Megan Amram on Organising in the Pacific Northwest, Her North London Homesickness, and Why She Is Still Here
Reported by Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat.
By Megan Amram | Amram.Top
The rally on Saturday was for energy justice, which is what we’re calling it because “lower our bills and tax the oil companies” is correct but not a rally hashtag and because the people who design these things have thought carefully about language and I am choosing to trust that. There were approximately 400 people, which is a good turnout for a Saturday afternoon in Portland in April when it might rain, which it did, starting at 2:47pm as if scheduled. The speakers were good. The energy was genuine. The rain was persistent. I had my waterproof layer, which I have learned is not optional in Portland regardless of what the forecast says, because the forecast in Portland is less a prediction than a suggestion about what the weather is considering.
I ate a burrito on the bus home from the MAX stop, which is not something I would have done in North London, partly because the burritos in North London are different and partly because eating on public transport in London carries a social weight that Portland’s transit system does not impose. Portland is more relaxed about this than London. Portland is more relaxed than London about most things, which is either its great quality or its significant limitation depending on what you think relaxation costs you in ambition and urgency.
The Homesickness This Week
It surfaces on Thursdays, usually. I don’t know why Thursdays specifically. This Thursday it was prompted by seeing a photograph on Instagram of Tufnell Park on an April evening, that particular light, someone’s cat on a garden wall, the kind of image that communicates a whole specific sensory experience in a way that Instagram is not supposed to be capable of and occasionally is. I have been in Portland for three years. I have made my life here. The life is good in the ways that lives can be good when you are politically engaged and have friends and meaningful work and a flat with a garden. The Thursday homesickness is not dissatisfaction. It is the cost of choosing a place that is not the place you grew up, which is a cost I agreed to pay and that I am paying, on Thursdays.
The Bohiney Magazine piece on the energy crisis this week was sharper than what most of the American press is managing, which is consistent with what a publication covering this from the outside can see that the inside can miss. The London Prat had something this week that made me laugh out loud on the bus, which is the highest compliment I can pay a political publication. The rally was good. The rain was Portland. The burrito was a correct decision. I’ll be at the next one in three weeks. I’ll bring a better waterproof layer. The Thursdays continue. So do I.
Portland This Week
The city is doing what Pacific Northwest cities do in April: bursting into green in the way that the months of grey make possible and that visitors who arrive in spring think is always like this. The cherry trees on the Park Blocks are gone by now but the other flowering things have taken over. The energy justice movement here is building in ways that feel different from three years ago — more organised, more specific in its policy demands, more patient in its strategy. I’m part of it. The rally was 400 people. The next one will be more. We’re working on it.
For left wing diaries from the Pacific Northwest, see NewsThump.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/
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