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Reposted by Charlotte.

elle is not ok [📌’d 👀] @scretladyspider.bsky.social · 9h

electric stays on! $0.05 leftover.
ty all SO much!💛but… I got a notice… $107.08 needed by 10/21/25 for gas &water… internet $110, due 10/14… grocery payment plan is overdue.. $245 covers it all. ANYTHING helps. Pls share.
#HelpSky #MARequest

v/c: secretladyspider
pp: [email protected]

Screenshot of disconnect notice. "Disconnect Notice, $107.08. The minimum payment to avoid disconnection is $107.08. This amount must be received by 2025-10-21 or the service(s) will be disconnected without further notice.
Last Statement Balance $214.00.

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Reposted by Charlotte.

Jeff VanderMeer @jeffvandermeer.bsky.social · 1d

This heartfelt and meaningful statement by Portland resident and author Cristina Breshears on another social media platform bears reposting here. I don't think the intent is to idealize Portland but to remind all of us what is important and why. (Posted here with permission.)

For nine nights now, the steady thrum of Black Hawk helicopters has circled over Portland. The sound is constant, invasive; a low mechanical beating above our homes. It’s expensive. It’s intimidating. And it’s unnecessary.

Our protests have been largely peaceful. There is no insurrection here. Yet this federalized military presence makes us feel like we are living in a war zone (the very kind of chaos this administration claims to be protecting us from).

The irony is painful: it is only this occupation that makes Portland feel unsafe.

Each hour of helicopter flight costs taxpayers between $2,000 and $4,000, depending on crew, fuel, and maintenance. Multiply that by multiple aircraft over multiple nights, and you’re looking at hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of dollars burned into the sky.

Meanwhile, the Woodstock Food Pantry at All Saints Episcopal Church — which feeds working families, elders, and people with disabilities — has seen its federal funding slashed by 75%. How can we justify pouring public money into intimidation while cutting aid to those who simply need to eat?

This is waste, fraud, and abuse in plain sight:
* Waste of public resources on military theatrics.
* Fraud in the name of “public safety.”
* Abuse of the communities that federal agencies claim to protect.

Portland is a Sanctuary City. A sanctuary city is not a fortress. It’s a promise — a living vow that a community will protect the dignity and safety of everyone who calls it home. It means that local governments and ordinary people alike will refuse to criminalize survival. That schools, clinics, churches, and shelters will remain safe spaces no matter who you are or where you were born. But the term reaches far beyond policy. It’s an ethic of belonging; a refusal to criminalize need, difference, or desperation.

Sanctuary isn’t weakness. It’s courage. It takes moral strength to meet suffering with care instead of punishment, to believe that our neighbors’ safety is bound up in our own, to insist that safety is not achieved through force but through community, inclusion, and trust. It is living Matthew 25:40 out loud and in deed. It is an act of moral imagination and moral defiance. To hold sanctuary is to say: you belong here.

When we hold space for the most vulnerable — refugees, the unhoused, the undocumented, the disabled, the working poor, the displaced — we become something larger than a collection of individuals. We become a moral body. We do more than offer charity. We offer witness. We declare that the measure of a nation is found not in its towers or tanks, but in its tenderness.

Sanctuary cities are not lawless; they are soulful. They represent the conscience of the nation, a place where the laws of empathy still apply. To make sanctuary is to affirm that the United States is not merely a geographic territory, but a moral experiment: a republic that must constantly choose between fear and compassion, between domination and democracy.

A nation’s soul is measured not by the might of its military, but by the mercy of its people. When helicopters circle our skies in the name of order, while food pantries struggle to feed the hungry, we are forced to ask: What are we defending, and from whom? The soul of a nation survives only when we make sanctuary for one another. Not through walls or weapons, but through compassion and collective will. If we allow intimidation to replace compassion, we will have traded our conscience for control.

Please know that despite the hum of war machines overhead, the conscience of our city — whimsical, creative, stubbornly kind — can still be heard.

Portland is not the problem. Portland is the reminder. A reminder that a city can still choose to be sanctuary. That a people can still choose to be human.

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Charlotte. @charlotteirene.bsky.social · 4h

Also, empathy is a thing! Caring about something that doesn't directly harm you is a good thing! I'm reminded of that white woman who said she drives around with a Mexican flag on her car in order to distract ICE and waste their time so targeted folks can get away, that's the energy we need now

Kevin M. Kruse @kevinmkruse.bsky.social · 10h

Someone in my mentions is upset because these people haven’t suffered the worst at ICE’s hands and therefore they shouldn’t be praised for being out on the streets?

Yeah, no. To push back on these people we need everyone — especially those with relative privilege — to get up and get involved.

Kevin M. Kruse @kevinmkruse.bsky.social · 13h

Portland, you magnificent weirdos

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Charlotte. @charlotteirene.bsky.social · 8h

Those Methodist hymns will get you lol

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Charlotte. @charlotteirene.bsky.social · 8h

Baseball is incredible lol

grumpon.bsky.social @grumpon.bsky.social · 9h

Imagine wearing a plug the dumper shirt only to have him plug your team instead

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Charlotte. @charlotteirene.bsky.social · 11h

I can't believe Trump 2.0 got me drinking gin and going back to church lol

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Charlotte. @charlotteirene.bsky.social · 16h

That's how I feel after shaving my head lol

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Charlotte. @charlotteirene.bsky.social · 1d

This is the opposite of me not knowing Catholics were also Christians until I was in college lol (I was raised Evangelical)

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Charlotte. @charlotteirene.bsky.social · 1d

I've had a shit week and I think this is the thing that's going to break me tbh. (It's nice to see Kelly Latimore's artwork on the protest signs, she makes beautiful icons)

Rich Raho @richraho.bsky.social · 1d

Chicago priest Fr. Larry Dowling describes procession to ICE facility: “No one had the courage to speak directly to us. No one from Homeland Security could stand in the presence of the Monstrance holding the Blessed Sacrament. No wonder. Evil is repelled, recoils in the presence of Christ.”

