So You Got Teargassed? Herbal Self-Care After Exposure to Chemical Weapons
If 2020 brought anything to my hometown of Portland, Oregon, it was the opportunity to be exposed to chemical weapons. Protesters, residents both housed and unhoused, bystanders, and workers throughout the city have been caught off guard by law enforcement’s prolific deployment of tear gas, … Read more
Dispatch from Portland’s Protests
Sarah Mirk is a comics journalist, author, and teacher. She works as an editor at The Nib and as a digital producer for Reveal. Her most recent book is Guantanamo Voices: True Stories from the World’s Most Infamous Prison, available here. This is her documentation of the … Read more
Sustain the Riot: From “Defund the Police” to Revolutionary Abolitionism after the George Floyd Uprisings
“Fascism has temporarily succeeded under the guise of reform. The only way we can destroy it is to refuse to compromise with the enemy state and its ruling class.” — George Jackson, Blood in My Eye “A politics of abolition could never finally be … Read more
This is How We Heal
This essay was written collaboratively by two Portland protest community members, Susan Anglada Bartley and Lexy Kahn, and is the result of conversations after participating in protests, both as frontline protestors and as writers and journalists. Throughout the article, we switch italicized and non-italicized fonts (Lexy in … Read more
New Year’s Eve // Portland, Oregon
All photos and words by Maranie Rae [she/her] New Year’s Eve 2021 in Portland, Oregon was a night that saw Federal officers respond to protesters with teargas and less-lethal weapons and one that led Mayor Ted Wheeler to promise to “push the limits of law … Read more
Inside the Battle for Portland With the Independent Journalists on the Streets
As federal agents snatch protesters in unmarked vans, the reporters covering the Portland uprising are facing intense and unprecedented repression.
In Defense of Autonomy: Seattle’s Organized Protest Zone Advanced the Movement for Black Lives
What is unthinkable, or was at the beginning of the month, is the power of the Black Lives Matter movement in the streets. The emergence of the autonomous zone is a pinnacle of that power, a significant victory. It demonstrates the ability of popular power to win the impossible from structures of white supremacy – the state and the propertied interests they represent. That victory, and the subsequent diminution of state violence, is a major step forward for community self-control and autonomy. It shows that ending anti-Black violence is the first and most basic step to honoring Black life.
