Vol. XXXV, Number 5 May 2015 http://www.ThePortlandAlliance.org/2015/May
Speaking Truth to Power and Distressing the PDX Elite Since 1981 /
Of, by and for the People!
Previous Issues: 2015 April, March, February, January 2014 Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, May, June, July, Aug, Sept, Oct, Nov, Dec 2013 Dec Nov Oct Older Issues
Scroll Down: CLG, Healthcare, War & Peace, Mayday, Wal-mart, Postal, News Bytes, Truthout, Immigration, Scientology, Street Roots, Music
Tom Engelhardt Dangers of GMO foods Marijuana: What's the Story?, by Don Dupay Mayday, International Workers' Day!
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Lots of Poetry!
Poetics:
http://www.theportlandalliance.org/poetry
Jan Underwood: After Disembarking / Before Departure
http://www.ThePortlandAlliance.org/underwood
ThePortlandAlliance.org/MaryOtte
New Poetry from Mary Ought Six
Walidah Imarisha
Two Poems by Walidah
ThePortlandAlliance.org/hastie
Obey
Living in America,
sometimes makes me think
I live in a luxurious concentration camp. I can have anything I want as long as I obey certain rules.
Accepting Submissions!
http://wordsmithcollection.blogspot.com/2013/06/accepting-submissions.html
Breaking News
How Privatization Perverts Education
Read the Article at BuzzFlash
Drone Killing the Fifth Amendment: How to Build a Post-Constitutional America One Death at a Time
Read the Article at TomDispatch
Excessive Radiation Levels Detected at New Mexico Waste Site
Read the Article at Reuters
Active Community,
Cartoons, Cartoons by Shannon Wheeler, Clyde List, & Steve Amy
Commentary, Critiques,
Letters, and more!
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Arts & Culture
Visual Arts, Music,
Theatre,
Cartoons, Movies,
Books, Writing
Community Calendar
Local actions, events, rallies, etc.
Eyes Wide Shut!
by Yugen Fardan Rashad
By Norman Solomon
Now the shoe is on the other foot. It is Obama defending the principle of “national sovereignty”while Putin is using the military “humanitarian intervention” rule promulgated most outspokenly by Obama’s UN Ambassador Samantha Power and National Security Advisor Susan Rice.
Picture of Michael Munk Tribune Photo L. E. Baskow
Peter C. Little: Alliance Photographer
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http://www.theportlandalliance.org/mayday
The Portland Alliance
MAY DAY! International Workers' Day
Baltimore Police Just Arrested Man Who Filmed The Freddie Gray Arrest
Kevin Moore filmed the police brutally arresting Freddie Gray. That footage went viral and began all of the protests that have been flooding the streets of Baltimore and sweeping the nation ever since. Now, after claiming the police had been harassing and intimidating him after he went public with the footage, Kevin Moore and two members of Cop Watch –
Chad Jackson and Tony White – have been arrested tonight in Baltimore.
Picture by @aaronmmaybin/Instagram
Kevin Moore filmed the police brutally arresting Freddie Gray. That footage went viral and began all of the protests that have been flooding the streets of...
The Back Story:
BALTIMORE - Kevin Moore was asleep in his home the morning of April 12, when his uncle yelled to him: "The police are tazing Freddie."
Moore, 28, ran out of his home in the same Gilmor Homes complex where Freddie Gray was arrested and sprinted across the street to get a view of what was happening.
"Once I got around to see where Freddie was, I instantly started recording," Moore said.
Moore shot one of the two cell phone videos of the Gray arrest that morning that have since ignited protests and raised questions about whether the police arrested him "without force or incident" as cited in an officer's report.
Moore said he found his friend handcuffed, "screaming for his life," and planted face down on the ground with one Baltimore bicycle police officer's knee on his neck and the other bicycle officer bending his legs backward so that Gray's heels were in his back.
"They had him folded up like he was a crab or a piece of origami. He was all bent up," Moore said.
"He said 'I can't breathe. I need a pump,' and they ignored him," Moore said. Gray had asthma and Deputy Police Commissioner Jerry Rodriguez confirmed at a press conference on Monday that Gray asked for an inhaler, but police did not have one at the scene.
Moore said, "The police yelled 'stop resisting,' but there was no resistance. He couldn't move."
rest of story: www.independentmail.com/news/man-who-filmed-baltimore-arrest-video-speaks-out
Join Jobs with Justice
more information: http://www.theportlandalliance.org/jwjupdates
"Behind the Badge in River City:
A Police Memoir, is a revealing,
unique and important book."
