Long-in-the-tooth Aging Hippies, 60-to-70-Somethings Living the Lie About Their Party
I think that it’s morally obscene and spiritually profane to spend $6 billion on an election, $2 billion on a presidential election, and not have any serious discussion—poverty, trade unions being pushed against the wall dealing with stagnating and declining wages when profits are still up and the 1 percent are doing very well, no talk about drones dropping bombs on innocent people. So we end up with such a narrow, truncated political discourse, as the major problems— ecological catastrophe, climate change, global warming. So it’s very sad. I mean, I’m glad there was not a right-wing takeover, but we end up with a Republican, a Rockefeller Republican in blackface, with Barack Obama, so that our struggle with regard to poverty intensifies.
– Cornel West, November 2012
Thirty-six years of jazz, the north part of Portland, along the Willamette River, under the St. John’s Bridge, with supports that look like cathedral steeples.
Free, open grass amphitheater, low key, amazing musicians, a few tables promoting music and the neighborhood, St. John’s, once a hippie-infused area. And now, homes – small, 60 or 80 years old – going for a cool half million or more.
The ones enjoying macrame pot hangers with heirloom tomatoes in backyards full of Oaxacan pots and interesting cairns and papasan chairs and yoga mats made with organic bamboo, well, they lucked out, no, buying…