Comrades

I love this group of people for bringing Buddhist practice to the quest for justice. They are, left to right, Maila, Frank, Michaela, Deborah, and Sue. Alex and Marina left before I had the sense to take my camera out of the bag, and Chris, Bud, Maggie, Anais, and Chelsea were unable to attend this month, but this dozen or so people constitute the Portland Buddhist Peace Fellowship Coordinating Committee. We have been meeting at least once a month for the past fifteen months, to explore what we can do, as Buddhist practitioners, about the disaster that is the government of the USA. We have been gathering steam since January, 2015. 

It seems marches, rallies, sit-ins, teach-ins, banners, letters, petitions, and all the traditional forms of protest are impotent in the face of the coup Rebecca Solnit says has already occurred. We sit together with the question: what can we do? We don’t know. Doing nothing is not acceptable. So we work on the question together. Together we voice our anxiety, grief, rage, sorrow, hope, and frustration. Being together brings smiles to our faces. We think relationship-building matters. We think gathering the force of a critical mass of people who share our values matters. But then what?

Right now we are building toward a major action in July. More will be revealed in the fullness of time.