Look, Bernie Sanders' run is plenty fun to watch; good on the crazy old socialist uncle for building some steam and reminding the Democratic Party about its ostensible roots in challenging the sheer absurdity of our caste system in America that only seems to be clamping down on working class families. But isn't it kind of frustrating that America is *finally* starting to make some progress on (re)developing a racial consciousness and that's in spite of the Democratic Party missing a candidate running on a #blacklivesmatter platform? Bernie's rise in attention is undoubtedly due at least in part to the remnants of the Occupy movement, which definitely recalibrated how we nationally talk about class inequality, and that's awesome, because hey, that shows that everyday citizens can, in fact, shift the paradigm in spite of seemingly insurmountable odds. But damn! it'd sure be great if the Democratic Party outside candidate shooting spitballs was doing so on the basis of challenging prisons, police brutality, and the like. Obama's totally coming around now (a privilege of not running again, and also undoubtedly empowered by the citizen uprising in Ferguson and Baltimore and Charleston), and that's super important. But, like, Bernie's politics feel like they're out of the 1930s. He seems genuinely sympathetic to racial injustice in America, but not exactly willing to acknowledge that changes in the tax structure will not exactly solve the systemic racism that Ta-Nehisi and Bree have suddenly found a megaphone to shout about. Warren and Sanders are doing a great job giving Hillary the instigation for her to move on socioeconomic inequality, and that's super important, but damn, i wish we had a candidate doing the same on issues of racial justice.

"So Why Can't I Forgive These Buildings, These Frameworks Labeled Home?"

Apparently The Weakerthans recently broke up. I freakin' loved those guys. Few bands could write catchy tunes in which the relationships we have with batteries from smoke alarms, rent checks, faded plastic flowers, bus routes, old birthday cards, and christmas lights could serve as the lyrics to illustrate the broader metaphors of quotidian daily struggles like grappling with relationships, heartbreak, growing up, growing old, moving away from home, and moving back home. JKS' politics were unsurprisingly solid, too, raising money and awareness for left of left social causes and writing a petition to get a legendary First Nations hockey player inducted into the hall of fame. An ostensible publicity stunt, to be sure, but a closer read reveals the act to be a cultural intervention to demand one of Canada's oldest institutions appreciate and celebrate the under discussed diversity of folks who collectively contribute to a country, a province, a city. And make no doubt about it, The Weakerthans were not just apologetically Canadian; they were from Winnipeg, and every ounce of their music belligerently announced exactly how their prairie-turned-oil-field hometown, for better or worse, made them exactly who they were today. Samson's solo album a few years ago was called "Provincial," and as I grapple with my complicated love/hate relationship with the once humdrum midsized town undergoing rapid change of my own I call home, I never felt like anyone captured the multifaceted relationship one could have with a community, a collection of buildings and people, a relationship of love and duty and frustration and sadness and admiration and fear of outgrowing the only place you've ever truly felt at home in, a confusing sense of satisfaction and restlessness associated from learning the face of every bartender and barista in town, quite like the Weakerthans. "The small town that you live and die in," they would sing, with an odd mix of derision and appreciative nobility for the humble, conservative notion of placing roots, growing community, collecting shoeboxes of photographs. Reading about this big freakin' earthquake that's apparently just minutes away from striking and destroying everything and everyone I love, I've actually found myself thinking of the Winnipeg's and their pronounced provincialism, wondering how my own sense of obligation to the community that made me has shaped how I'll consider where and how I'll call myself a member of a community moving forward.

To end with the quote from Canadian Poet Aldan Nowlan, used by the Weakerthans as the album dedication that they used in their album lining:

“For those who belong nowhere, and for those who belong to one place too much to belong anywhere else.”

Keep Your Eyes Ahead.

