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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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SI: Museum of African American History (Bot) @simuseumafro.bsky.social · 13h

Photograph of Lena Horne in profile https://nmaahc.si.edu/object/nmaahc_2011.27.1.1

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Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 14h

Shared courtesy of my Penn History colleague, Ben Nathans

Image: A variation on Benjamin Franklin’s “Join, or Die” engraving, originally published in the Pennsylvania Gazette in 1754. Each segment of the snake has the name of a university sent Trump’s “compact”: Texas, AZ, Vanderbilt, USC, Dartmouth, UVA, Brown, Penn, MIT.

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stuffwithnopoint.bsky.social @stuffwithnopoint.bsky.social · 1d

Day 11 #birdart
#peachtober

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spinnity @spinnity.bsky.social · 1d

damn, that's gotta smart

spinnity @spinnity.bsky.social · 1d

awww, nuts. 😢

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Lori Lou Freshwater @lorifreshwater.bsky.social · 1d

Beautiful ☮️💜☮️

Robert Plant with Saving Grace - Higher Rock (Later... with Jools Holland)

YouTube video by BBC Music

youtu.be

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Preorder Read This When Things Fall Apart @mskellymhayes.bsky.social · 1d

I know not everyone is who they thought they would be under a fascist, authoritarian regime. That's okay. But it's time to do more than react and post about it. It's time to get organized—including mapping or creating lines of support and defense in your community.

Mapping Community Defense and Care in Our Neighborhoods

This worksheet can help us prepare for Trump's military interventions at the neighborhood level.

organizingmythoughts.org

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Chanda Prescod-Weinstein 🌌 @chanda.blacksky.app · 1d

The universe is too fucking fabulous for capitalism, y'all!

Last night's evidence:
1. North America Nebula (1 hour)
2. Andromeda (20 min)
3. Pac-Man Nebula (15 min)

The universe is basically just hydrogen, dark matter, and dark energy. Plus trillions upon trillions of perturbations lol
🔭
1/3

North America Nebula. Lots of red because of all of the hydrogen gas.

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Eric Blair @protecttruth.bsky.social · 1d

Members of Congress should be on the streets of DC—where many of them live! —putting their bodies between these law-abiding citizens and ICE. Congress should be demanding names, and promising ICE will be prosecuted when US democracy is re-established.

But they are not—b/c they think it polls badly.

Marisa Kabas @marisakabas.bsky.social · 1d

New — Video shared with me shows ICE officers in DC detaining a man on Friday.

Bystander filming asks man for his name. ICE agent lies and says he’s not allowed to speak to him “by law” and another says “We’ve arrested American citizens for being too close…If he gets any closer, put him in cuffs.”

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spinnity @spinnity.bsky.social · 1d

It's almost Black in Micro science time! Who's ready??

Black Microbiologists Assoc (Black In Micro) @blackinmicro.bsky.social · 1d

✨Get ready for Oct 16: Dive into Zines with Aaron Davis, MPH, CHES. 🚀 Let's explore how Zines can spark creativity and enhance storytelling in Public Health. Register & save your spot now: linktr.ee/BlackInMicro. Show your support by donating: tinyurl.com/GiveBiM (links in bio) #BlackInMicro

Black in Microbiology Week 2025 Science In Action Workshop – Community: Exploring Creativity, Storytelling and Public Health Communications through Zines. Led by Aaron Davis, MPH, CHES (University of Washington). Event time: 1:30–2:30 PM EST, Oct. 16, 2025.

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TrustedReveler @trustedreveler.bsky.social · 5d

LA: we will fight you.

Chicago: we will fight you.

PDX: we will make you endure week after week of of improv theater.

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spinnity @spinnity.bsky.social · 3d

🤨🤨🤨🤨

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TeslaTakedownPDX @teslatakedownpdx.bsky.social · 3d

SUNDAY AT ELIZABETH CARUTHERS!

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TeslaTakedownPDX @teslatakedownpdx.bsky.social · 3d

SATURDAY AT ELIZABETH CARUTHERS

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king's co-op bookstore @kingsbookstore.bsky.social · 3d

i love you all but there isn't one of you i wouldn't turn on for this moby dick chess set

a moby dick themed chess set with the whaling characters up top, and moby dick and other animals down below

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Not Your Negress @notyournegro.blacksky.app · 5d

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Anuradha Sarup @anuradhasarup.bsky.social · 4d

It was a treat! To see the Great Bustard (Otis tarda)in Bratislava recently.

At first backlit and far away, the air haze was too high. Then one flew right towards us.

A lifer. My #977th #birds species as I work towards a 1000! Kid me is so excited! :D

Conservation status: Endangered

A Great Bustard flying in front of wind mills

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Anuradha Sarup @anuradhasarup.bsky.social · 19d

Magpie time.
They always seem to be demand attention. But how can you not stare when they are so striking?

Scientific Name: Pica pica
Conservation Status: Least concern

#spain #EurasianMagpie #birdphotography #birdwatching #magpie #birder #birders_gallery #birdontherun

#addbirder please :)

Eurasian Magpie running with a wasp in it's beak. The Magpie has it's tail up showing a bright green in it's tail feathers. The whole landscape is dry and brown, typical of summer time in Central Spain.

Close up of Eurasian Magpie running with a wasp in it's beak. The Magpie has it's tail up showing a bright green in it's tail feathers. The whole landscape is dry and brown, typical of summer time in Central Spain.

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Peter Nguyen @dptbirder.bsky.social · 4d

Is it the season for pumpkin spiced flycatchers? 🍂

Cinnamon Flycatcher 📷🌿🪶

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Black Aziz Anansi @blackazizanansi.blacksky.app · 4d

Please share

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rax ‘levon honkers’ king @raxkingisdead.bsky.social · 5d

you guys happen to notice how everything is finance and landlords now and many things are both

flipinidaho @flipinidaho.bsky.social · 5d

southsideweekly.com/federal-agen...

The building is in a 27 million dollar foreclosure filed by Wells Fargo. The next day, Wells Fargo filed an emergency motion for receivership. The fascist regime kindly emptied the building for donor Wells Fargo.

Federal Agents Storm South Shore Building, Detaining Families and Children

Families were woken by flashbangs and helicopters as hundreds of federal agents raided their homes. Days later, neighbors are still searching for the missing.

southsideweekly.com

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Gina BOO 👻 #FreeŁink @gina.bzky.team · 5d

Nobel Peace Prize right here

s. eek smith 👻 @sesmith.lol · 5d

For anyone who has been fighting for your life with Zoom's AI companion, you have to turn it off in the web settings, not in the app!

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fairshare.help @fairshare.help · 5d

Please contribute if you're able or share the original if you're not.

Note that the most effective way to get help for people is to directly ask people you know

🇬🇾🗽Sydette The Dreaded Gorgon🗽🇬🇾 @blackamazon.bsky.social · Apr 10

Welp it’s gotten real real if you can please help. If you can’t it’s really hard out here so share

gofund.me/a5ee0064

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