct action by Greenpeace activists at the St. John’s bridge in Portland, OR.
13 courageous and determined GP activists rappelled from the bridge,
and were suspended for over 40 hours in their attempt to stop or delay
the Fennica, an ice-breaker owned by Shell Corp., bound for the Artic to
be used for oil-drilling. They were supported by the “kayaktivists” who
bravely tried to block the Fennica from sailing past the bridge, but
were overwhelmed by the coast guard in their motorboats. We will always
remember the beautiful image of this remarkable direct action of these
activists hanging from the bridge, with their colored flags flying in
the wind.
see more: Bette Lee Portalhttp://www.ThePortlandAlliance.org/bettelee
Stop Drilling in the Arctic! Obama betrayed us Again… Why do people support Obama
when he supports drilling in the Arctic, offshore drilling, murdering
prisoners, 27 unnecessary wars of choice, the suspension of habeas
corpus, sending illegal drones knowing each kills an average of fifty
innocent people.
If you want this irresponsible drilling stopped, contact the most powerful man on the planet… as if if would do you any good. https://thepeaceresource.wordpress.com/2015/07/26/stop-drilling-in-the-arctic-obama-betrayed-us-again/
Revolution and Liberation… ~OO~
At home, American police bureaus, militarized and armed
with machine-guns, have been provided a license to kill at will and our
president claims a “right” to kill anyone, anywhere, any time, for any
reason or without providing any reason at all. This amoral and
extralegal extortion has been extended abroad in more than 25 corporate
wars of choice. And what is most terrifying is that the American people
have surrendered to this betrayal and treason. With innocents executed
at home and abroad, we are under attack and must stand up and fight
back. The revolution has begun. ~OO~ http://www.ThePortlandAlliance.org/afewwords Take Action! We are the change we seek!
more info: www.theportlandalliance.org/activecommunity
Black Lives Matter Portland
There was an African funeral at the Mississippi Street Fair (aka the White Celebration of Black Displacement)
for our siblings, Kendra James and Keaton Otis, lost to racist police murder. We love and remember them. find out more and get connected!
http://www.ThePortlandAlliance.org/blacklivesmatter
There were fires in at least six
predominantly African American churches. Arson at religious
institutions has decreased significantly over the past two decades, but
this remains haunting.
The Matthews-Murkland Presbyterian Church in Charlotte, N.C. was burned down in an act of arson in June of 1996.Chuck Burton / AP“What's the church doing on fire?” Jeanette Dudley, the associate pastor of God's Power Church of
Christ in Macon, Georgia, got a call a little after 5 a.m. on Wednesday,
she told
a local TV news station. Her tiny church of about a dozen members had
been burned, probably beyond repair. The Bureau of Alcohol, Firearms,
and Tobacco got called in, which has been the standard procedure for
church fires since
the late 1960s. Investigators say they’ve ruled out possible causes
like an electrical malfunction; most likely, this was arson.
The very same night, many miles away in North Carolina, another church burned: Briar Creek Road Baptist Church, which was set on fire some time around 1 a.m. Investigators have ruled it an act of arson, the AP reports; according to The Charlotte Observer, they haven’t yet determined whether it might be a hate crime. Two other predominantly black churches have been the target of
possible arson this week: Glover Grove Missionary Baptist Church in
Warrenville, South Carolina, which caught fire on Friday, and College Hill Seventh Day Adventist, which burned on Monday in Knoxville, Tennessee. Investigators in Knoxville told a local news station
they believed it was an act of vandalism, although they aren’t
investigating the incident as a hate crime. (There have also been at
least three other cases of fires at churches this week. At Fruitland Presbyterian Church in Gibson County, Tennessee, and the Greater Miracle Temple Apostolic Holiness Church
in Tallahassee, Florida. Officials suspect the blazes were caused by
lightning and electrical wires, respectively, but investigations are
still ongoing. A church that is not predominantly black—College Heights
Baptist Church in Elyria, Ohio—was burned on Saturday morning. The fire appears to have been started in the sanctuary, and WKYC reports
that the cause is still under investigation. The town’s fire and police
departments did not immediately return calls for confirmation on
Sunday.*)
These fires join the murder of nine people at Charleston’s Emanuel
African Methodist Episcopal Church as major acts of violence perpetrated
against predominantly black churches in the last fortnight. Churches
are burning again in the United States, and the symbolism of that is
powerful. Even though many instances of arson have happened at white churches, the crime is often association with racial violence: a highly visible attack on a core institution of the black community, often done at night, and often motivated by hate.
