may 2025 special election
portland, or
It’s eighty degrees out and his head is on the cafeteria table, hood covering his little skull like a tent. I can tell that he’s been silently crying. Misery’s aura.
His head hurts and he didn’t want to attend the after-school program today. He wants to crawl beneath blankets and fold himself into a sheaf of something small enough to stop touching the outside world. Here at school, too many edges are exposed. Misery doesn’t wish for an about-face to happiness, usually — just the cool respite of vanishing.
When I sit next to him, I say, “Coucou, c’est moi.” He speaks French, and from a previous life, I do too. The seams of his hood are laying flush with the sticky table right now because he wasn’t able to explain to anyone in time that he just wanted to go home on the regular bus.
I say, “Let’s talk privately,” and we swing by the nurse’s sink on the way to my office. I advise him to give his face a rinse, and, forgetting the word for blow in French, I say, “Do like an elephant” and hand him a tissue to encourage a good honk. He doesn’t, of course. He’s delicate and restrained, just as he usually is, until the emotions of All He Carries spill over from time to time.
We make a plan for him to go home early tomorrow. We both know that today it’s too late. He tried to solve this problem earlier but couldn’t. Each step was uniquely taxing and defeating, though he technically speaks enough English to explain. It costs so much to gather his faculties, to rehearse the ask in his head, to talk to his teacher and then the office staff about this, to require an adult to find an interpreter to call home and ask permission, to await the answer, and so on.
We pulled it off last week. He was able to tell me that he wanted to go straight home, and I walked him out to the bus in the nick of time. His relief made the air around him swirl a bit. Feeling maybe daring or content, he ventured some rare English with me: “Yes, bus one hundred seventy-six.”
I beamed at him. “Yes.”
Time elapsed just slightly, like a pixel out of place. He corrected himself softly, “Four hundred seventy-six.” I simply said, “Yes” again.
Numbers above one hundred are very hard. I loved him for his bravery and his relief and his honest-to-god desire to rest and for everything about him that makes him him. What can I say? Every youth worker worth their salt feels this way about their kids. We love them. We witness high highs and low lows dense with symbolism, these salt-crystal moments of their FLEETING fucking childhoods. Goodhearted educators know that they’re not saviors, that kids and families find their way always ultimately at their own hands — we are simply, actually, in real community together. We belong to each other for the times in which we overlap.
Next year, many of the brilliant educators who run small groups on language learning, reading, math, and so on will be cut. Educational assistants, ELD teachers, the very people who gather around my student to meticulously guide and track his learning, who encourage him when he feels frustrated that many of his peers are learning English more quickly than him. I despair for my students who deserve to be met warmly at the edges of their learning, who already slip between the cracks sometimes. I grieve for my colleagues who want to keep doing the incredibly difficult jobs that they love to do.
COVID-era grants are ending, budget deficits and inflation are pestilent dominoes, hard-won and much-needed cost-of-living raises are hitting, and my district (I’m in East County — not PPS) will face major staffing cuts and furlough days. The district does not want to do it. They have worked with our union and school board to preserve as many staff as possible. The district and the union are both begging the state for money. The state wants to fund education, but Oregon simply doesn’t have the revenue to provide enough of a safety net when shit hits the fan. It’s not just my district — every school I know is being asked to do more with less.
Even so-called progressive rags like the WW write pieces about how increased COVID funding didn’t meaningfully increase graduation rates for Oregon students. I read the comments. People are leery of funding education because they feel that more money isn’t helping.
Sorry, what the fuck? COVID-era funding was intended to make up lost ground, which is an illusion. I worked in schools for years before COVID and shit was hard but it’s gotten so much harder. The learning loss, the socialization loss, and most importantly, the magnitude of struggle experienced by families. We’ll be making up lost ground for over a generation. We can’t get back what was lost.
I picture someone pouring water into a bowl, and the rule is that the water needs to stay in the bowl long enough for students to drink.
In my mind’s eye, I see the bowl become a sieve whose holes keep growing. Pouring water is good and needed. God knows we don’t solve the problem by taking the water away. But the holes — those are there because of the ghoulishness of how we run this country.
We need healthier, more prosperous, more supported communities in order to see higher performance in schools. There are many people working ceaselessly to bring about these kinds of changes.
