An excerpt from The Place We Make: Breaking the Legacy of Legalized Hate We don’t know what we don’t allow ourselves to know. But when I began to know—after I’d picked my jaw up off the floor enough times to wonder … Continue reading Imagining My Way In
On May 25, 2020, the world shifted as millions witnessed the horrifying moments when a police officer pressed his knee on George Floyd’s neck for over 9 minutes. We weren’t the same after that—it was vicarious trauma. Also, in 2020, … Continue reading Maturing of the Human Soul
. . . like it’s 1899! You might not have seen it coming. Weapons of mass distraction have been cloaking laws of disorder for decades. Now here we are in 2023, with regressive racial policies as blatant as when “Redeemers” … Continue reading Laws of Disorder: dehumanizing through dehistoricizing
I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a … Continue reading A Radical Revolution of Values
For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows. (1 Timothy 6:10) Sin entered the world when man disobeyed God. … Continue reading A Self-Perpetuating System
On December 23, 1921, the mayor of Portland, Oregon, announced that he was forming a vigilante group to assist the Portland Police. One hundred civilians would be armed—with guns, badges, the power to make arrests, and the cloak of anonymity—and … Continue reading Guns in the Hood: A Brief History of Klan Violence in Oregon
1444 marks the beginning of the Atlantic Slave Trade. This is when the Portuguese transported the first Africans to Europe as slaves. By 1526 they expanded their reach and delivered their first shipload of enslaved Africans to Brazil. In 1619 … Continue reading Slavery and the Roots of Racism/White Supremacy
I can clearly remember the day that I became acutely aware that I was different from other little 10-year-old girls. During the summers, my family had a big camper and we traveled across the country in that camper, staying at … Continue reading Rooted in the Wrong Garden
The first time I read Richard Wright’s 1937 essay, “The Ethics of Living Jim Crow: An Autobiographical Sketch,” it took my breath away. I stumbled across it while flipping through a fat volume I’d checked out of the library, The … Continue reading What I Never Knew: Reading Richard Wright
