MLK Day Intentions

The annual Martin Luther King Day march was cancelled because of weather. I started the day with three hours on a Zoom devoted to ways to work for a Ceasefire in Gaza. One of the speakers on the call offers opportunities to volunteer in Palestine, helping with the olive harvest in the West Bank and listening to the lived experiences of Palestinians. Their next full session is scheduled for October, 2024, assuming there are still some Palestinians left alive, and some olive groves still standing in the West Bank at that time. Some of you in the UK might be interested in that (or other engagements in the UK and Calais) as a service (and photographic) opportunity. You can request more info now.

I thought I would take a walk after the Zoom. It was 22F/-6C in my neighborhood, and I had good intentions. Sue put on her Yak-Trax and made it a mile or two, sent me a photo. I barely made it out of my building when I saw that wherever someone had stepped before me, there was ice. And in my high-density neighborhood, others had stepped everywhere I wanted to go. So back inside I went and resumed my organizing.

Kritee Kanko, a climate scientist in India, one of the speakers on the zoom, said, “Choose a local target, maybe a place where bombs are being built. Go closer to people who are hoarding the power.” Inspired by that, I spent the rest of the day networking, calling, texting people, and doing research on the local companies that make high-tech weapons of destruction. RTX is one such company with a branch in a suburb of Portland, one of six weapon builders whose income from US taxes is over $210 billion.

Tomorrow’s weather will be worse yet. This warning: “The Portland Bureau of Transportation (PBOT) urges the public to avoid travel all day Tuesday, as a forecast of up to half an inch of freezing rain could make travel hazardous across the city and the metropolitan area.”