Street Roots • August 18-24, 2017
Page 3
E d ito r ia l
Plug in, don’t drop out, during challenging times
ot that we should have to be reminded, but
the year is 2017. And we have a racist in the
White House.
This past week’s immersion course into latent
and overt racism has left most Americans
wondering: Where do we go from here?
What is the next step after the murder of
Heather Heyes in
Charlottesville, Virginia?
How far have we come
more than two months after
the murders of Taliesin
Myrddin Namkai-Meche and
Ricky Best on a Portland Trimet train?
Who’s going to draw the line between a free-
speech rally and unabashed domestic terrorism,
complete with threats and acts of violence against
members of the black, Muslim and Jewish
community?
How many more are going to die at the hands of
people emboldened with racism, hate and bigotry?
Certainly the fingers are pointing at Washington
D .C ., and a White House bent on pandering to -
and profiting from - the lowest common
denominator. The fact that the President of the
United States clearly stroked white supremacists by
putting blame on their protestors isn’t a bumbling
mistake, it’s the politics of divide and conquer. The
enemy of my enemy, as the saying goes.
But we also need to look closer to home on this
matter. We shouldn’t get swept up in the nation’s
race problem without acknowledging that violence
and oppression against communities of color in our
own state are more than just uncharacterist
N
EDITORIAL
abberations. I f we are going to em erge from these
challenging times any wiser, stronger and more
just, then the lessons start right at home. Here,
where lawmakers degrade and dehumanize
immigrants as “criminals” or “illegals” (State Sen
Kim Thatcher among others), and where the
violence and terrorism promulgated by white
supremacy groups are condemned with the usual
lip service, but only once their they’re falsely
lumped together with Black Lives Matter and the
anti-fascist movement (State Rep. Bill Post, for
example). No one side is wrong, apparently, if
they’re all bad, indistinguishable and insignificant -
like the difference between fake news and real
news, according to right-wing distortion.
This language of division spans not only racist
and xenophobic bias, but economic and social class,
including homelessness. In all its forms, it
undermines real progress.
Portland has become a frequent destination for
white nationalist and racist organizations to pound
their chests and incite a conflagratioan. For that
reason, we’re going to be on the front lines for a
long time to come. We have to be ready, because
for all of our vigils and somber intentions, this
administration will continue to fan the flames of
racism, regardless of the violence, bloodshed and
emotional trauma it causes our country. It’s all in
an effort to retain its power and keep the critics
distracted from the work at hand, because that’s
one of the things racism is good at.
Meanwhile, the EPA is essentially being shut
down and all pretenses of addressing climate
change abandoned; Americans are being arbitrarily
disenfranchised wholesale from the voting rolls;
and health care - and subsequently the lives of
millions of poor Americans seems destined for
ruin. People are struggling to pay their rent, pay
their bills, keep their children in school and put a
meal on the table. On and on. Through all this,
institutional racism is pushing forward,
incarcerating people of color behind bars and
singling out millions of American Muslims for
discrimination and Latinos for incarceration and
deportation.
It’s all connected. You can’t support one shade of
oppression without endorsing it all. It has to start
by addressing the alt-right rhetoric in our state
house, and continue down to our own backyards.
So from here we go forward, not backward. Plug
into your community. Go to the town halls and the
neighborhood association meetings. If you’re
already doing this, bring a friend along next time.
History, from this day forward, begins now.
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imonstrator waves the
m ean F la g as part o f
‘Patriot Prayer” rally in
land's Tom M c C a ll
erfront Park, Ju n e 30.
event devolved into a
vl between the right-win^
dot Prayer supporters
anti-fascist protesters
confronted the event.
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