January 2021 • vol 22 • issue 263 COMMENTARY: Denise Reed on Systemic Racism NEW COLUMN: Unsheltered Thoughts by Kathleen Sullivan ART: AVA features video/mobile projections HIPFiSH FOREST: Citizen’s Timber Tax HAPpY NeW YEaR! MONTHLYalternative press serving the lower columbia pacific region 20 21 Ready to Shift? LENS By Heather Hirschi Since 1987 finnware Dedicated to Nordic style and quality. Visit our Portland Location at finnware.com • 503.325.5720 Nordia House 1116 Commercial St., Astoria OR • Open 11am - 4pm Mon - Sat Imogen Gallery contemporary works 240 11th street, astoria, or • 5 0 3 . 4 6 8 . 0 6 2 0 mon – sat 12 to 5pm, sun 12 to 4, closed tue/wed • imogengallery.com Belly Dance with A Jessamyn We’re Open ! 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After Georgia’s run-off results were an- 2021 Of course, if 2020 established anything, it’s that change is the only nounced, congress began the process promise. In the past decade, truthtelling of counting electoral votes to confirm has initiated momentous cultural shifts, the presidential election of Joe Biden, from exposing lies of rape culture to call- contested by 100+ house republicans ing out systemic racism. This reckoning and a handful of senators. And then, intensified in 2020, a year of unraveling in a move long-planned and incited social institutions and the loud disavowal by the lame duck president, his armed of rotting systems of relationship. We’ve supporters flooded the capitol building. deepened the long struggle of truth- With little resistance, they shut down telling, illuminating false glories mask- government business. ing stories of landgrabs and massacres. This drama of whiteness obscur- Stirling Gorsuch"Icefire" monoprint, 2016 We’ve started to occupy the freedom truth ing the hard work of black organizers instigates. seems emblematic of stories we have come to understand in the past decade. Real In 2020, the COVID19 pandemic helped reveal the inadequacies of many of our work toward justice is eclipsed by inflated, sensationalized performances of domi- social networks at the same time we witnessed the boundless capacity of individuals nance. But the symbols on display were easily recognizable as serious signifiers of and local organizations to truly support each other. The tumultuous events of 2020-- oppression: confederate flags, camera cords knotted into nooses. from the pandemic to reckoning with white supremacy--inspire a reexamination of who The epiphany brings to light that these divisions are not serving us. The narratives we are at an essential, existential level--how we flourish or flail as individuals and in of freedom in the US, the promises of the american dream, are hollow. The lens shifts relationship to each other. What matters? to reveal the suffering incurred by generations of adherence to a paradigm that pits 2021 hits like a King Tide. Within the first full week of the year, on January 6, 2021-- us against “them”. Days into 2021, we’re reverberating in the energetic and systemic the Epiphany--grassroot efforts to get out the vote in rural Georgia resulted in the red shifts that came to fruition in 2020. And while painful, these shifts have cracked open state turning blue. The election of democrats Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff wrests some worn out narratives. cont. p9 3 JAN 21 hipfishmonthly.com The Spirit of St. Louis Trumpeter Mark Berney RUSSIAN GOLD w/ Lee Stromquist - piano MEDALISTS Joey Altruda - Bass RETURN TO Friday July 6 • 8pm ASTORIA E HAPPY 2021! outside the box STEPHEN BERK Salon Stellar Thank you for all your DURING THE PAST MONTH leader, Mikhail Gorbachev. Gor- support this past year! American security apparatus bachev was a peace seeking reformer Natasha, Belinda, Celestine, Shelly, Ron & Marks! detected a massive hack into a whose policies of glasnost (openness) wide range of public and private and perestroika (restructuring) did entities with strategic value. much to democratize Russian political Before sufficient analysis could institutions and open it to the West. be done, media was proclaiming Gorbachev wanted to negotiate with the hack had to come from a big the US with the aim of eliminating “state actor” which had to be nuclear weapons. Recognizing the Russia. While the hack was about ever-present dangers of a nuclear a month after the 2020 election, exchange, which could be caused the last significant accusation by mistaken information, the Russian of Russian hacking came on the CoNtInUoUs AmErIcAn RuSsOpHoBiA leader wished to eliminate nuclear heels of the 2016 election: Hillary weapons entirely. The American former Moscow mayor, whose alcoholism Clinton versus Donald Trump. Clinton president, Reagan, a cold warrior who increasingly compromised his ability to was claiming “Russian interference” on had referred to Russia as “the evil em- Open: Every Day 11 to 5pm govern. At one point he ordered tanks the eve of the election, seemingly too pire” was willing to negotiate. But he to fire on the Russian Parliament, so out www.forsythia.com 1124 Commercial St • Astoria, OR early to tell its source. After a 22 month would not consider abolishing America’s of touch with reality was he. While Yeltsin subsequent investigation by his com- nuclear arsenal. For one thing, the was head of state the Clinton administra- mittee, special counsel Robert Mueller defense contractors who supported him tion did everything they could to enable issued a report claiming 2016 election made great fortunes building nuclear his alcohol based dysfunction. Incompe- interference “in a sweeping and system- weapons. So Reagan settled for the INF tence and corruption reigned as Russia A Poetic atic fashion.” Much journalistic hoopla Treaty, which sharply limited intermediate under Yeltsin sought to transition to capi- followed this revelation, but rarely was range nuclear weapons. talism. Indeed, with the help of the CIA there any description of in what manner After Gorbachev, Russia’s most vision- Family and NED, Russia was in the economic the election interference occurred. This ary leader since the 1917 Revolution, doldrums by the late nineties. turned out to include Russia’s staging came the Yeltsin period, wherein the Memoir “a social media campaign” favorable to Moreover, the US blatantly interfered Soviet Union collapsed and the US began Trump and disparaging of Hillary Clin- with Russian politics by conducting “color to implement its “color revolutions,” “Toast na zdrowie to this ton. This amounted primarily to ads on revolutions” (coups) in the Eastern Euro- installing authoritarian pro-Western lead- delightful collection.” Facebook. Congress appointed Robert pean states along Russia’s border. Russia ers. The US thus succeeded in “western- -Margaret Chula, laureate Mueller to investigate Russian interfer- had communized those states, including izing” the buffer states which had helped author of One Last Scherzo ence. Almost two years later, the Mueller the Baltics, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and protect Russia from invasion. As those Report would state that Russia had Rumania in order to have buffer states countries threw off communism and between Russia and the West. Western “An exquisite piece of indeed “interfered in the 2016 election” joined the West, the US placed nuclear remembrance.” -Hal Calbom A social media campaign disparaging European countries, together with the weapons in them aimed at Russia. of the Columbia River Reader Clinton does not in this writer’s opinion US, had invaded Russia after the 1917 Yeltsin was replaced in 2000 by Vladi- constitute a “sweeping and systematic Revolution, attempting to restore the mir Putin, a capable leader who succeed- campaign.” tsar. And Nazi Germany had invaded and ed in revamping the Russian economy, as Now Available at RiverSea Gallery in Astoria Comparing Russia’s anti-Clinton ad- devastated much of Russia in the early well as its defense systems. The US con- vertising with previous US interference years of World War Two. stantly derides Putin as an authoritarian, in Russia’s internal politics, mainly during After World War Two, the US, being as if we never cozied up to authoritarians. Visit Downtown Astoria the Bill Clinton presidency, reveals the US the only major participant not to have American elites keep presidents from on the 2nd Saturday of level of interference in Russian politics to suffered invasion or bombing found itself negotiating with the Russians, as Reagan every month for art, music, have been far greater.