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Claire Willett

@clairewillett.bsky.social

46K followers 1.1K following 19K posts

Chaos Muppet. Raconteuse. The internet’s gay Catholic aunt. Covering arts philanthropy at orartswatch.org. Writing books and plays at clairewillettwrites.com. Mentoring lefty grantwriters at tinyurl.com/8thHousePDX. I wish ill upon JK Rowling.

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Claire Willett @clairewillett.bsky.social · Jul 24

here’s your Claire World freshman orientation:

1. gay shit
2. Catholic shit
3. Star Trek
4. Watergate
5. morally ambiguous female characters over forty
6. Billy Joel
7. fuck TERFs

welcome, please send these people some money

chuffed.org/project/1133...

The Refaat Alareer Camp - by The Sameer Project

The Sameer Project, a mutual aid organization led by three Palestinians in the diaspora, are the proud directors and funders of a tent encampment in Central Gaza that provides shelter and specialized ...

chuffed.org

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Claire Willett @clairewillett.bsky.social · 2h

some of these fuckos would plainly rather stand shoulder to shoulder with a dapper, erudite fascist than someone who agrees with them 97% but seems cringe

a term which can mean anything from “having fun” to “has not read Marx” to “is a mom”

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Claire Willett @clairewillett.bsky.social · 2h

they’re so mad the frogs are more effective than their threads on political theory

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Claire Willett @clairewillett.bsky.social · 2h

I am so weary of that class of extremely online leftists who think being a Serious Person™️ who only posts and does nothing else is superior to being a Fun Person™️ who physically shows up

Aaron Putnam @aaronputnam.bsky.social · 6h

I deleted a post of me in a frog suit with my 7-yr old daughter because a big account reposted, admonishing us for not being serious enough protestors (or something). I shouldn’t have included my daughter in the image, which was why I deleted it. But I was stunned by the condescension.

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Michael Jay McClure @mjmimages.bsky.social · 10h

Walked by a guy, hunky, in gym clothes, with his bro, hunky, also in gym clothes, who said, in the most SoCal accent possible, “It’s not a kind of sitch where you normally RSVP but I don’t want to be rude so I’m going to fucking RSVP” & I hope this is a new Jane Austen project.

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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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Shane Burley (Blue Sky Edition) @shaneburley.bsky.social · 3h

Shout out to the Naked Bikeride who today ran hundreds of naked people directly through the line of federal officers and effectively blocked them from assaulting demonstrators. Being naked on a bike goes on the list of effective tactics if you get at least 500 of them and the city loves you.

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Meredith Shiner @meredithshiner.com · 4h

It’s impossible to overstate how much “abolish ice” is the normie position now here in chicago — just countless random moms at toddler soccer on a park district field asking me where I bought my anti-ice t-shirt. average people don’t like our neighborhoods being terrorized.

laura olin @lauraolin.bsky.social · 10h

A friend ran the Chicago marathon today and said he couldn’t count the number of FUCK ICE signs along the way.

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LAaah! A Ghost! Guettler @laguettler.bsky.social · 5h

Thank glob we're melting the planet so a dude named Rich can strike out with women.

Also imagine not being able to come up with "Hey Sarah, it was lovely to meet you" on your own.

C. Buckthorn @cbuckthorn.bsky.social · 23h

This is amazing. I laughed out loud www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle...

As 32-year-old Rich points out, though, "it's not like using ChatGPT guarantees success".
When he met someone in a bar one Friday night and swapped social media handles, he asked AI what his next move should be.
ChatGPT discerned that sending an initial message on Monday midmorning would set the right pace. "Then it gave me some options for what the message could be," says Rich.
"Keep it light, warm, and low-stakes so it reads as genuine interest without urgency," the bot advised. "Something like: Hey Sarah, still laughing about [tiny shared moment/reference if you've got one] - good to meet you!" Rich went back and forth with ChatGPT until he felt they'd hit upon exactly the right message ("Hey Sarah, it was lovely to meet you") but sadly she never replied, he says. "It's been two weeks now."