One thing I want to tease out alongside you is the question of revenue. We need more revenue in this state for public programs, period. Oregon’s graduation rates have improved in recent years, actually, but still hover around 81%, much lower than the 87% national average. Oregon’s graduation rates rank toward the bottom of the country — 40th of 50 states.
Last year, West Virginia graduated 91% of its seniors, the highest in the country. State and local revenue accounts for 80% of the funding for West Virginia public schools, largely funded by property tax, but also including income tax and sales tax. By contrast, 66% of funding for Oregon’s schools comes from state and local government pools, most notably Oregon’ General Fund (mostly income tax based), with other revenue streams coming from the lottery, frantic local school district bonds like the one we’re seeing in this election, and a paltry corporate tax. State funding is encumbered and hamstrung by libertarian-ass policies like Measure 5 and Measure 50.
Measure 5 passed in November 1990 at the hands of fervent anti-tax activists. LOL you ALREADY KNOW that they were crusty white guys. The two main petitioners of Measure 5 were Don McIntire and Thomas Dennehy (my ancestors curse them) who also sued the state of Oregon in 1995 arguing that building a light rail would be unconstitutional. Really makes you think…I ain’t ever seen two pretty anti-tax activist best friends…
Measure 5 significantly rerouted property tax funds away from public education, shifting the burden of funding to the state’s general fund (mostly income tax, remember), and altering the Oregon Constitution so that taxpayers get a “kicker” of funds every other year if revenue is 2% or more above what state economists forecasted two years earlier. These economists have to predict what revenue will be two years into the future, to which I can only say what the fuck. Imagine being a state economist in 2019 and not being able to predict what would happen as a result of the pandemic. That exact nightmare scenario has helped dig the hole we peer out from today!
Many smart people think we should “kick the kicker” — which, surprise, disproportionately benefits rich people LOL — as a way to retain more money for tough years like this one…money for schools, say, or wildfire relief efforts (read this short and sweet blurb supporting SB 1177 from the legendary Daniel Hauser out of the Oregon Center for Public Policy). For more on how we fund education in this state (aka badly lmao so fucking badly), read this helpful OPB article.
I say this to you to put it on your radar. For real. Put it on your radar and keep it there. Be talking about it with your friends and colleagues — because when bills like SB 1177 start making progress in our state government, I want us to be calling our reps with a realllll hot girl’s air of authoritative knowingness to say we support kicker reform. And if a statewide ballot measure hits in the next year or two to amend the constitution so the state can keep more of the kicker for essential services, I want to see us supporting the fuck out of it. I want us to be able to talk about it simply and cogently to our friends and family because it is common sense that we need SOME WAY of getting more revenue for public services in this state. IT IS INSANE THE WAY WE DO IT NOW.
And of course…I want to put on your radar that kicker reform IS A DROP IN THE FUCKING BUCKET COMPARED TO WHAT A COMMON SENSE CORPORATE TAX HAS THE POTENTIAL TO DO. Oregon has SUCH a hard time passing corporate tax measures. Our little state attracts MILLIONS of dollars in voter propaganda for relatively small races because national lobbies don’t want corporate tax policies to gain traction here (pour one out for Measure 97). In 1960, the US taxed corporations at around 30%, which is on par with what YOU AND I as individuals pay in income taxes; this rate has dropped to 21%, with many pathetically easy loopholes therein, almost as if those loopholes were left by design lmao. Nike, for instance, based right here in Oregon, did not pay federal income tax at all. Intel paid no federal income tax in 2022 but did benefit from a $249 million tax credit reducing future tax payments. In Oregon, the tax rate for corporations with over $1 mil in revenue is a measly 7%, also with many loopholes.
When reformists propose that we tax these corporations, even pro-public services Dems regurgitate the bitch-ass neoliberal argument that they will move out of Oregon and leave us bereft of middle class tech jobs and economic boon. This has never been my argument. Back when I thought I was bisexual, I HATED seeing the nouveau tech bros clogging up the Hinge feeds. But I have heard this argument and can allow it to sit at the table.
The trouble is that this logic only really works if these corporations reach a point at which they are reasonably satisfied. What we have seen instead is a ceaseless hunger for profit, a kind of mythological, Greek parable insatiability. There will never come a point at which they are satisfied with profits, so they will continue to wave the same tired argument against raising corporate taxes like an abusive boyfriend — if you dump me, I’ll kill myself! If you raise taxes, we’ll leave!
