Including the headline, this blog post contains six f-bombs — As soon as he saw me step up to the plexiglass wall with no mask on, the thirtyish guy working at the to-go-only Portland coffeeshop turned and strode briskly over to grab something. I wasn’t sure what it was, until he wordlessly thrust it towards me: a white, paper face…

Out today: A new long-form story about a group of people living in vehicles on the edge of the Portland airport. Here’s how Narratively summarizes it: “At this lawless encampment of rickety RVs, residents face eviction, addiction and machete battles, but their self-made community is the only thing they have.” …

By Thacher Schmid In recent years, American homelessness has been on the rise again. In 2015, West Coast cities declared homeless “emergencies.” Since 2017, “Point in Time” counts have risen; some measures see unhoused populations at all-time highs. Now, due to Covid-19, the numbers could spike higher: as many as…

We watch the pretty colors, the blue and the red, the dizzying backdrops and pretty graphics. The dance of numbers and data, the ticker tape, a constantly-refreshing menagerie of digits crunched by 3,141 United States counties. We listen to the authoritative words, the tough tone from guys and gals alike…

Once in awhile the chorus of an Arlo Guthrie tune my dad used to sing when I was a kid hops, uninvited, into my head. “Good morning, America, how are you?” It’s a tough question, these days. We face unprecedented climate change destruction—are wildfires and hurricanes year-round now?—a once-in-a-century pandemic…

A protest leader and Chicago 7 trial codefendant has a new book, ‘Conspiracy to Riot’ — By Thacher Schmid Chicago 7/Conspiracy 8 activist, protester and codefendant Lee Weiner’s memoir Conspiracy to Riot came out last week. It barely made a splash in U.S. media, who seem more intent on building hype for movies such as the Aaron Sorkin and Sacha Baron Cohen drama “The Trial of…

Johnson cosponsored the National Suicide Hotline Designation Act, to make 9–8–8 a national crisis hotline. Amidst a pandemic and historic job losses, could it mitigate a deepening crisis? — We are the stories we tell. But, because ignoring something doesn’t make it go away, we are also the stories we don’t tell. There’s no story Americans don’t tell, in proportion to lives taken, more than suicide. It’s the tenth leading killer of Americans, the tenth leading cause of death…

An immigrant story of trauma and love — Denzel Mendoza loved his student model King 606 trombone so much he would shower and sleep with it as a sixth grader, his mother, Melody Lumbang-Stevens recalls. “He’d come back from school and take a shower and clean the trombone, and he’d sleep beside the trombone,” she laughs, still marveling…

A deeper dive into Portland’s leading antifascist group, a major 2019 demonstration, and related questions and controversies — PopMob organizers say opposing fascism can be fun as well as serious. “One way that PopMob has influenced my life is seeing the joy in resistance,” said Elizabeth, a member of this leading antifascist organization here in Portland, who declined to give a last name. (The name PopMob is short…