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Claire Willett @clairewillett.bsky.social · 5h

it makes me angry every day that they’ve arranged their lives so that the right has constant access to them and the left has none but they frame that as neutrality

Laura Bassett @lebassett.bsky.social · 5h

I do not want to see a Supreme Court justice’s face on cable news, period

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 15h

Amy Coney Barrett defends heavy use of the shadow docket: "If we wrote a long opinion, it might give the impression that we have finally resolved the issue, and in none of these cases have we finally resolved the issue."

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Kevin M. Kruse @kevinmkruse.bsky.social · 7h

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 · 9h

Portland, you magnificent weirdos

Tim Dickinson @timdickinson.bsky.social · 9h

Live from the Emergency Naked Bike Ride 🚲 where the crowd hase just erupted in cheers with the arrival of the Unipipier

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Regime Accountant, CPA ☠️🎢 @regimecpa.bsky.social · 16h

Hard to believe the people who told me “have fun being poor” would make such bad risk management decisions.

warrior cop @wyattprivilege.bsky.social · 16h

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Claire Willett @clairewillett.bsky.social · 7h

every housewife doing crimes believes in her heart that she is the one who will never get busted

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The Tennessee Holler @thetnholler.bsky.social · 12h

Chicago not letting Portland have all the fun 🐧

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Claire Willett @clairewillett.bsky.social · 7h

this sure feels like a crucial point

🇬🇾🗽Sydette The Dreaded Gorgon🗽🇬🇾 @blackamazon.bsky.social · 7h

American politics becomes what it becomes because when people were saying “ Americans don’t protest like the French, Koreans, etc”

Everyone leaves out the context of

How they stopped covering Black protests and no longer mention them

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Claire Willett @clairewillett.bsky.social · 7h

Karen is going to find a way to turn this to her advantage and make Wendy the bigger villain I know it in my heart

Claire Willett @clairewillett.bsky.social · 7h

Imagine forfeiting your moral high ground over Karen Huger like this

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Claire Willett @clairewillett.bsky.social · 7h

this is the only thing I want to think about

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Katelyn Boo-urns @katelynburns.com · 1d

I wrote a little about some of the little details you might have missed in this video and why it hit me so hard as a trans person this morning:

www.burnsnotice.com/you-have-to-...

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Brendel @brendelbored.bsky.social · 10h

Terrified he died but delighted that it’s just him talking about cocaine

The New Yorker @newyorker.com · 10h

Tim Curry was a 20-something stage actor living in London in the seedy, sex-drenched 1970s when he auditioned for a new B-movie musical called “The Rocky Horror Show.” In a new interview, Curry discusses the cult classic, David Bowie, Studio 54, and more. http://nyer.cm/Z9RkgrI

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Claire Willett @clairewillett.bsky.social · 10h

yeah they do it at allll the Steubenvilles. it’s a big worship service thing with music and a procession, everyone cries. very evangelical. it’s big with Life Teen too. I’m sure it existed at my church as a Grandma Thing when I was younger but we didn’t do them regularly until we got Life Teen

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K9Woof @k9wag.bsky.social · 1d

It absolutely ruins their little individual cosplay fantasy too.

These guys signed up for a toxic masculinity field trip. They thought they were coming to “fuck antifa” not get twerked at by a halloween parade.

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Andrea Pitzer @andreapitzer.bsky.social · 1d

One great aspect of iconic inflatable costumes (aside from how they instantly undermine propaganda about war zones) is that it's useless to arrest the person wearing one. Cuffing a frog would make law enforcement look pathetic. And carting one off just guarantees that more will show up the next day.

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Claire Willett @clairewillett.bsky.social · 1d

🤝

Claire Willett @clairewillett.bsky.social · 1d

until legalized abortion came along and suddenly they were besties!

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Claire Willett @clairewillett.bsky.social · 1d

I remember my mom telling me as a child that they didn’t even know how to say it. They thought it was “prez-bye-baterian”