by Naseem Rakha, Oregon Capital ChronicleJuly 26, 2022 Anyone who’s read George Orwell’s “1984,” the dystopian novel about life under an authoritarian regime, knows that to survive, one had to accept whatever Big Brother said no matter how big the lie. Proof you’d come to fully embrace the all-controlling Party… Read More
by Naseem Rakha, Oregon Capital ChronicleJuly 13, 2022 I woke up the morning of July 4th feeling cynical about “Independence Day” after the recent slew of Supreme Court decisions that essentially eviscerated long-standing constitutional rights and protections considered core to our democracy. With Dobbs v. Jackson, the Supreme Court’s newly… Read More
by Naseem Rakha, Oregon Capital ChronicleJune 30, 2022 The Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe made it clear that the “wall of separation between church and state” that founding father Thomas Jefferson described as integral to the Constitution, has been breached. The majority opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson came from… Read More
I have begun to write commentaries for The Oregon Capital Chronicle, a member of The States Newsroom and one of 28 states providing in-depth and fearless coverage of state and national politics. In the past my commentaries could occasionally be found in The Guardian, The Washington Post, the Oregonian and… Read More
Never in the four years of the Trump administration did I imagine our sides engaging in a war. Rhetorical sparring, sure. But not physical combat.
And so, on this day, I fill that hollow space in my chest with heat from a thousand thousand thousand suns:
The lists goes on and on. A long miserable soliloquy that is really only a fraction of the names that it could be. A list that leans back to the first time black people stepped onto this soil and were bought and sold on a block. No thought to their needs. Their pain. Their humanity.
And now we have his flaccid response to the Corona Crisis. The mish-mosh of declarations, proclamations, denunciations, and weak-kneed applications of assistance and action has been an abdication of Trump’s duty and power as a President.
Mother and Daughter They live in our woods. Sleep in a nest of grass between large moss covered boulders and ancient gray barked firs. When I walk by the pair they eye me with curiosity and wariness. I avert my gaze then lift my camera and click. I wonder about… Read More
While we isolate in our homes, our hearts learn to reach out to the world.