Celebrity volunteer

Walidah Imarisha is a brilliant Black scholar well-known for her talk entitled, "Why aren't there more Black people in Oregon?" Today I was making more photos to document the building of the Keaton Otis Memorial, and who should be there, working in the street, but Walidah herself, clearing out the deep cracks in preparation for a machine that lays down a tarry substance, filling the cracks so that gold paint can be added to them. (See Extras.)

In the first extra you may notice a clean and tidy tent behind Walidah. Someone was living there, and while I was making photos, he came out of his tent, pulled his bicycle out of the bushes, and went to work. Many working people are houseless because rents are so high in this city. Sadly, the mayor's henchmen arrived while I was there and swept away his tent and all his belongings while we were working. (Third extra.) I was outraged, but there was nothing any of us could do about it. It's "legal" to steal a person's home and all their belongings if they are living in the streets. Sometimes I am so furious I feel like my head will explode. The criminalization of poverty is one of the signs of societal collapse, in my opinion.