Most days, most people just take cops for granted. They assume the police are more or less like everyone else, putting in their hours and doing their jobs. At one level this is true.
Some of us may say hello to officers we happen across or we might encounter them briefly when getting a ticket or asking for directions. Regardless of these brief glimpses, few of us know a great deal about the men and women who serve as peace officers with The Portland Police Bureau. Perhaps it's time we found out.
Don Dupay served with the bureau from 1961-1978 as an officer and detective. After resigning from his position in 1978, Mr. Dupay worked as Director of Security for a well-known hotel in Portland, co-hosted a cable access TV show,
"Cannibus Common Sense," and he still
lives and writes in Portland, Oregon. Checkout the review of his book:
http://www.ThePortlandAlliance.org/behindthebadge
India’s Shame, and the World’s
by Mel Gurtov
A democracy is supposed to have the advantage of affording people of any social class, gender, or religious or ethnic group the opportunity to advance. In contrast with authoritarian political orders, democracies should be superior in their openness to change, to everyone’s participation in politics, and to equality before the law. In a word, democracies are based on the politics of hope and the virtues of transparency. Or so the theory goes.
India defies these expectations. Though it has democratic institutions and vigorous political competition, at least among elites, when it comes to human development and human security,
India falls very short—embarrassingly so when compared with China.
rest of story: Alliance PeaceVoice Portal / http://www.ThePortlandAlliance.org/peacevoice
America's Drones Are Still Killing Scores of Innocents
By Alan Grayson and Robert Greenwald, Brave New Films
31 October 14
Nabila Rehman, 9, was injured by a U.S. drone strike in Pakistan. Rehman was picking okra in her family garden last year when missiles from a drone rained down from the sky, killing her grandmother and injuring her and seven other children. (photo: Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OvhAFyeGk4&
ISIS has revived our dependence on drones. We must not let it.
amana Bibi was a 67-year-old Pakistani grandmother and midwife, killed by a U.S. drone strike on October 24, 2012. One year ago, the family of Mamana Bibi came to Washington,, D.C., to share their sad story with Members of Congress.
The rest of story: http://www.ThePortlandAlliance.org/drones
This Israeli effort to blow up the Iran deal recalls the fake "African yellowcake" documents eventually exposed as US-sponsored fakes but used as evidence for the WMDs to justify the Iraq war.
Now, as Gareth Porters details, another set of fake PMD docs submitted to the IAEA by Israel-- with US complicity-- threatens the Iran nuke deal and could open the way for an attack on Iran. After IAEA chief ElBaradei dismissed those docs several years ago, the US replaced him with Amano, a citizen of a nation with a military alliance with the US, and who has since looked to the US and Israel for guidance on his decisions.
Read Porter's insider analysis, "
The 'Possible Military Dimensions' bomb that could blow up the Iran deal"
http://www.ThePortlandAlliance.org/Munk
NWWRF 2015
Dates -- July 24 - 26
-- Scio, Oregon
We have found our new home for 2015 - Beautiful Scio, Oregon.
Scio is just 14 miles east of Albany, Oregon ( halfway between Eugene and Portland).
The site offers shaded camping,
nice RV parking area,
river access, nice stage area,
great vendor booth spots and
is only 2 blocks from the small town of Scio with stores, restaurants and another local businesses welcoming U to their small town. We are
blessed to be welcome
to this community.
We will have lineup announcements coming next week.
We have a great show in the works!!
get the skinny: http://www.theportlandalliance.org/reggae
"It was tough; yesterday I finally watched a documentary on MLK's support of sanitation workers in Memphis that I'd recorded but did not want to see. I did not know Bobby Kennedy, running for POTUS, chartered the plane that brought Coretta and the family in to retrieve the body, or that she and the children
- in their grief - led a march her husband had planned. I realized how much I still ache.
I had forgotten that arsonists got within three blocks of the White House."
Bobby was dead when the SCLC returned to Memphis for a one-year
memorial of King's assassination.
Find out more at:ww.ThePortlandAlliance.org/consulthardesty
A Portal to Consult Hardesty
1040 For Peace
by Jack Payden-Travers
"In the fiscal calendar this is Tax Time. In my church calendar it is the season of Easter, the holiest time of the year for all Christians. For my Jewish brothers and sisters it is Passover season. By my garden’s reckoning it is Spring.
...On my Induction day in 1970 I answered that question by refusing to step forward and fight in what my conscience told me was an unjust war. As fate would have it, I am once again confronted with that challenge each April 15th when I am asked to pay my taxes with the largest percentage going to current and past and future wars. As a conscientious objector to war, I believe that paying for war is participation in war. That is something that my religious beliefs forbid.