This keynote speech was delivered at the
Portland State University Multicultural Graduation,
June 12, 2015 in Portland, Oregon.
It is such a privilege to be at this year’s Portland State University
Multicultural Graduation — I look forward to this graduation every day,
to celebrate the amazing accomplishments of our students of color. I am
so honored to be the keynote speaker, and to have been chosen by the
student leaders to do so. Yall know the Cultural Resource Center student
leaders are phenomenal, so this is definitely an honor!
This is such an incredibly important time for each of us here —
students obviously, but also parents, friends, family, faculty, and
staff. It makes me so happy to see so many brilliant students I’ve had
the opportunity to get to know graduating here today. This is a time to
celebrate the immense amount of work and sacrifice and dedication that
got each of you graduating here.
As a former Portland State student and graduate, I have literally sat
where at least one of you is sitting right now. I’ve known the
unbounded joy of having made it through, of getting not only the tassel
but the cloth stole with the Adinkra symbols on them.
The Charleston church massacre has occasioned a revival of symbolic
and “reconciliation” politics by old school Black preachers. “They
forgive, they call for reconciliation, and they make symbolic demands
whose acceptance or rejection will not seriously alter the balance of
power.” The Black political class would much rather fight the
Confederate flag than confront the police.
The Perils of the Politics of Symbolism
by BAR executive editor Glen Ford
“The misleaders are counting on presidential election year fervor to drown out the new movement.”
The Confederate flag is in ignominious retreat, shunned by GOP
presidential hopefuls and officeholders and banned from the shelves and
catalogues of Wal-Mart, Sears and eBay. In hot pursuit, vowing to
exorcize the demons of old Dixie, is a suddenly aroused array of Black
preachers and politicians that have found new relevance in wake of the
Charleston church massacre. The
slaughter of nine innocents by a white youth intent on fomenting race
war has, at least temporarily, energized and elevated the politics of
symbolism, by which great victories can be claimed without putting a
dent in real structures of power. Dylann Roof’s rampage
also reminds Black folks that the Republicans began replacing the
Democrats as the White Man’s Party half a century ago, and have since
provided a haven for all manner of white supremacists and their
paraphernalia. Hillary Clinton, who has participated in the murder of
many millions of Black, brown and yellow people but, like most of her
ilk, has the good sense to avoid association with swastikas and
Confederate insignia, will profit from the carnage at Emanuel A.M.E. The
“Confederate” presence in the GOP makes the Democrats the “Black”
party, by default, eliminating the need for Democrats to actually Photo of the woman who scaled the SC flagpole
and pulled down the Confederate flag.
do anything of substance for Black people. The infinitely evil Ms.
Clinton (“We came, we saw, he died”), who shares responsibility for the
genocide of six million Congolese, becomes a “lesser” evil.
America's war on black girls:
"But Black girls are never deemed feminine enough for their sexual
and adolescent vulnerability to register for white people. They are
frequently viewed as aggressors by both police and regular citizens
alike, even for doing very adolescent things like mouthing off to those
in authority. This is the reason why education scholars suggest that
Black girls are suspended from school six times as often as white girls,
because even simple adolescent forms of testing boundaries are perceived as far more aggressive based on race."
Join
us, for the 100-Day Countdown to the UN International Day of Peace,
featuring messages from UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, Dr. Jane
Goodall, and others, including a performance on the amazing World Peace
Violin by Scarlet Rivera.
* The Heart of Democracy Summit (August 18 - 20)
* The Subtle Activism Summit (September 8 - 10)
* 11 Days of Global Unity Summit (September 11 - 21)
“Officials in France and in Brussels saidon Mondaythat
they were unhappy and dumbfounded with the no vote, but let it be known
that they would hold the door open to the possibility of a compromise
between Greece and its creditors.”
Dumbfounded? Why? Because the godlike power of the creditors was insulted?
Mainstream coverage of economic matters — the above quote is from the New York Times —
seldom cuts very deep into the world of money, seldom questions who’s
in charge, and seldom dares to suggest that an economic system ought to
serve humankind rather than vice versa.
The
austerity packages Greece has endured as its condition of economic
bailout over the past half-decade — dictated by those who wielded
financial power and were determined to profit enormously off of the
suffering of Europe’s economic losers — ...
get the rest of the story: Alliance PeaceVoice Portal
“The
existence of the approximately 14,000 photographs will probably cause
yet another delay in the military commissions at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba,
as attorneys for the defendants demand that all the images are turned
over and the government wades through the material to decide what it
thinks is relevant to the proceedings.”