Even with growing profit margins, they promise to foist the cost of raised corporate taxes onto individual consumers or leave the state. But they’re ALREADY raising costs to individual consumers anyway! At some point we need to hold the ideological line and I would argue that we’ve let it go WAY TOO FUCKING FAR for DECADES.
We need a national movement around this so that corporations can’t flee to tax sheltered states but the line has to be drawn somewhere for making corporations pay, making polluters pay. Let there be backlash.
SO THIS IS THE FUCK-ASS LATE STAGE CAPITALISM SOUP WE’RE SWIMMING IN. WE ARE BEING COOKED. WE ARE THE LOBSTERS, BABE.
Let’s zoom back into the Portland School Board election. I AM LOOKING FOR SCHOOL BOARD CANDIDATES WHO ARE LIKED BY THE EDUCATOR’S UNION and who are willing to LISTEN TO TEACHERS ABOUT WHAT’S GOING ON IN SCHOOLS. I seek candidates whose intelligence lies in service-mindedly searching for CREATIVE SOLUTIONS to the problems that the union brings forth. Under these DIRE ASS CONDITIONS, in this IMPOSSIBLE way we fund public education, I do NOT see value in school board members who are suspicious of teachers or the union, or who think they are asking for too much.
I DON’T WANT TO HEAR ABOUT SAVING MONEY IN EDUCATION AS A FOUNDATIONAL THEORY OF CHANGE
CUTTING COSTS IN EDUCATION IS AN EMBARRASSING, DULL BOILERPLATE AND SAYS NOTHING ABOUT ACTUAL VALUES
NOT HAVING ACTUAL VALUES AND TRYING TO BE ELECTED TO A POSITION OF SERVICE IS GOOFY AS FUCK
EDUCATION SHOULD NOT BE PRIVATIZED OR OPTIMIZED
WE’VE NEVER FUNDED SCHOOLS IN THIS TOWN OR COUNTRY ADEQUATELY ENOUGH TO REALLY GRAPPLE WITH THE IDEA OF “WASTE”
I UNDERSTAND THAT PRIORITIES MUST BE ORDERED WITH GREAT LUCIDITY DUE TO FINITE RESOURCES
OBVIOUSLY
I WAS NOT BORN YESTERDAY
I HAVE SEEN RESOURCES FRITTERED AWAY IN PPS I REMEMBER THE CURSED FURNITURE FOR THE DISTRICT OFFICE I HAVE HEARD TELL OF THE WAREHOUSES FULL OF HIGH-TECH SCREENS MOLDERING EVEN NOW INTO OBSOLESCENCE
GROW UP
I AM TALKING ABOUT ALIGNING WITH THE TEACHER’S UNION WHO WANTS MONEY SPENT WELL TOO
I DON’T WANT TO HEAR ABOUT HOW THE SCHOOL BOARD SHOULD HOLD THE UNION ACCOUNTABLE OR BE A CHECK OR BALANCE TO THE UNION
HAVE YOU EVER TRIED TO HAVE A HEARTFELT DISCUSSION WITH SOMEONE WHO WON’T EVEN AGREE WITH YOU ABOUT YOUR OWN INTENT
I WANT A SCHOOL BOARD WHO ASSUMES THAT THE FUCKING TEACHER’S UNION WANTS WHAT’S BEST FOR KIDS
IF YOU FRAME YOURSELF AS AN OPP TO THE TEACHER’S UNION
THAT IS SO EMBARRASSING
?????
knock knock housekeeping ✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧
Election Day is Tuesday, May 20th. Polls close at 8pm. Find your nearest ballot drop-box here. You may drop your ballot into your mailbox or any USPS drop-box all the way until the last pickup on Tuesday, May 20th without a stamp. Because we do mail-in ballots, we collect and count ballots well into the following the week. You are SAFE to drop your ballot into the mailbox as long as it gets picked up by the end of the day. Your public library is a drop-site, and they will give you an “I Voted” sticker that you can put on your pet’s nose (I want to see you do this).
If you need a replacement ballot, order one here. You can pick up a replacement ballot at the county Elections Office all the way until 8pm.
