Thick blanket of fog

I am intensely busy attending meetings and planning actions and events on behalf of all those threatened by the Republican administration's executive orders. We are experiencing a new level of police violence in Portland. Heavily armed and physically intimidating riot police are arresting peaceful demonstrators if they do not pay hundreds of dollars for "permits" to protest. Many of us feel the requirement to pay money to the police in order to be "allowed" to protest is a violation of our right to assemble and right to free speech, is a demand for us to pay "protection money" in order not to be attacked and violated. The police are only "protecting" those who have financial privilege. Some say this is how it has always been, only now it is more blatantly so. Some say this is how it has always been for people of color, only now it applies to "white" people too. It is as though this administration has already cast a blanket of suppression over all of us. When I looked out my window at 1:30 a.m. last night/this morning, I saw this blanket of fog lying heavily over the city, and it seemed to me to symbolize where we are right now.