July 27, 2020: There's One....

I rode my bike downtown yesterday afternoon, to the Salmon Street Springs fountain – well, it’s not fountaining right now, so I guess it’s a plaza -  where I saw the lovely (and enormously sad) Say Their Names installation. It features a wall of photographs honoring Black victims of police violence. All the photos are in black and white, and many are graduation pictures, a wall of smiling young faces. If each picture were worth a thousand words, there would be so very, very many words represented there. Which is the point.

A few families were gathering around the plaza, getting ready for an event put on by Portland parents dedicated to raising anti-racist kids.

There are a lot of protests in Portland right now, something for everyone, every day. You can don a protective vest and goggles and go to the Justice Center late at night (if you are lucky enough to have a protective vest and goggles), or you can join a car caravan that is meant to last about two hours, two days a week. You can listen to speakers in a playground and then slowly walk around the block in a spread-out and charming straggle of schoolkids, or you can stand on a freeway overpass, waving a sign. The Portland Mercury keeps a calendar of protest events in their Things to Do section.  

The wealth of choices (and other things people need to do besides protesting) means some events will be underpopulated, and this was one of those, with maybe ten or fifteen familes, each in the shade of a big tree. People were masked, a few dogs were wagging, and there was a breeze off the river. It was hot, heading up towards 99. No linked arms, no tear gas, no bad guys. There’s nothing wrong with little events. If all you have heard about Portland is the scary and enraging bits, this was none of that.  The gathering may have grown after I left, but I think it never got very big.  

I hung out in the shade, on the edge of things, far from anybody, and took some pictures - partly so I could post them and show that Portland isn’t going through hell, 24/7.  (The “lack of people” photos were also intended to keep my most-protective friends from scolding me. Not to worry, MPF’s! I’m masking, social distancing, avoiding large groups, the whole bit!)

What pierced me happened before people started gathering, when there were only a few of us around the whole plaza. This little girl was there with her dad.  She was walking up to each photo she could reach, pointing and saying, “There’s one! And there’s one!” And he was behind her, keeping an eye, saying only, “Uh huh,” each time.