http://www.ThePortlandAlliance.org/blacklivesmatter
Stop Killing Us: A Black Lives Still Matter Exhibition
Public · Hosted by Dont Shoot Portland, Holding Contemporary and 10 others
Select a date and time
THU, AUG 13 12:00 PM FRI, AUG 14 12:00 PM SAT, AUG 15 12:00 PM
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Thursday, August 13, 2020 at 12 PM – 5 PM PDT
2 days from now · 54–79°F Sunny
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Stop Killing Us: A Black Lives Still Matter Exhibition runs August 6–29 at Holding Contemporary.
To put it mildly: Don’t Shoot Portland has been busy. In a normal year, the group—founded in 2014 by activist and recent mayoral candidate Teressa Raiford—organizes direct action, operates a youth art program, and works to maintain archives about Black Portland and Black Portlanders, among countless other ad hoc projects. 2020 being 2020, the group’s business-as-usual was first shaken by COVID, and then, come June, nightly protests against police brutality it’s helped organize. On June 5, Don’t Shoot filed a class action lawsuit against the city of Portland, citing the police bureau’s use of tear gas and excessive force.
All this to say: its agenda is full of items more urgent than an exhibition at a tiny gallery in the Pearl District. Still, the show must go on, and starting next week (with help from folks at the Pacific Northwest College of Art), Don’t Shoot will begin installing Stop Killing Us: A Black Lives Still Matter Exhibition at Holding Contemporary for an August 6–29 run.
“I would love to just be like, ‘Yay, we’re installing all day!’” says Tai Carpenter, Don’t Shoot’s president and Raiford’s daughter. “But then real life hits. People are being kidnapped, people are being arrested and harmed. Every day it’s something different.”
Still, Carpenter’s full of enthusiasm about the show, a multimedia exhibition that will include photographs, acrylics, protest memorabilia from Portland’s spirited history, and looped documentaries, including a piece called State of Oregon that details the sentencing of two white supremacists who murdered Larnell Bruce in Gresham in 2016. The film also touches on Raiford’s own early experiences with the Portland police—her grandparents owned the long-standing Burger Barn on MLK, at which two PPB officers lobbed dead possums in 1981 (when the street was still called Union Avenue), an action they played off as a prank.
“More people were upset about the fact that they killed the possums,” Carpenter says. “I’m looking forward to people getting a little insight into why Don’t Shoot has been participating in direct action for so long. It wasn’t just the death of Teressa’s nephew—my cousin—that made it a reality. It was the fact that she grew up knowing she was a second-class citizen in the city of Portland.”
Don’t Shoot Portland’s Liberated Archives installation at the Portland Art Museum. From left to right: Fyndi Jermany, VP of Don’t Shoot Portland; Teressa Raiford of Don’t Shoot Portland; Kimberly Drew, art curator, author.
Stop Killing Us marks Don’t Shoot’s second exhibition at Holding, following 2017’s Stolen Angels, which memorialized Black children who’d been killed by police and white supremacists. Both a commercial gallery and an exhibition space, Holding hands over half of its roughly 500-square-foot white-cube real estate on NW Flanders for “more challenging, conceptual, political shows,” as Tiffany Harker (who operates the gallery with founder Iris Williamson) puts it.
“They really believe in the messaging we put out and aren’t afraid to let us showcase what we want,” Carpenter says. “They don’t try to censor us, they know you can’t control art, and we love and appreciate them for that.”
Stop Killing Us will be Holding’s first show since COVID hit, and, as you might expect, there are new rules: mandatory masks and a two-people-at-a-time viewing cap. Harker notes, however, that most of the work will be visible from the street, and that she and Williamson plan to keep lights on and video rolling beyond the gallery’s limited hours. What does Carpenter hope Pearl-strolling passersby might take away if their eyes catch some looping video?
“The juxtaposition of the video happening with the kids marching, maybe it’ll instill the fact that yes, we’re all showing up every day and we’re fighting for change, but also that fighting against injustice is not peaceful. Having children make signs and shout ‘Stop killing us’ is not to be celebrated,” she says. “I want people to walk away with mixed feelings, and I want them to be inspired to do something, and to also be heartbroken and angry and demand change.”
Stop Killing Us: A Black Lives Still Matter Exhibition
Holding Contemporary, 916 NW Flanders St, noon–5 p.m. Thu–Sat, Aug 6–29
“Ignorance and prejudice are the handmaidens of propaganda. Our mission, therefore, is to confront ignorance with knowledge, bigotry with tolerance, and isolation with the outstretched hand of generosity. Racism can, will, and must be defeated.” ― Kofi Annan
“Race doesn’t really exist for you because it has never been a barrier. Black folks don’t have that choice.”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Americanah
https://thewordsmithcollection.wordpress.com/2015/07/30/black-lives-matter/
The Racist Killing Fields in the US:
The Death of Sandra Bland
By Henry A. Giroux
Truthout | News Analysis
Sunday, 19 July 2015
Sandra Bland. (Image: Jared Rodriguez / Truthout)
“On July 9, soon after Sandra Bland, a 28-year-old African-American woman, moved to Texas from Naperville, Illinois, to take a new job as a college outreach officer at her alma mater, Prairie View A&M, she was pulled over by the police for failing to signal while making a lane change. What followed has become all too common and illustrates the ever-increasing rise in domestic terrorism in the United States. She was pulled out of the car by the police for allegedly becoming combative, and was pinned to the ground by two officers. A video obtained by ABC 7 of Bland’s arrest “doesn’t appear to show Bland being combative with officers but does show two officers on top of Bland.”[1]
https://thewordsmithcollection.wordpress.com/2015/07/21/the-death-of-sandra-bland/
Baltimore Update: "Ms. Mosby said six officers would be charged, one with second-degree murder. She said warrants had been issued for the officers’ arrests; she said she did not know if anyone was in custody.