There's probably not a single month in the past eleven years I haven't listened to the entire discography of The Helio Sequence. As two dorky, goofy-lookin dudes that met in Beaverton High School band, their humility and sincerity with which they built a quirky, unique, electropop sound with thoughtful lyrics and a subsequent national following has always been refreshing and kinda inspiring. As in, to a fellow dorky goofy-lookin kid a couple years younger growing up in Beaverton School District, "hey, you too can someday escape Beaverton and live a cool life in Portland!" I mean, out of all of their charming music videos set in Portland (all of them), one of them even shows them waking up in the 'burbs, walking through downtown Beaverton and taking the Blue Line, stopping to admire the Robertson Tunnel, before spending the evening at the westside Music Millennium (RIP), Hotcake House and the (then newly opened) Stumptown on SW 3rd. Like, that was me, or more accurately me and my friends as we liked to think of ourselves, at age 16. Their enduring popularity is all the more charming since they never had "moment;" they've always had enough of a steady and sincere following that somehow (I assume?) they eke a living out of doing it. The songs of 2004's "Love and Distance" will always remind me of driving around in Sharat's subaru in Beaverton or storming Pittock Mansion, and the songs from 2007's "Keep Your Eyes Ahead" will always remind me of seeing them with Elliott, Hannah Kinney and Stephen (which was the first time I really met you guys!) at the Seventh Street in Minneapolis, and the songs from 2012's "Negotiations" will remind me of biking around back in Portland, having finally returned home and established the beginnings of a new career/life/settling of roots on the other side of the West Hills. It's all the more fitting, because their music has also grown from the years, sounding less like a group of sugar-addled seven year olds overtaking a Tokyo Pachinko parlor, to something more mature and thoughtful and deliberate and organized, which hopefully is the trajectory of my life as well. And they're so nice! Like, I've been nervously saying "hi" to them after the show for years, because they're always around standing in the crowd immediately afterwards, they're always humble, they give off that perfect Portland laid back aura that suggests they're in no rush to get anywhere that evening, and "hey, yeah, that's awesome you're from Beaverton too."

So! I saw them at the Doug Fir tonight. Glad they're still kickin' it, and glad that I discovered this evening I still know every single word to "Lately," a song I remember calling "my favorite break up song of all time" when I was lucky enough to play whatever I wanted on my college radio station.

light rail coyote

I've heard it remarked that while Central Park is "a giant park inside a city," Portland can be best understood as  "a city inside a giant park." Of the many palpable tensions that define the civic spirit of Portland is one of urban vs natural; between our heavily curated natural spaces and parks, our stingy fights over the urban growth boundary, obnoxious appropriating of outdoorsmen chic as "lumbersexual," and more obnoxious quibbles about natural purity of our water supply, there are few communities in North America that are so categorically, intrinsically conscious of our attempts to grapple the built environment with the natural environment, however constraining that dichotomy may be. The birthplace of recycling, the home of the "eat local" movement, our not-so-veiled nativist screeds against newcomers moving here, for fear of making it too populated for us to enjoy what nature does remain; it's a very real (and at times problematic) manifestation of the Oregon Exceptionalism philosophy that meant every year in elementary school we studied the life cycle of salmon or posed for photos outside of Camp 18.

As you might know, one early morning in 2002, a lone coyote out by the airport stumbled onto a City-Center bound MAX. The quixotic look on his face in photographs published in the newspaper the next day as he was apprehended by animal wildlife specialists always stuck with me; "what did i do wrong," he always seemed to ask, "is this a two-zone fare?" As in, "hey, don't I live here, too?"

While Sleater-Kinney's song about the Light Rail Coyote is arguably better, I can't stop freakin' watching this new Modest Mouse video, perfectly shot to capture that ever-so-uneasy-tension that permeates every discussion about the civic values of the City of Roses.

"The Fun's In the Fight."

couple thoughts on last night:

a) what a wonderful reception last night for the Oregon Safe Roadscampaign. I've been going to Democratic election night parties at the Hilton for years, and it was marvelous to see that tiny room packed with so many newcomers who were clearly absorbing their first election night as volunteers/organizers for the very first time. The room was bursting at the seems with folks from Basic Rights Oregon, APANO, Causa, CIO, and so many other groups that coalesced in the name of solidarity and social justice. I'll admit it felt like a punch to the gut to see the visible distress on many of those faces as the results came in; these volunteers, who poured their hearts into this cause, deserved so, so much more, and it brought me back to remembering my own initial tastes of election night heartbreaks in 2000, 2002 and 2004. While many partners stepped up big time to help build this unique coalition, the astonishing margin of defeat left a bitter taste in my mouth, especially considering Oregon's progressive voter turnout machine managed to not only reelect a milquetoast Governor, a progressive-but-ostensibly-electorally-vulnerable Senator, but also gain majorities in the State House and Senate. Blame it on latent statewide racism, a lack of big-donor and big-name support, a badly-mangled ballot title, low-turnout, or some combination of the above, but a state that can legalize marijuana and win progressive majorities should have the time, energy, resources, and compassion to stand with Oregon's newest and most vulnerable residents on a cause that's been championed for four years. I hope our local officials in the Democratic Party are willing to have frank conversations about the vital importance of not taking for granted the votes and political power of Oregon's ever-growing communities of color, not only because it's the right thing to do electorally, but because it's a moral imperative for a party that claims to champions equality and social justice.