This was the Washington Post
a few days ago, informing us wearily that the torture thing isn’t dead
yet. The bureaucracy convulses, the wheels of justice grind. So much
moral relativism to evaluate.
“They
did what they were asked to do in the service of our nation,” CIA
director John Brennan said at a news conference in December, defending
CIA interrogators after a portion of the 6,700-page Senate Intelligence
Committee report was made public.
Serving the nation means no more than doing what you’re told. Really?
God
bless America. Flags wave, fireworks burst on the horizon. Aren’t we
terrific? But this idea we celebrate — this nation, this principled
union of humanity — is now just a military bureaucracy, full of dark
secrets. The darkest, most highly classified secret of all is that we’re
always at war and we always will be. And war is an end in itself. It
has no purpose beyond its own perpetuation.
This is the context of torture.
At
least this is what occurred to me as I reflected on the most recent
non-news, that the existence of many thousands of photographs of U.S.
black site operations are out there somewhere, classified but known and
pulsing. What more can we learn that we don’t already know?
get the rest of the story: Alliance PeaceVoice Portal
ORFTC Fair Trade Monitor Monthly fair trade update from the Oregon Fair Trade Campaign June 2015:
"The
clock is ticking on the TPP. There may not be enough time left in
Obama's presidency to introduce the trade deal, and it has little to no
chance of moving forward during the 2016 Presidential election. We have
built tremendous momentum in this fight, and if we keep it up, victory
is within reach."
What Is the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP)?
The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is a
secretive, multinational trade agreement that threatens to extend
restrictive intellectual property (IP) laws across the globe and rewrite
international rules on its enforcement. The main problems are two-fold:
(1) Intellectual Property Chapter:
Leaked draft texts of the agreement show that the IP chapter would have
extensive negative ramifications for users’ freedom of speech, right to
privacy and due process, and hinder peoples’ abilities to innovate.
(2) Lack of Transparency: The entire process has shut out multi-stakeholder participation and is shrouded in secrecy.
Todd Boyle brings us Chris Hedges talking about revolution... more from Todd Boyle below...
DRUG POLICY ALLIANCE www.drugpolicy.org
Contact: Tony Newman 646-335-5384
June 29, 2015 Tamar Todd 510-593-4908
July 1: Possession and Home Cultivation of Marijuana Becomes Legal in Oregon for Adults
Oregon Joins Washington, Alaska, Colorado, and Washington, D.C. in Ending Marijuana Prohibition
Oregon to End Wasteful and Racially Disproportionate Marijuana Possession Arrests; State Expects Significant Fiscal Benefits
Beginning July 1st,
adults 21 and older will be able to legally possess up to 8 ounces of
marijuana in their home and up to 1 ounce of marijuana outside their
home. Adults may also grow up to four plants as long as they are out of
public view. The regulatory structure allowing for commercial retail
sales is still in the works and will not be implemented until next year. ...
Israeli warplanes pound Gaza strip 09 Jul 2014 Israeli warplanes have pounded targets in the Gaza strip ... leaving 28 people dead and more than 100 wounded. ... The
deaths brought to 28 the number of fatalities since the launch of
Israel's Operation Protective Edge early on Tuesday, with the Jewish
state not ruling out a ground operation to stop the rocket attacks.(Editors' Note... This military assault on civilian
targets in Gaza is a form of collective punishment. tmf
Congress, the president and the supremes have surrendered: the rule of law is gone in America and the Fortune 500 are in the driver's seat.
There were 28 of them in house and 12 in the Senate and the story of how
Obama worked with the worst of the Repubs to get his gift to the
corporations rammed through a reluctant congress is only now being
exposed. What will labor and the liberals do when these 40 come up for
re-election?-MM Munk's Musings: http://www.theportlandalliance.org/Munk
The Truth About Diego Garcia:
50 Years of Fiction About an American Military Base
by David Vine
Tom Dispatch, June 15, 2015
The U.S. military facility on the island of Diego Garcia in the
Indian Ocean represents a horrific example of the human costs of war and
imperialism.
"... the administrations of John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson
convinced the British government to detach the Chagos Archipelago from
colonial Mauritius and create a new colony, which they called the
British Indian Ocean Territory. Its sole purpose would be to house U.S.
military facilities."