You can track your ballot here. It’s worth it to double-check in case there are any weird reasons your ballot may have been rejected.Your Voters’ Pamphlet is a freaky refuge, a strange land like old Craigslist or a gas station in the middle of nowhere. I love to read it because folks speak for themselves and furnish their own opinions, so it gets kwazy: typos, straw-man arguments that don’t make no sense, someone’s uncle who is on one again. It will show you en bref who is endorsed by whom, and candidates tell you what they think is most important to know about themselves. You get to read the full text of ballot measures. In a twisted world where short form content and AI try to synthesize everything, SEEK ORIGINAL SOURCE MATERIAL AND READ THE LONG VERSION. IT IS HEAVEN!
FUCK AI, Y’ALL, STOP USING ITS THIRSTY ASS TO WRITE YOUR RESUMES AND PLAGIARIZE FROM GOOGLE IMAGE EXAMPLES LIKE WE’VE DONE SINCE TIME IMMEMORIAL
You can access the pamphlet in English, Spanish, Vietnamese, Russian, Korean, and Chinese, large print, recorded audio, and more.
Please remember that I’m just a dumb bitch. I love talking to y’all about local politics because I think it really, really matters to use every avenue possible to protect each other and especially the most vulnerable among us. I will never, ever give up or cede an inch on this point and I hope you won’t either. I am honored to have you here. I am not an expert. I work in clinical mental health and public education, not policy. I am not a journalist, I ABSOLUTELY heed gossip and vibes, I solicit DMs before every voter guide to see what the street committee is up to. I want you to know at least what I know, and I hope to provide you with many resources to consult in case you aren’t so sure of my take.
I’m mixed-race Korean/white, was raised poor but work a middle class job now, have stable housing. My scope is beautifully enriched by my life experiences, most especially by being my beautiful, special, all-suffering immigrant angel mama’s daughter. My scope is also limited by my experiences. I can’t predict the future and I’ve been wrong so very many times in my life. I’m just a gay Capricorn eldest daughter out here in these streets!!!
If you are having some kind of ballot emergency that you can’t solve by yourself, DM me. I am so dead serious. I will help you find an answer to your obscure question, or a way to get a replacement ballot, or get your ballot picked up. I’ll get it myself, or one of my hot friends in your neighborhood will do it. Believe in life after love, babe.
beloved resources i consulted (✿✪‿✪｡)
The Portland Association of Teachers’ endorsements
The Oregon Education Association PAC (Oregon’s statewide teacher’s union) — they include statewide school board recommendations
The Merc’s editorial endorsements
APANO Action Fund’s endorsements — these include statewide school board races outside of the Portland Metro Area!!
Next Up Action Fund’s Youth Voice voter guide — also includes many other school districts across the state
East County Rising rules, and they have endorsements for East County school board races like David Douglas, Reynolds, Corbett, Gresham Barlow, etc.
BerniePDX’s progressive endorsements for school board
The stories and gossip of my friends and acquaintances, many of whom are sexy and talented educators in Portland Public Schools — your niece’s favorite teacher, your stepson’s favorite counselor type shit
Candidates *ੈ✩·
Portland School Board
Director, Zone 1: Christy Splitt
Splitt was appointed to the school board in January to take over for Andrew Scott, who moved out of District 1, and is well-liked by her colleagues on the board. She used to be a civics and social studies high school teacher and has worked in statewide public policy for years, so she has that nice balance of knowing what a classroom is like and having big macro policy experience. I trust her to read a budget proposal and digest what it actually says, hopefully giving guidance to other board members who may be stepping into their policy chops in this role.
She has the endorsements of PAT, Next Up Action Fund’s Youth Choice, APANO Action fund, OEA, the Merc, etc.
Director, Zone 4: Rashelle Chase-Miller
Chase-Miller, former preschool teacher who now works for a statewide literacy education nonprofit, and parent to two PPS children, is challenging incumbent Herman Greene for this seat on the board. Her campaign lawn signs are some of the only ones I’ve seen around town for this relatively small election — I see them especially on walks through regular shmegular neighborhoods like mine. She has the endorsement of school board member Michelle DePass, who was quoted in Oregon Live saying that she pursued Chase for over a year to run, and that “she saw a board member’s role as that of a ‘thought partner’ to Superintendent Kimberlee Armstrong and her staff, not as an operations manager who hovers or second guesses.” Yes yes yes. This is what I want to hear. School board members who look at the people who work in schools and say, “Let them cook.”