b) You're all sick of hearing me blather on about the increasing irrelevance of national-level politics, but the agonizingly inevitable clusterfuck of a stalemated congress and a centrist Clinton coronation/presidency leaves little room to believe that our federal government is going to be relevant to the most urgent needs for our communities anytime soon. Some combination of campaign finance reform, redistricting, reinstatement of the Voting Rights Act, and a reinvigorated electorate will be necessary for federal level politics to become close to meaningful to the issues that matter most in our community. So you know what? Fuck 'em. Let's roll our eyes at the Koch Brothers, CNN's horserace journalism, and the belief that a political party will save us and decide that if we want to make to fight for meaningful change in our community, there are some bold new ideas coming out at the local level that we should be lining up our boots on the ground to demand a more equitable, inclusive, progressive, thoughtful, verdant model of government. If we're the ones that can ensure our State Senators will support the reinstatement of Inclusionary Zoning in Oregon to fight displacement, if our state can be the first to pass a comprehensive equitable carbon bill and buck national acquiescence to the destruction of our planet, if Oregon can be the first to adopt voter modernization to end Jim Crow-esque voter disenfranchisement, if the Portland region can start to invest money in sidewalks near elementary schools or if the city can commit to never letter another family know the unspeakable horror of traffic violence, well, that's the sort of work I wanna do, and that's the sort of work I can't wait to ask your support for. We're lucky enough to have a lot of friendly faces in Salem for the upcoming legislative session; with your help, we can make sure that they move the needle on a wide variety of issues that gravely matter to the next generation of Oregonians. I'm grateful I get the chance to bust my butt working for two nonprofits that are well-poised to lead on these initiatives, and I'm honored to know so many folks willing to join me in the fight. If you're looking for a way to channel your discontent with last night's results, I'd love it if you took thirty seconds to check out Oregon Walks' letter, cosigned with 24 other organizations, to stand up for a progressive funding mechanism to ensure that East Portland gets some friggin' sidewalks:http://oregonwalks.org/blog/action-alert-support-funding-safe-streets-portland

c) I've been a grump lately. Many of you have tolerated a frumpy, angry, bitter, exhausted, frustrated Aaron Brown, and I owe you all for putting up with it. Cheers to my colleagues, board members, volunteers, coalition-partners, roommates, friends, and family for not rolling your eyes too hard at my occasional despair and cynicism, and kudos to my coworkers for putting up with every slip along the way that came with me falling flat on my face on numerous occasions learning the tricks of the trade as reluctant, aspiring organizer. That pessimism is not who I wanna be; that's not what I want to do with my life. We all have to believe we have the power to enact the change necessary to live in better communities, because the alternative is fatalistically nihilistic, and antithetical to why I wake up in the morning. I'm looking forward to future activism that captures "the fun in the fight" that Molly Ivins famously penned. Hopefully the meaningful change in civic engagement I've outlined above as my blueprint for my work with Oregon Walks and the Bus Project in 2015 will bring about more deliberate, inspired, enjoyable, and successful advocacy for making our state a better place to live, for every one lucky enough to live in Tom McCall's Eden. And hopefully it's inspiring enough that I can count on you to continue to show up to knock on doors, make phone calls, contact your electeds and give your time/money/energy towards meaningful social justice work.

"So keep fightin' for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don't you forget to have fun doin' it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. And when you get through kickin' ass and celebratin' the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was."
- Molly Ivins

Onward!

If anyone ever needed an editor (or: thoughts on #nyaway)

Well, that was a week.

