One City Block

On Portland, protests, and my author's marquee appearance on CNN

Every night lately, I’ve fallen asleep to the drone of military helicopters circling overhead.

It feels like we’re living in upside-down world here in Portland, Oregon, based on the president’s assessment of our city as “war-ravaged.” Neighbors linger over coffee and vegan pastries. We push containers of homegrown grapes into each other’s hands now that the tomatoes are done. We share favorite books and recipes. We wear sparkly top hats to walk our dogs—or maybe that’s just me.

The thing is, as many of us keep insisting on social media and to our friends and family in other cities, there’s no crisis. Nothing’s on fire. Don’t believe what they’re saying about our city. It’s not perfect, but it’s not burning.

Two weekends ago, I protested at the local farmers’ market with four other people, about seven minutes’ drive from the ICE facility. We earned waves and honks and conversations. My sign said NO TROOPS on one side, and FIGHT FASCISM on the other. I drew a flower on the fascism side and colored in the bubble letters with paint pens

There are lots of small-group protests at various intersections around Portland on any given day—peaceful but insistent locals intent on not being the silent ones. On not standing by while our neighbors are disappeared. And yes, there are also ongoing protests at the ICE facility in South Waterfront, and there’s news coverage and video footage about the feds who use tear gas and other munitions on mostly peaceful protestors. But that is taking place on one city block in a neighborhood that also boasts excellent coffee, a sweet little park, affordable housing, senior living, medical buildings, the streetcar, a ballet studio, and Blue Star Donuts.

I have spent hours of my life standing in that exact location, picking my kids up from the school that used to be next to ICE, which was forced to relocate this fall. The clouds of tear gas, pepper spray, and other munitions that fall on the playground when the feds respond violently to protestors aren’t poisoning our children, because the children are elsewhere now.

My kids, when they went to school on the same city block as ICE, could walk to and from their favorite spots without adult supervision. They loved being responsible and having agency. They also loved the hot chocolate with flavored whipped cream at one particular coffee shop, because it comes with sprinkles, but even more, they loved the baristas who knew their orders.

Last Tuesday, Oct. 7, the day Kristi Noem, the US Homeland Security Secretary, stood on the ICE building in Portland, local authors and the readers who love them were celebrating the launches of new books. Keith Rosson’s Coffin Moon came out, as did Polly Dugan’s The House of Cavanaugh, Debbi Flittner’s The Ten Thousand Things, and Gigi Little’s Who Killed One the Gun?

Gigi is my author at Forest Avenue Press. Who Killed One the Gun? is a cozy mystery with time loops, noir vibes, and old-time radio lingo. Her big launch party happened that evening at Powell’s City of Books, which is one city block filled with new and used books. Which means it’s brimming with ideas, facts, art, and imagination—and avid readers. Tuesdays are the traditional book-launch days, and Powell’s often puts its featured authors on its iconic marquee—lights up their names in a rite of passage for those fortunate enough to get events there.

Which is how Gigi’s name ended up on CNN, in an Anderson Cooper segment about Noem’s visit and the peacefulness of Portland.

My first time getting an author on a national news show—and it had nothing to do with the book and everything to do with countering propaganda.

A few days later, a similar image landed in The New Republic.

The five-minute CNN segment includes footage of the Trump administration’s claims about Portland, juxtaposed with interviews and voiceovers. In the Powell’s clip, a musician plays his guitar outside the bookstore.

On a block a twelve-minute drive away, where ICE is, there are protests. Where, not that long ago, my children learned to test water quality, how a heart pumps blood, and what a lamprey’s mouth feels like when it sucks your skin.

Seven minutes from there, along my dog-walking route, someone has painted wooden triangles to look like candy corn. They are pressed into the grass with wires that look like spindly legs.

Different blocks, same one city. We can hold them together in our minds, can’t we? Any one by itself isn’t the whole picture. In fact, pick a block, any block, in our wonderland of quirky neighborhoods, and you’ll find street performers, oat milk lattes, neighbors out for a stroll, bakeries and breweries and dance studios and more bookstores.

After Noem’s visit, the White House put out this official statement: “For years, an Antifa-led hellfire has turned Portland into a wasteland of firebombs, beatings, and brazen attacks on federal officers and property.” I have never seen any of these things, despite years of weekday visits to the school next to ICE.

According to multiple news reports of Noem’s visit, she stood on the roof peering down at a small group of protestors and a person in a chicken costume. While this was going on, people in Gigi’s writing group were preparing their own costumes for her book launch. Like the ICE protests, and the flagship Powell’s, Who Killed One the Gun? takes place in one city block. Characters have numbers for names, and each number rhymes with an identity word or phrase. One the Gun, as you’d might expect, is the third-rate gumshoe trying to solve the murder of Five the No Longer Alive.

At the Who Killed One the Gun? launch at Powell’s, Four the Door came in a sandwich-board like costume, complete with a brass doorknob. Six the Kicks was the widow dressed in black. Two the True Blue, One’s brilliant assistant, arrived in blue, of course. A foley artist used a hand-crank wind machine, a pair of black shoes, stubby bar glasses, and other instruments of the sound-effect trade to bring One the Gun’s world to life for the overflow crowd. Just like an old-time radio show, one of Gigi’s inspirations for the novel. One the Gun relives the same day over and over again, making different choices and trying to shift his fate, all in that same city block.

What would our president’s number-name be in this time-loopy tale, one of our Forest Avenue editors wondered afterwards. Forty-five the Contrive? Because what’s being said about our city doesn’t match up with who we are, with how we live? With what we see every day? Our community’s leaders have asked the administration to leave us alone. A judge has blocked the National Guard from being deployed against our city, at least temporarily, although the appeal is being heard now.

Forty-five the Please Don’t Arrive, because our city’s leaders don’t want federal intervention? Or perhaps in true Portland fashion, we can spin some humor into what feels bleak and dangerous. With a doff of the top hat to our farmers’ market culture, how about Forty-Five the Endive? Or Forty-Five the Garlic Chive?

Forty-five, Let Us Thrive. We’re doing just fine. Believe the people who live here, the ones who check in on their neighbors and dress up like frogs to protest and ride bikes naked and make their own candy corn lawn ornaments.

Outside Powell’s on the night of the launch, twelve minutes from ICE and my kids’ former school, I said good night to Two the True Blue and her friends. I almost collided, around the corner, with Four the Door, who was sauntering past the book-cover posters in the store windows, his rectangular placard still slung around his neck. Then I walked Six the Kicks to her car, one city block from mine.

If there were helicopters circling, and there probably were, I was too wrapped up in a good story to worry about them.

Laura Stanfill is the publisher of Forest Avenue Press and the author of Imagine a Door. She lives in Portland, Oregon, where all the bookstores are her favorites.