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Good morning, Portland! I hope you had a great three-day weekend, if you were fortunate enough to take the time off from work.
Let's get right to it—here are the headlines.
• The Clackamas County Board of Commissioners is at it again! This time, in an incredibly embarrassing and offensive move, elected officials drafted legislation that compares COVID-19 passport legislation to Jim Crow laws. Yep—seriously. (Of course, Clackamas County would know a thing or two about exclusionary racial laws, because like much of Oregon, it used to be home to many sundown towns where Black people weren't allowed after dark.)
• Speaking of vaccine passports: Over a million people have already downloaded a vaccine passport app in New York state, the first jurisdiction to introduce one. Somehow this has not resulted in social collapse or a new world order, at least not yet!
• This week marks the hundred-year anniversary of the Tulsa Massacre, an actual tragedy caused by actual racism. Learn more about the massacre and see how the anniversary is being observed here:
The Tulsa massacre anniversary in photos https://t.co/rg0hvLV1ll pic.twitter.com/F5P8VuCmvV
— BuzzFeed News (@BuzzFeedNews) June 1, 2021
• House Democrats in the Texas Legislature walked out on the job last week to stop a vote on Senate Bill 7, which would restrict voting rights and accessibility by reducing polling hours, narrowing mail-in voting, and empowering biased and intimidating poll watchers. Gov. Greg Abbott now says he'll withhold the Democratic lawmakers' pay in retaliation.
• Naomi Osaka, the star tennis player, has withdrawn from the French Open after she was fined by the tournament for refusing to speak with the media following her matches. Osaka, who was ranked first going into the tournament, says that speaking with journalists during tournaments gives her intense anxiety.
• Donald Trump was the keynote speaker at the North Carolina Republican Party's state convention over the weekend. The move marks the beginning of Trump's return to the campaign trail in support of other Republican candidates—which could lead to him running for president again in 2024. Can't wait to do it all over again!
• New depression just dropped:
Those with winter seasonal affective disorder (SAD) tend to oversleep and overeat, while people with summer SAD — the disorder's less common and less understood counterpart — experience insomnia and lowered appetite. https://t.co/cLVsc4kNPE
— The New York Times (@nytimes) June 1, 2021
• The Portland Clean Energy Community Benefits Fund (PCEF) recently announced its inaugural round of grantees. Also known as Portland’s version of the Green New Deal, PCEF aims to fund climate action projects while centering racial and social justice. Learn more about its first grantees—and PCEF's process of trial and error—in our story.
• In another sign that things are slowly returning to some level of "normal," the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland has announced that it will resume in-person performances on July 1.
• And finally, here's some reading material, in case you missed it all last week:
I had a lot of fun editing the Mercury's Spring Reawakening Guide, which dropped on the site this week. (Fun fact: We first planned to run this in early May, but pushed it because of the spike—second time's the charm!) Here's a thread of the pieces, ICYMI.https://t.co/IzZPUCvXkt
— Blair Stenvick (@BlairStenvick) May 28, 2021