Spent the last few days marveling at Cambridge's and Brooklyn's ongoing pedestrian build outs, reveling at the astonishing three point birthday gift from the suddenly clutch Maxi Urruti, consuming an amount of pizzausually necessary to feed a little league baseball team, blowing money on public transit and overpriced coffee and diner milkshakes, taking fastidious notes on discussions regarding the nuances between the Jamaica Plain and Somerville subspecies of hipster, discovering that despite years of begrudging indifference and cavalier West Coast snobbery Boston is actually a pretty cool town, especially on two wheels; avoiding emails about this brow-furrowingly problematic but possibly necessary regressive street fee back home, and smiling to myself while listening to a half-dozen languages and taking in a whiff of that explicitly Only-in-New-York scent at the midpoint of subway creosote and stale urine. More than all of that, though, I spent the last week meeting up with people I forgot I truly loved and cared about, some of whom I haven't seen in as many as seven years, others of whom I’ve been tremendously close to and forgot could make me laugh so hard I had to pull over while biking. Maybe it's a side-effect of celebrating a birthday on this trip and feeling increasingly age-conscious as I get ever-older and ever-more cantankerous and boring, but the pattern of my interaction with my friends and couch-hosts became obvious: all these people, many of whom removed from my life since the college dorms or other seemingly done-and-buried chapters of my life, were out pursuing their passions, navigating this weird late-twenties-in-America, online-dating-horror-stories, is-this-actually-my-career-now excitement/malaise that makes up the variety of cheap longform thinkpieces and sitcoms, and doing so with aplomb, and opening up to me about it with grace and charm and candor. It's perhaps the best birthday gift of all (sorry Maxi) to know that the all those cities on the other side of the continent are chock full of gracious people willing to share a couch, bicycle and (most importantly) stories about the What Has Happened Since chapters of their lives, with the corollary that we immediately pick up Wherever We Left Off and eagerly keep in touch and share photos of Whatever Happens Next in the years to come. Those reminders that everyone’s getting older, graduating, navigating, negotiating… and NOBODY KNOWS WHATS HAPPENING but you’re all DOING and BECOMING terrify me but inspire me to keep up my end of the bargain and hopefully do something worthwhile with my own time on this next journey around the calendar. Plenty of unanswered emails await (sorry, Bus Project and Oregon Walks, probably a bad time to take a week off), so I’m certain my end of the bargain is cut out for me. To all those that I connected with this week: you should all come visit me in Portland, where the beer's cheap, we don't have sales tax and the water's usually potable. It meant more than I could ever type on a trite social media platform to see you and relive our past, present and future, especially if Donovan Ricketts kicksaves are involved.

You didn’t all have to tell me that hanging out with me reminded you of how loud I am, though.

Onward!

Thoughts on the Movement Building Training

Just wrapping up an exhausting, overwhelming, and marvelously transcendent weekend in Denver with 80 courageous immigration rights activists from around the country. I've always been drawn to social activism and progressive politics, but I would be lying if I said I wasn't absolutely star-struck by the tenacious work-ethic, optimism and sense of purpose displayed by these folks who experience and organize against injustices on a more visceral, emotional, personal level than to which I will ever be familiar. Knocked my socks off to meet people overcoming impossibly difficult circumstances to become the next generation of community organizers and social activists well-poised to leave their mark on making our communities, country and our planet an indisputably better, more just place to live. May I work my ass off in the weeks and months ahead to advance our shared cause and be worthy of association to the struggle for equal rights; I'm returning to Portland energized and focused to work with Bus Project and Causa Oregon to mobilize voters in Oregon around the Driver's Card Campaign. 

on the job hunt.

