Piper Kerman

My dear friend Piper, who wrote Orange is the New Black, was in town for a few hours between planes and we met for lunch to talk about prisons, police brutality, and other subjects of interest to us both. She just recently spoke at the dedication of the very powerful new monument in Montgomery, Alabama. I was preparing a statement to deliver at the Portland City Council, arguing that boosting the police budget by another $6.7 million is a very bad idea. During our lunch, Piper pointed out that police killings of Black people occur now in exactly the same counties where lynchings occurred in our grandparents' time. There's a connection.