Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

C. Vargas McPherson

@vargasmcpherson.bsky.social

140 followers 61 following 11 posts

author — Inheriting Our Names: a memoir of Spain’s Pact of Forgetting

Posts Replies Media Videos

Pinned

C. Vargas McPherson @vargasmcpherson.bsky.social · Jan 22

“Fascism is cured by reading, and racism is cured by traveling.”
~ Spanish Philosopher, Miguel de Unamuno

C. Vargas McPherson

@vargasmcpherson.bsky.social

Thank you to Lisa Wolf and others who nudged me to make testimony! I’m so dang proud of #PortlandOregon

October 16, 2025 at 4:14 PM

C. Vargas McPherson

@vargasmcpherson.bsky.social

Leveling up and unlocking new characters! Onward through the fog!

Portland protesters dressed in unicorn, bear, raccoon, and dinosaur inflatable costumes.

October 13, 2025 at 9:40 PM

C. Vargas McPherson

@vargasmcpherson.bsky.social

It’s a beautiful day to find our way through the corn maze and get to “Human Rights For All” at Bella Farms in Sauvie Island!

October 13, 2025 at 9:37 PM

C. Vargas McPherson

@vargasmcpherson.bsky.social

This is me under my personal page
Thanks to Jeff for sharing my middle of the night musings. I’m still new to BlueSky and appreciate those who can navigate!

Jeff VanderMeer @jeffvandermeer.bsky.social · Oct 12

This heartfelt and meaningful statement by Portland resident and author Cristina Breshears on another social media platform bears reposting here. I don't think the intent is to idealize Portland but to remind all of us what is important and why. (Posted here with permission.)

For nine nights now, the steady thrum of Black Hawk helicopters has circled over Portland. The sound is constant, invasive; a low mechanical beating above our homes. It’s expensive. It’s intimidating. And it’s unnecessary.

Our protests have been largely peaceful. There is no insurrection here. Yet this federalized military presence makes us feel like we are living in a war zone (the very kind of chaos this administration claims to be protecting us from).

The irony is painful: it is only this occupation that makes Portland feel unsafe.

Each hour of helicopter flight costs taxpayers between $2,000 and $4,000, depending on crew, fuel, and maintenance. Multiply that by multiple aircraft over multiple nights, and you’re looking at hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of dollars burned into the sky.

Meanwhile, the Woodstock Food Pantry at All Saints Episcopal Church — which feeds working families, elders, and people with disabilities — has seen its federal funding slashed by 75%. How can we justify pouring public money into intimidation while cutting aid to those who simply need to eat?

This is waste, fraud, and abuse in plain sight:
* Waste of public resources on military theatrics.
* Fraud in the name of “public safety.”
* Abuse of the communities that federal agencies claim to protect.

Portland is a Sanctuary City. A sanctuary city is not a fortress. It’s a promise — a living vow that a community will protect the dignity and safety of everyone who calls it home. It means that local governments and ordinary people alike will refuse to criminalize survival. That schools, clinics, churches, and shelters will remain safe spaces no matter who you are or where you were born. But the term reaches far beyond policy. It’s an ethic of belonging; a refusal to criminalize need, difference, or desperation.

Sanctuary isn’t weakness. It’s courage. It takes moral strength to meet suffering with care instead of punishment, to believe that our neighbors’ safety is bound up in our own, to insist that safety is not achieved through force but through community, inclusion, and trust. It is living Matthew 25:40 out loud and in deed. It is an act of moral imagination and moral defiance. To hold sanctuary is to say: you belong here.

When we hold space for the most vulnerable — refugees, the unhoused, the undocumented, the disabled, the working poor, the displaced — we become something larger than a collection of individuals. We become a moral body. We do more than offer charity. We offer witness. We declare that the measure of a nation is found not in its towers or tanks, but in its tenderness.

Sanctuary cities are not lawless; they are soulful. They represent the conscience of the nation, a place where the laws of empathy still apply. To make sanctuary is to affirm that the United States is not merely a geographic territory, but a moral experiment: a republic that must constantly choose between fear and compassion, between domination and democracy.

A nation’s soul is measured not by the might of its military, but by the mercy of its people. When helicopters circle our skies in the name of order, while food pantries struggle to feed the hungry, we are forced to ask: What are we defending, and from whom? The soul of a nation survives only when we make sanctuary for one another. Not through walls or weapons, but through compassion and collective will. If we allow intimidation to replace compassion, we will have traded our conscience for control.

Please know that despite the hum of war machines overhead, the conscience of our city — whimsical, creative, stubbornly kind — can still be heard.

Portland is not the problem. Portland is the reminder. A reminder that a city can still choose to be sanctuary. That a people can still choose to be human.

October 13, 2025 at 6:28 PM

Reposted by C. Vargas McPherson

Governor JB Pritzker

@govpritzker.illinois.gov

Tyranny requires your fear, your silence, and your compliance.

Democracy requires your courage.

February 20, 2025 at 2:14 AM

Reposted by C. Vargas McPherson

unraveled

@unraveledpress.com

Happening now: protesters are outside the Fine Arts Building on Michigan Avenue in downtown Chicago this evening.

People are in line to see House of Reps Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries for an event tonight promoting his recently released book.

Crowd chanting at them, "we don't need a book tour!"

February 21, 2025 at 12:35 AM

Reposted by C. Vargas McPherson

Aaron Parnas

@aaronparnas.bsky.social

Is this what they meant by peak government efficiency?

February 18, 2025 at 11:31 PM

Reposted by C. Vargas McPherson

The Tennessee Holler

@thetnholler.bsky.social

He’s not making up: news.bloomberglaw.com/banking-law/...

Is this really what y’all voted for? 🫤 💰

February 18, 2025 at 7:51 PM

Reposted by C. Vargas McPherson

Kevin M. Kruse

@kevinmkruse.bsky.social

The AP must refuse this but more importantly the rest of the White House Correspondents Association should back them.

Boycott the press briefings until they relent, and if they refuse, walk out. There is no real use to them in any case.

Trump craves attention. Deny him that and he’ll cave.

Kaitlan Collins @kaitlancollins.bsky.social · Feb 11

"Today we were informed by the White House that if AP did not align its editorial standards with President Donald Trump’s executive order renaming the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America, AP would be barred from accessing an event in the Oval Office."
www.ap.org/the-definiti...

AP statement on Oval Office access | The Associated Press

The Associated Press issued this statement on Tuesday from Executive Editor Julie Pace: As a global news organization, The Associated Press informs

www.ap.org

February 11, 2025 at 10:52 PM

Reposted by C. Vargas McPherson

Patton Oswalt

@pattonoswalt.bsky.social

Hey NYTimes — *now* you’re lighting the beacons? NOW?!? After months of “Sauron: Avatar Of Evil… Or Extreme Uniter?” thumbsucker reporting you’re screaming what we’ve known since 2015? Fuck all the way off.