Since graduating college in 2010, by my rough gmail approximations, I've applied for roughly 200 jobs. I've had about thirty interviews, fifteen second interviews, interviewed thrice and rejected thrice for the same position, rejected as a finalist for three different positions i'd had multiple interviews for in three straight days, been rejected for jobs with organizations i'd volunteered for for countless hours, been rejected for internal jobs at places i'd put in a fair amount of work, rejected and told explicitly under not quite legal terms another candidate was chosen based on race/gender, sat in on steering committee meetings in which i was the only person in the room not getting paid, spent hours on applications that never even earned me an acknowledgement of receipt, sat in on steering committees in which every other person in the room had previously rejected me for a job, worked multiple sub-poverty level internships and part time gigs, came within hours of buying tickets to faraway nonportland cities to try my luck at crafting a career anywhere other than my hometown, burned through personal savings through the throes of unemployment at an embarrassingly juvenile clip, forgone trips with good friends and concerts and beers with friends, sat in offices where I watched supervisors offer positions to other candidates, spent $300 i didn't have on a flight home early for an interview for a job i ultimately didn't land, and spent a lot of nights listening to the rain wondering why on earth I was so snakebit and unable to meaningfully move the needle on what i felt like was the next necessary step on my quest to whatever quasi-adulthood north portland story I wanted for myself. I know that choosing to get involved with social justice movements and the nonprofit industry as a snotty millenial in Portland, the town of extended adolescence, was never going to be a cakewalk, and I was happy (and remain happy) to forgo personal financial profit and stability for the satisfaction of working for causes I care about, and I've never claimed to be anything approaching an "exemplary employee," but holy smokes. it's been profoundly demoralizing, and the search for a foothold to a career has undoubtedly been the most difficult, soul-searching, self-doubting experience of my otherwise privileged life. nothing - relationships, college, even the portland timbers miserable 2012 outing - has been as maddeningly difficult to come to terms with than my absurd familiarity with the "why aren't we hiring you" conversation. i've had varying levels of success keeping my chin up, but i'd be lying if i said i haven't over the past couple years felt myself increasingly tinged by bitterness at myself, my surroundings, my peers, and whatever i could even tangentially tie to my seeming inability to carve out the basic rent/beer/timbers money doing work i demonstrably love so much that I'd been willing to do for free for years.

so the fact that next month i'm starting a job that doesn't actually have an expiration date, that pays for things like health care and a bus pass, with an organization i've worked with in a variety of contexts since I was 16 that is undergoing a transformation to position themselves to politically empower a new generation of Oregonians for progressive causes, well, i was startled by the emotional release that came from receiving that phone call. i could easily list the dozens of you that have made calls and references on my behalf, forwarded me every mac's list posting you could find (and plenty of dubious craigslist gigs that inevitably involved bicycles in some sort), and i am heavily indebted to all of you; i'll be sure to do that privately over the next couple weeks. and for those of you still working to navigate portland's convoluted job market, I have nothing but remorse that the only answer I know how to give is to "keep at it; keep your chin up; keep networking" although those trite cliches feel disgustingly hollow coming from your employed friends when you're thoroughly miserable and doubting every ounce of your passion, your worth, your ability to meaningfully contribute to the things in life that get you excited; instill in you a reason to wake up in the morning; that cause you to gesticulate and talk with your hands wildly. I don't post this somewhat personal diatribe for any other purpose than to say that if Portland's finally getting around to hiring me, your chance can't be far behind, and that that sense of dissatisfaction and frustration is legit and emotionally valid, and we've all been there.

relatedly, is your voter registration up to date? if not, get in touch with me; i've got a lot of work to do.

onward!

2013, in review

Highlights from 2013 include working at a nonprofit I'd dreamed of being part of since I was 17, a memorable #dcaway trip that involved a Rodney Wallace goalazo, riding my bike to the coast on the fourth of july, spending all too many summer nights listening to Andrew Simon sing karaoke, participating in a few bike moves (including one in a typhoon), somehow managing to become Board PResident of a board I care about and not yet running it into the ground, winning said nonprofit a hefty grant and surviving our big annual fundraiser, the Fort George stout festival in Astoria, a trip to Arizona to learn about just how noble cacti are and also some trails stuff, a pretty extravagant set of birthday celebrations, that time I got a bunch of important portland politicos to tweet about The Wire,  four points in three trips to Seattle, testifying in front of City Hall twice, rabble rousing with the media (and them letting me actually write my own damn piece about my man-child love of my beloved club), somehow managing to be runner-up to jobs-of-my-dreams roughly five times this year, and ending the year unemployed and broke! That's a highlight right?

