Tamara L. Siuda, unplugged
Sunday evening I marked my 51st birthday quietly, after a hot day in coronavirus lockdown, and a disappointing dinner which I cooked incorrectly. Last year I had intended to celebrate this year, since I’d not had any chance to do anything nice on my 50th birthday due to being at a conference. This year, I was supposed to be in Belgium - I would’ve completed a conference on Friday, and had planned to spend a quiet Sunday with European friends and family. Now it will all have to wait until 52, if I can afford to make the trip next year and the conference is rescheduled to the same week.
We have passed 50 days of protesting the Portland Police Bureau here in the city. Now we are also contending with unwanted federal troops, who are not only brutalizing unarmed people doing nothing illegal by demonstrating in public, but are randomly grabbing people off the streets in unmarked vehicles for intimidation and arrests. This is not acceptable. We will continue to demonstrate until the feds go home and the PPB is defunded. Didn’t expect to mark the second half of my life in pandemic or martial law, but here we are?