Chase-Miller said she would have voted against a move to allow high schools to start J-ROTC programs, an initiative Greene spearheaded last year that was wildly unpopular among students who wanted the military to stay out of their schools. Greene said that the military was a viable path for economic stability, especially for students of color, and wanted them to have that option. But the trouble was that actual students, including students of color, were saying HELL NO. Greene often positions himself as knowing better than the students or teachers, and has been called “adversarial” by many news articles and even colleagues. In 2023, Greene said to student representative Byronie McMahon at a school board meeting that he “didn’t care what students think” because “their brains are immature and ADHD.” What…the fuck?
Friends of mine who were in PAT negotiations during the strike called him condescending, and they highlighted what news articles have picked up too — that he has a tendency to go on long-winded speeches posing questions that were actually answered by the briefings that he neglected to read. The WW endorsed the guy LMAO but even they said, “He’s come to many a School Board meeting unprepared, asking questions whose answers lay in packets he should have reviewed.” He frames himself paternalistically, as someone that the school district needs to “answer to.” I am very bored and unimpressed by such framing.
Now, I believe that Greene really cares about students, especially our students of color. I believe that his heart is in the right place overall. And I think he’s right to call for, say, audits of the current building remodel projects, which are expensive. Money saved from these audits could help middle schools and elementary schools. Rachelle Chase-Miller said that she supports such an audit.
Let’s look at some ideological concerns. Greene is the pastor of Abundant Life Church, which is notably missing from Portland’s registry of queer-friendly churches. I went back into the archives to try to find a statement from Greene about how he feels about LGBTQ+ students, and found myself watching a Facebook live video recording (entitled “Straight Talk: Episode 1”…you cannot make this stuff up) from his first election in 2021 in which he spends many, many minutes Not Answering the Question, before eventually saying in broad strokes, “I love everyone and will stand up for everyone.” Okay…? If you’re pro-gay, how about you just say that.
With today’s trans hysteria around sports teams, opportunities to enforce or undermine Oregon’s Department of Education’s fabulous gender-affirming protections for students in schools (according to ODE, we don’t have to notify guardians of a student’s name/pronoun, but we can change the official records at school to reflect a student’s request, and we are mandated to check with students before disclosing their self-identified name/pronouns to guardians — which is so fucking major right now), national debates about “parent’s rights” overruling LGBTQ+ students’ previously held rights…I want someone who is very clearly and specifically on the side of protecting queer kids.
My union friends cite many dubious lines of questioning from Greene at board meetings that make them believe that he will not be a champion for our queer kids in the way that Rachelle Chase-Miller could be. She is endorsed by PAT, OEA, the Working Families Party, APANO Action Fund, Next Up Action Fund’s Youth Vote. She comes across as warm, competent, and grounded. Read more about her priorities here. I believe that this literacy baddie will do the reading.
Director, Zone 5: Jorge Bautista Sanchez
Bright, openly-queer, and long-since been in these streets doing community organizing and educational activism work. Bautista Sanchez is eighteen years old and would provide a crucial voice on the school board as someone with an actual pulse on what students are going through, and what they want and need. So many adults seem to not grasp why young folks’ existential dread, life experiences, overexposure to technology, and so on make them prone to checking out and disengaging. It would be fabulous to have a school board member with great insight into engagement and how school is supposed to FEEL.
PAT president, Angela Bonilla, flags his policy experience and lived experiences as uniquely valuable to the school board. I love that she gives his hood, Cully, a shoutout. His detractors think he’s too young and too cozy with the teacher’s union. I like that he would be cooperative with PAT, and I like his fresh window. Look to the fantastic Danny Cage, another recent grad elected to MESD’s board in 2023. I love when young people get platforms. I love that it’s gaining such traction in Portland. It, frankly, makes me proud of Portland. Sorry to be earnest!! I love the idea of Bautista Sanchez acquiring great policy experience on the school board and going on to many, many more positions as a progressive policy maker if his heart continues to call him toward service in this realm.
The narrative he’s presented about his life — doing tenant organizing work at age 10 in his apartment complex, speaking out about gun violence, being appointed as a student rep to the Oregon State Board of Education — is beautiful, special, and impressive. Very worth a read.
He could have been a longshot candidate, but he’s actually pulled some incredible endorsements, including PAT, OEA, Bitchtucci sweethearts like City Councilors Angelita Morillo, Candace Avalos, Tiffany Koyama-Lane, Metro Councilor Duncan Hwang, former DA Mike Schmidt, Latino Network Action Fund, the COLOR PAC, LGBTQ Victory Fund, the Oregon Working Families Party, and many many more.
