We've got issues.
Mark Harris is the longtime writer of his Notes from the Riverside column in Eugene Weekly.
I went to Portugal on a Measure 110 fact finding tour. I was one of three people going from Lane County: State Sen. Floyd Prozanski, Paul … Continue reading
In 1974, two years before the Eugene Springfield NAACP branch was founded, I worked in a Los Angeles Black Community Mental Health Day Treatment center … Continue reading
“Safe” at home, I’ve been watching a pandemic, wrapped in a depression, with tales told by an idiot genius, hoping things will return to a … Continue reading
We attended, my wife Cheri and I, the opening of the University of Oregon’s Lyllye Reynolds-Parker Black Cultural Center, a place first demanded 50 years … Continue reading
I was looking at my high school yearbook, where I appeared as student body president, in my natural blackface — an actual eight-inch Afro, denim … Continue reading
Black History Month started as an internal celebration, expanding from Negro History Week during the Harlem Renaissance. Designated the second week of February to bookend … Continue reading
When a trope or metaphor gets popularly misappropriated due to cultural transference, problems ensue. Two examples often used in mainstream Western culture are “low man … Continue reading
What if you were born to live in this time, in these times? Choosing to incarnate, burdened by terrible conditions, strengthened by an indigenous strength, … Continue reading
I wanted to be white for three weeks in 4th grade (1965)because I was being rejected, being the only black kid in class in my elementary school in Bel Air. After three weeks I realized, wait, there’s nothing wrong with me, it’s them. My home training countered the non-lessons I was getting: Slaves were smart. Slaves resisted every step of the way. We were the slaves that taught ourselves to read, when it was a death sentence. Continue reading
I want my country back. I want the country where “All My Relations” meant an expanded humanity that lives in kinship with other life forms as relatives, not resources. That recognizes that humans in particular are relatives to be nurtured and cared for, not resources to be enslaved or exploited. When enslavement, exploitation or terror happens, that the solution to oppression is to become more humane than your oppressors. Continue reading