“Those Iraqis havebeen fighting each other for centuries,” a friend
recently said to me. I have heard this mistaken view too often. I told him I had been to Iraq nine times, all before the 2003 U.S.
invasion of Iraq. Not a single Iraqi ever said to me, “You need to
know I'm Shiite” or “I should tell you I'm Sunni.” Not doctors, not
taxi drivers, not hotel staff, not families we visited. Baghdad had
many mixed marriages of Shiite and Sunni, as well as mixed neighborhoods. An Iraqi-American friend confirmed that often
people didn't know the religious sect of their neighbor
– or if they did, they didn't care. Peace prevailed in the neighborhoods. What happened?
Iranian officials reveal to MEE that real progress has been made with a deal likely emerging as early as 9 July
P5 + 1 foreign ministers and other ministers attend the Iran nuclear talks in Vienna, Austria on 6 July, 2015 (AA) Gareth PorterVIENNA - As
the US and Iranian negotiators move toward completion of a historic
deal in Vienna, the lifting of sanctions against Iran - which is the
most difficult outstanding issue in the talks - is on its way to being
resolved, Western and Iranian sources close to the nuclear negotiations
told MEE.
The Summer Institute that I am attending is called
“Conflict Transformation across Borders.” Although a University of
Massachusetts Boston graduate course, it is offered in Ecuador, South
America, because much of the classwork is about border issues between
Ecuador and Colombia, including the status of the estimated 200,000
Colombians who have fled their country’s long-standing civil war in
search of refuge in Ecuador. It seems that the world is witnessing a
crisis in terms of borders.
The U.S. is building a wall along its southern
border to keep Mexican people from coming into the country. Israel has
almost completed a 26-foot high concrete wall to keep Palestinians out,
although the wall violates the border recognized by the UN. Fleeing
migrants in the Mediterranean and the Bay of Bengal have also captured
the attention of the world. Africans from many countries, Syrians,
Bangladeshis, and Rohingyas from Myanmar are escaping persecution and
human rights abuses in their home countries.
However, the issue of reaching a different country
safely and being granted refugee status is a complicated one. These
asylum-seekers simply know they must flee to survive. Tragically, at
least 1,800 people in flight have already drowned in 2015. Many of these
boats are not even allowed to reach shore because if they do, the
United Nations 1951 Convention on the Status of Refugees and 1967
Protocol will apply. These documents clarify the receiving countries’
responsibility to protect those who are threatened by persecution and
need refuge. Some countries use their borders to keep citizens in while
others use their borders to keep people out.
Human beings live in a world largely defined by boundaries.
Geographic borders determine where people live, to what nationality they
belong, and what human rights they are able to realize. Despite
daunting circumstances, many people choose (or are forced) to leave
their homes in hopes of being accepted in another place. However, at
times the most significant borders people must negotiate are not
physical at all. All of us face boundaries within our own countries,
whether they are of race, gender, economic status, faith tradition,
ethnicity, status of citizenship, sexual orientation, age, or ability.
Curriculum Resources for Media Art Educators
Our community is open source. All curriculum and resources created by
the Hollywood Theatre Education Programs can be found on our online
learning platform. This site is in a constant state of flux as we foster
and develop new programs and educational initiatives.
"People have only as much liberty
as they have the intelligence to want and the courage to take.” Emma Goldman
— at St John’s Bridge….Cathedral Park.
The
slaughter of nine innocents by a white youth intent on fomenting race
war has, at least temporarily, energized and elevated the politics of
symbolism, by which great victories can be claimed without putting a
dent in real structures of power. Dylann Roof’s rampage
also reminds Black folks that the Republicans began replacing the
Democrats as the White Man’s Party half a century ago, and have since
provided a haven for all manner of white supremacists and their
paraphernalia. Hillary Clinton, who has participated in the murder of
many millions of Black, brown and yellow people but, like most of her
ilk, has the good sense to avoid association with swastikas and
Confederate insignia, will profit from the carnage at Emanuel A.M.E. The
“Confederate” presence in the GOP makes the Democrats the “Black”
party, by default, eliminating the need for Democrats to actually 
America's war on black girls:
“The
existence of the approximately 14,000 photographs will probably cause
yet another delay in the military commissions at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba,
as attorneys for the defendants demand that all the images are turned
over and the government wades through the material to decide what it
thinks is relevant to the proceedings.”
2015
July Vigil for Keaton Otis
Here Are the Navy’s Plans to Bomb the Arctic
