Phil Busse

Nietzsche would be proud. When the homeless encampment known as Dignity Village was ostracized in late August from its site underneath the Fremont Bridge, most observers believed that would be the whimpering conclusion to the eight-month attempt at establishing a camp for the city’s homeless–run exclusively by the homeless. Over the previous eight months, about […]

Within hours of President Bush confirming that fighter planes were raining bombs on Afghanistan, several hundred activists and concerned citizens packed into a grassy park across the street from City Hall. Contacted by phone and e-mail, an informal anti-war network sprung almost instantly to life. They dropped rakes, left Sunday-afternoon hikes, and turned off the […]

Eliciting laughs and hisses from the crowded balcony, the pivotal point in Wednesday’s City Council meeting came when police Chief Mark Kroeker asked those in attendance to “trust us.” Chief Kroeker provided thirty minutes of testimony about fire bombings and perceived safety threats around Portland in an attempt to convince City Council to re-approve their […]

Coordinating anti-war protests with 100 other colleges across the country last Wednesday, about 200 students from Lewis & Clark held hands on the green near the College President’s office. It was a sunny day and an idyllic scene for a liberal-thinking college, something torn straight from the glossy pages of a recruiting brochure. Yet, in […]

Thirty-six hours after terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, about eighty local activists gathered in a stuffy downtown office. Like tens of thousands of other Americans, they gathered in the settling darkness of Wednesday evening–the first full day after the terrorist attacks–to lean on each other and try to regain a […]

Just hours after the bizarre news that two hijacked commercial airplanes rammed into the side of the World Trade Center’s twin towers, a used car dealership along North MLK Blvd in Portland hung a homemade banner. It read, “Kill All Them in the Middle East.” Like opening interment camps for Japanese-Americans after the attack of […]

On August 13, the Salvation Army shut the doors on the Greenhouse School. Literally. With no prior notice, representatives from Salvation Army changed the locks on the alternative school, a unique program where street youth could earn their high school diplomas. That same day, two teachers who had served as primary instructors and mentors, were […]

Wearing a black Pink Floyd shirt, a young man began quietly fumbling his way through the story of his arrest. The lecture room at Portland Community College was packed with an equal number of both young, black and white teens and twenty-somethings. Jack (not his real name) began slowly, looking down at the podium. Epileptic, […]