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Charlotte. @charlotteirene.bsky.social · 1d

I haven't watched First Wives Club in years but I can still hear her "I'M SORRY!" speech

Bailey McCann @baileymcc.bsky.social · 1d

Someone made a supercut on TikTok of Diane Keaton crashing out at some point in all of her movies and we really need a lot more female rage in the culture

Charlotte. @charlotteirene.bsky.social · 1d

how the fuck does he still have a job

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Charlotte. @charlotteirene.bsky.social · 1d

This heartburn is fucking me up tonight

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Charlotte. @charlotteirene.bsky.social · 1d

Finally listening to the new Cardi B album and I need her as a Drag Race judge asap

Charlotte. @charlotteirene.bsky.social · 1d

I was today years old when I learned what a Monstrance is (I first heard the word in a Ghost song lol)

Elise Wang @elisewang.bsky.social · 1d

For those not fluent in Catholic: refusing the Monstrance is not denying prisoners the Eucharist, it is refusing Christ himself, since Christ is present in the Monstrance.

If Portland’s blow up animals are the right language for Portland, this is the right language for Chicago.

Rich Raho @richraho.bsky.social · 1d

Chicago priest Fr. Larry Dowling describes procession to ICE facility: “No one had the courage to speak directly to us. No one from Homeland Security could stand in the presence of the Monstrance holding the Blessed Sacrament. No wonder. Evil is repelled, recoils in the presence of Christ.”

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Charlotte. @charlotteirene.bsky.social · 1d

I assume this dude is Evangelical; Evangelical Christians love using tragedies to coerce people into conversion. It's predatory and gross

Hemant Mehta @friendlyatheist.com · 1d

This is a very real, utterly thoughtless comment from a pastor in the wake of a tragedy:

"We are sad that our community is going through this, but it’s a tremendous opportunity for the church to minister to a lot of those people today."

apnews.com/article/tenn...

During a vigil at Hurricane Chapel in McEwen, senior pastor Tim Farris noted that many in attendance know each other, the victims and their families.

“There’s a lot of people hurting. A lot of people who are crying a lot of tears,” he said. “We are sad that our community is going through this, but it’s a tremendous opportunity for the church to minister to a lot of those people today.”

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Charlotte. @charlotteirene.bsky.social · 1d

Fun Fact: Diane Keaton was in the original Broadway cast of Hair and sings on the OBC recording

AmyAlexCA @amyalexca.bsky.social · 1d

A reverse-engineering Baller Move: #DianeKeaton was born in #LA during the post-WWII “Baby Boom,” BUT: “She grew up in Santa Ana, Calif., and briefly attended community colleges..At 19, she dropped out and moved to NYC to study acting at the Neighborhood Playhouse.” 🌟 www.nytimes.com/2025/10/11/m...

Diane Keaton, a Star of ‘Annie Hall’ and ‘First Wives Club,’ Dies at 79

www.nytimes.com

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Reposted by Charlotte.

mivox is exHAUNTed 👻 @bs.mivox.net · 3d

Three people protesting outside the Portland, OR ICE facility, dressed in inflatable frog costumes, holding a small sign that says “Portland Frog Brigade”.

Over top of the photo is white text reading: “Exodus 8:2-6 "But if you refuse to let them go, I will plague your whole country with frogs... The frogs shall come up on you and on your people and on all your officials."”

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Charlotte. @charlotteirene.bsky.social · 1d

Denying detainees communion should send you straight to hell and I'm not fucking joking.

amanda moore 🐢 @noturtlesoup17.bsky.social · 1d

Outside of the Broadview ICE facility, a state trooper tells the delegation attempting to have communion with detainees that ICE has denied their request.

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Reposted by Charlotte.

Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social · 1d

get in losers we're repenting

Judah Grunstein @judah-grunstein.bsky.social · 1d

Liberation theology in the USA. More please.

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Charlotte. @charlotteirene.bsky.social · 1d

Salvation Army being pro-ICE makes so much sense tbh. Instead of giving them money this Christmas, give it to a queer person

kat, ghost of helenruthsghost @chaoskat.bsky.social · 1d

Salvation Army seen feeding ICE today. For anyone who doesn't already know about their bigotry, here is more, No need to give them your money this Christmas, or ever.

unraveled @unraveledpress.com · 1d

It’s dinner time for the police. Appears to be pizza from a Salvation Army van.

Broadview’s “free speech” curfew starts soon, at 6pm.

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Charlotte. @charlotteirene.bsky.social · 1d

First Wives Club made me the woman I am today! Had me singing You Don't Own Me in the 8th grade choir concert lol

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Reposted by Charlotte.

Moira Donegan @moiradonegan.bsky.social · 1d

Should have been Woody Allen.

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