“We have probable cause to file criminal charges,” Ms. Mosby said."
https://thewordsmithcolletion.wordpress.com/.../james.../
A
fter the shooting of two police officers in Ferguson, Glen Ford, senior editor with Black Agenda Report, says the goal of the Black Lives
Matter Movement is to establish Black community control over the police in the USA.
It's getting tougher to ignore the numbers: Morris Dees says, "Victims are piling up around us." "African Americans are incarcerated
at six times the rate of white people … cities have revived debtors’ prisons that punish and exploit the poorest, most vulnerable among us. While
perhaps its most visible and horrifying signpost, the criminal justice system is merely one part of a larger, structural problem."
He observes 90 million eligible voters did not use their ballot. http://www.splcenter.org/.../ghost-of-jim-crow-continues...
China Is Building a $1.85B Methanol Plant
in ‘Cancer Alley’ Louisiana But No One Bothered
To Inform the predominantly Black Community
The company slated to run the plant in St. James Parish, Yuhuang Chemical Inc., is a subsidiary that Chinese natural gas giant Shandong Yuhuang formed in 2012. The company is seeking expedited permits to construct and operate a plant on the sprawling 1,100-acre site and is awaiting the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality’s determination of the environmental impact of the project, a decision that is expected on March 6, 2015.
There was a town hall meeting in July at St. James High School where local residents began hearing about the project—but it took place only after the majority-white St. James Parish Council approved the project.
Edwin Octave, 92, who lives with his family in the area, told Al Jazeera America, “I don’t think the way they went about getting the plant was right. They bought the property before they tell people it’s going to happen.”
The neighborhood where the plant will be located is 90 percent Black, according to Ambrose, who was a member of the parish council in the 1990′s. When asked why the community wasn’t consulted, Ambrose said, “I think it’s because we’re black. But I can’t put my finger on that alone to say that was the only reason … Blacks are still somewhat second-class citizens.”
more info: atlantablackstar.com/2015/01/29/china-is-building-a-1-85b-methanol-plant-in-cancer-alley-louisiana-but-no-one-bothered-to-inform-its-predominantly-black-community/
This country owes Black citizens nothing less than
full recognition of our human rights.
The White House’s current racial justice initiative, My Brother’s Keeper, ignores too
many members of our communities. It does not address the inhumane conditions we collectively experience living in a white supremacist system.
The issues facing Black women, immigrants, trans and queer people must be included
and we demand a full expansion of My Brother’s Keeper to do so. We demand the
same inclusion from our movement.
None of us are free until all of us are free. Our collective efforts have exposed the ugly American traditions of patriarchy, classism, racism, and militarism. These combined
have bred a violent culture rife with transphobia, and other forms of illogical hatred.
This corrupt democracy was built on Indigenous genocide and chattel slavery.
And it continues to thrive on the brutal exploitation of people of color.
We recognize that not even a Black President will pronounce our truths.
We must continue the task of making America uncomfortable about institutional racism.
Together, we will re-imagine what is possible and build a system that is designed for Blackness to thrive.
We fight in the name of Aiyana Stanley-Jones, killed by Detroit Police at the age of 7 years old, who never got to
graduate from elementary school. We fight in the name of Mike Brown, who was killed by officer Darren Wilson,
weeks before starting college. We fight in the name of Islan Nettles, a 21 year old Black trans woman who was
pummeled to death outside a NYC police station in Harlem. We fight in the name of Tarika Wilson, who was killed
by an Ohio police officer while holding one of her babies, and will never get to embrace any of her six children again.
2015 is the year of resistance. We the People, committed to the declaration that Black lives matter, will fight to
end the structural oppression that prevents so many from realizing their dreams. We cannot, and will not stop
until America recognizes the value of Black life.
Media Contacts:
Alwiyah Shariff (Alwiyah2012@gmail.com, 614.328.5829)
Lourdes Ashley Hunter, MPA (Lourdes@twocc.us, 347.320.8681)
National Director, Trans Women of Color Coalition
National Leadership Team, Black Lives Matter
Endorsing organizations: Justice League, Millennial Activists United, Black Lives Matter,
Trans Women of Color Collective, Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, Dream Defenders.
Black and Brown People Vote, Million Hoodies Movement for Justice , African American Policy forum,
ThinkMoor, Unchained, BYP 100, Freedom Side, Ohio Students Association, Hands Up UNited,
the Organization for Black Struggle and The Portland Alliance.
Go here for the rest of the story: http://blacklivesmatter.com/state-of-the-black-union/
We are walking the talk and producing a vehicle for progressive Portland. We must not let the mainstream media continue to ignore our community and provide inaccurate and dishonest versions of the news. Please send suggestions, critiques, copy-edits, breaking news, events, ideas... editor@theportlandalliance.org
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A Scientist Who Resisted Trump Administration Censorship of Climate Report Just Lost Her Job
“I wouldn’t do anything different, but Jesus, this is stressful.”
http://www.ThePortlandAlliance.org/Esquire
Why War Is Not Inevitable
By David Swanson
If war were inevitable, there would be little point in trying to end it. If war were inevitable, a moral case might be made for trying to lessen its damage while it continued. And numerous parochial cases could be made for being prepared to win inevitable wars for this side or that side.
Developing ways to avoid generating conflicts is part of the answer, but some occurrence of conflict (or major disagreement) is inevitable, which is why we must use more effective and less destructive tools to resolve conflicts and to achieve security. But there is nothing inevitable about war. It is not made necessary by our genes, by other inevitable forces in our culture, or by crises beyond our control.
War & Peace / Women / Writing / WritingResource / Yell
