“It’s so great that we are all together in one place,” a middle-aged white woman gushed, almost directly in my ear. “Trump was sent by God!” I had other theories, but she was right about one thing. Donald Trump’s “Great American Comeback Tour” had brought me and roughly a thousand other souls together, far too […]
“We’ve been thinking about a world without policing, a world where we can actually survive”: A conversation with Stickii and Shae Shae
In Part I of this conversation, we heard from Stickii and Shae Shae about their experiences with police growing up in Springfield, MA and what got them into the streets protesting from a young age. Now, we hear about their lessons from over a decade of challenging police, and where they look for inspiration. Stickii: […]
We’re Cooking with Gas, Brother
My brother-in-law Norms responded to my recent Shebeen article in Hard Crackers with his own story. I want to tell it and a little more. Norms lives with his wife in the Walmer neighborhood of Port Elizabeth, South Africa. He is married to my older sister, Bronwen. They have been a unit for coming on […]
“Everyone Agrees”
When a politician, TV anchor or newspaper opinion writer starts out by saying that “Everyone agrees”, I think it’s time to pay attention. There are not too many instances where everybody agrees—except about something that’s really wonderful or awful. Everybody does agree, I think, that a rainbow in the sky is beautiful. They also all […]
The Forward Pass – An International Recollection on Professional Sport Protest from the Bottom Up
The national insurgency against police brutality and murders has finally infiltrated the elevated ether of professional sports in America, quite spectacularly too. It is both surprising and not so at the same time. I want to cite something I wrote in 2005 about athletes and their attitudes toward the outside world. It was in a […]
COVID, protest, and now fire: Portland at a tipping point
The past four months in Portland have felt like nature doling out warning slaps, demonstrating the fragility of all of our systems. In the midst of years of far right groups mobilizing and marching in the city, months of militant and bold demonstrations against police violence, and after COVID had arrived earlier, our local and national […]