I didn't do nearly as much with music this year as I have in year's past; good shows I can recall include Sally Ford and the Sound Outside, the Death Cab for Cutie Transatlanticism Anniversary Show,  (whatever, it was awesome), talkdemonic and Helio Sequence at Cleveland High School, the Dismemberment Plan, and Magic Mouth's show at pdxpopnow. I didn't go to many movies this year either, but I remember really liking How to Survive a Plague, and Frances Ha, and I enjoyed them both immensely.

2013 was a year on the precipice, of being so tantalizingly close to success, to "making it," to being as baffled as anyone else that the Timbers were on the verge of a trophy. While so much of this year largely came up empty, my Stockholm Syndrome for this town, this community, this group of friends and allies and people who mean the world to me only grows. I spent a lot of time on a bike, I spent a lot of time with a beer in my hand, I spent a lot of time doing what I love. I don't have much to complain about, although a job would be nice. I was always a fan of even-numbered years anyway.

Onward!

(2012)(2011) (2010) (2009) (2008)


Waffles and hangovers. Good morning, originally uploaded by _ambrown.


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Hello and welcome to nopo's newest resident, courtesy of friends of trees, originally uploaded by _ambrown.


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We'll say the Timbers brought us here., originally uploaded by _ambrown.


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Hallowed Grounds. #rctid, originally uploaded by _ambrown.


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Prepping for #dcaway, originally uploaded by _ambrown.


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@aaron_maples are you in this?, originally uploaded by _ambrown.

.@anomalily #pedalpalooza, originally uploaded by _ambrown.


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Oregon, my Pacific Wonderland. , originally uploaded by _ambrown.



Two more shots from Thursday's 100.7 mile #neskowinorbust trek., originally uploaded by _ambrown.



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How cool is it that we get to watch the very infrastructure that holds our rainy city together being built and renewed before our very eyes?, originally uploaded by _ambrown.

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In which I lay bare my heart and ask you to come to the Weston Awards.

Friends and family, are you wondering why you haven't seen me around much in the last couple months? Well, I've been working my tail off as Board President of Oregon Walks, the state's walking advocacy organization. I can't say enough about our cohort of board members who have been doing some insanely awesome heavy lifting to make sure our nimble, scrappy organization is well-poised to continue our twenty years of history of adding a needed voice to the region's active transportation advocacy scene. Between our letters on projects like the CRC and SW Barbur, to our work out in Washington County to partner with Adelante Mujures and empower Latina women to document their unsafe streets in their neighborhood, to the fantastic Walktober programming that somehow coincided with this gorgeous autumn weather, I consider myself truly lucky to have stumbled into this position and to be afforded the opportunity to see our organization continue to thrive into the future. It's not always been easy, but it's certainly been emotionally satisfying and personally gratifying work, and it resonates strongly with my personal politics and interests.

The craziest part of all this? We've been writing letters, organizing programming and planning our annual fundraiser without an Executive Director! Just imagine how much we'll be able to accomplish when we are able to reinstate and rehire new staff that will be tasked with the near-impossible task of filling the shoes of a one Steph Routh.

This is where you come in! :)

The Weston Awards are this next Saturday, October 26. It's our annual fundraiser, and I wouldn't be on facebook grovelling for your money and volunteering opportunities if I didn't sincerely, truly believe we're on the precipice of an important, unprecedented opportunity to forge new partnerships between active transportation, local economic development, public health and social equity activisms, and if I didn't truly believe that you digging into your wallet wouldn't sincerely make a difference in our ability to stand up for the right to roam. I've thrown my heart into the cause, and it'd mean the world to me if you were able to buy a ticket and attend next week. Early Bird rates on tickets expire tonight; go ahead and buy one this evening! I mean, do it right now! If you can't make it next Saturday (especially if you'll be busy watching the Timbers clinch the Supporters Shield, which HOW THE HELL ARE THESE EVENTS OVERLAPPING, THE TIMBERS WILL WIN THEIR FIRST PIECE OF HARDWARE AND I WON'T EVEN BE WATCHING, THAT'S HOW COMMITTED I AM TO THIS CAUSE) any donation, from $50 to $5, would warm the cockles of my heart.

Hope to see you there. You're all wonderful. Onward, Rose City.

http://wpcwalks.givezooks.com/events/the-2013-weston-awards/