And so this year as I have done for four decades I will file my taxes. I will pay for roads, health care, social programs, government operations, education, etc. But I will also refuse a portion of my tax debt. ...
Jack Payden-Travers, Lynchburg, VA, writes for PeaceVoice serves as the Director of the National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund in Washington, DC.
find out more: http://www.ThePortlandalliance.org/peace
May Day rally coming to Missoula!
“No matter how cynical you become,
it’s never enough to keep up.” — Lily Tomlin
Fugitive Dreams
From Portland's Walidah Imarisha,
a New Vision for Science Fiction,
Social Justice, and the Future
By Megan Burbank
Upending the Wagon Train to the Stars
"I HAVE ALWAYS been into superheroes and comic books," says Walidah Imarisha when we meet up at Coffeehouse-Five on
N Killingsworth. Perhaps best known for her writing (everything from poetry to criticism), teaching (at Portland State University), and her public scholarship on race in Oregon, Imarisha's now putting a social justice lens on science fiction. As co-editor of Octavia's Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements,
out now from Oakland's AK Press, she's also written a story for the anthology, about a "grumpy" black angel.
"When I was growing up, all I had was Storm from the X-Men who looked like me," says Imarisha. "She's supposedly the second-in-command but she's very Uhura [from Star Trek]. She's very underutilized."
So when she and fellow writer Adrienne Maree Brown signed on to edit Octavia's Brood, named for science-fiction luminary Octavia E. Butler, Imarisha wanted to create a black female superhero. But it turns out it's pretty difficult to write a superhero who isn't inherently fascist.
"Superheroes by definition are these very elitist ideologies," she explains. "You have superpowers either because you had money to buy them—Batman—or you were born with these superpowers or you got mutated by some spider or whatever—but you're better, you're super."
Imarisha had done what many sci-fi writers have, from Joss Whedon to The Hunger Games' Suzanne Collins. She'd written a character you don't normally see taking power in mainstream sci-fi. But instead of subverting the dominant superhero narrative, Imarisha realized she'd merely reinforced it. Her heroine had become "a regular superhero."
read the rest of this story at The Portland Mercury!
http://www.portlandmercury.com/portland/fugitive-dreams/Content?oid=15345218
...The consequences are profound. The lack of sick days has helped create a phenomenon known as “presenteeism,” whereby people go to work even though they are ill. These workers — especially those in occupations with high degrees of public contact such as restaurants, hospitals and schools — expose others to illness and create health hazards.
...The rest of the story: http://www.ThePortlandAlliance.org/sickpay
The Portland Alliance Portal for Cascade Tickets...
http://www.ThePortlandAlliance.org/cascadetickets
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King Chip, May 31 at Peter's Room at the Roseland |
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Dirtwire, June 4 at HiFi Music Hall (Eugene) |
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Veil of Maya, June 7 at Hawthorne |
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The Griswolds, July 8 at Hawthorne |
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Tony Furtado Trio, July 18 at HiFi Music Hall (Eugene) |
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Fu Manchu, July 18 at Hawthorne |
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Charli XCX & Bleachers, July 26 at Edgefield (Password: MCMENAMINS) |
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Toadies, August 5 at Hawthorne |
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James Bay, August 5 at Crystal (Password: MCMENAMINS) |
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Brandon Flowers, September 3 at Roseland |
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Social Distortion, September 5 at Roseland
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Oregon Small Businesses Can Thrive With a Higher Minimum Wage!
Study finds past wage hikes have not dampened small business growth
Raising Oregon's minimum wage to $15 per hour could boost the bottom
line of small businesses, a sector that has enjoyed growth even after substantial
wage hikes over the years. That's according a new study by the Oregon Center
for Public Policy.
"History shows that the small business sector can thrive following an increase
to the state minimum wage," said the Center's executive director, Chuck Sheketoff.
see the rest of the story: http://www.ThePortlandAlliance.org/ocpp
"Commemorating" the Vietnam War: One Marine's Perspective
Camillo Mac Bica, Truthout: "March 29 has been designated 'Vietnam Veterans Day,' according to a proclamation issued by President Obama in 2012. Now, I have no problem acknowledging the debt owed to all whose lives were affected by this war. What I find intolerable is that our leaders are incapable of telling the truth about the war."
Read more about this and other issues: http://www.ThePortlandAlliance.org/truthout
Ibrahim Bilal Mubarak came up with the idea, that those who embrace
community might get together and embrace one another.
“Educate and inform the whole mass of the people…
They are the only sure reliance for the preservation
of our liberty.”
—Thomas Jefferson
Obama want's to be
your Big Brother