Director, Zone 6: Stephanie Engelsman
This is a close race between great candidates with great experience. I found the Merc’s endorsement particularly helpful: they identify Engelsman’s background as a public defender, which gives her both legalese and policy comprehension chops and a long history of seeing how difficult life can be for families who don’t have adequate resources. She says, “We can no longer cut from our schools but then be surprised that our students do not thrive, excel and love school. We cannot underfund our schools and under-serve our students while also calling ourselves progressive.”
I LOVE THAT SHE TALKS SHIT ABOUT MEASURES 5 AND 50 in her “about me.” I LOVE how specific her priorities are, and I LOVE that she identifies Oregon’s cap on Special Ed funding as a major hindrance to success and I would love to have prominent school board members lobbying the state about lifting the 11% SPED funding cap when 15% of our student population has IEPs (and honestly, if we had more resources, I think we would identify way more than 15% of kids as we learn more about neurodivergence, how trauma impacts learning and development, and see more pro-disability activism instead of shame and minimization).
She wants to keep ICE out of schools, she specifically calls out protecting Black History in schools, and she’s pro-gay and pro-trans athletes and students. She’s pro-union.
Engelsman is endorsed by PAT, OEA, AFL-CIO, Latino Network Action Fund, APANO Action Fund, Next Up Action Fund, Basic Rights Oregon PAC, and lmao even the vegans love her because she wants there to be plant-based school lunch options.
Multnomah Education Service District
Director, Position 2: Erica Fuller
Director, Position 4: Jessica Arzate
Director, Position 1, Zone 5: Amanda Squiemphen-Yazzie
Urban Flood Safety & Water Quality District
Director, Position 1: Lori Stegmann
Re-elect Stegmann. She’s doing a good job. Because districts have changed around, we have to re-elect her even though we just elected her in November 2024. She has been with this board since it came into existence in 2020, and has experience in preventing flooding along the Columbia River, emergency preparedness, community resilience and climate change policies, and will be an asset to keep in this position!
Ballot Measure ༺
Ballot Measure 26-259 PORTLAND SCHOOL DISTRICT BONDS TO IMPROVE HEALTH, SAFETY, AND LEARNING: MODERNIZE, REPAIR SCHOOLS: YES
Oh my fucking god we need to pass this bond. Oh my god what are we talking about here.
This does not increase taxes — it maintains the current tax rate. If we funded schools at the statewide level more coherently, we wouldn’t be beholden to nailbiter local bonds! Imagine!!!
I’ve been watching school bonds across the Portland metro area for eleven years. They tend to pass or fail by an extremely narrow margin — often just 1-2% in either direction. This is an extremely up-in-the-air ballot measure to text your family or friend group chat about.
This bond proposes to update elementary and middle schools — the previous bond was only for high schools. It also hopes to make seismic upgrades to all schools, upgrade curriculum and tech, and expand arts/theatre/athletic facilities. Please put some respect on the names of theatre kids!!!!
I want to give a very special neg to the Willamette Week’s endorsements this year. Thank you for your fun crossword each week but y’all are so fuckin’ wrong for this. You sound dumb. My eyebrows crept further and further up my forehead as I read, disappearing altogether beneath my bangs. Their line of reasoning to vote No on this was basically devil’s advocate fedora realness at a time when our state is losing massive federal funding for education. They cited a long-ago school bond that failed and then returned to the ballot the following year after it got more specific. I would argue that we don’t have time wait here, that the decrepit and unsafe conditions of our schools and kids RIGHT NOW do not have time to wait, and that it’s EXPENSIVE and LABORIOUS to keep putting the bond on the ballot. It’s not such a simple proposition. We will have a SCHOOL BOARD to help us with the nitty-gritty of implementing the bond. Pass it at once!
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Thank you for reading, baby ~
Operation Olive Branch is a very nice, continually updating spreadsheet that highlights important mutual aid fundraisers for our comrades in Palestine, and elsewhere.
Tamara’s fundraiser for her family in Gaza. Tamara is the best — it was just her 26th birthday, I believe. She and her family have been though so, so much.
If you’ve had a chance to share resources with folks in need and you’d like to treat me to a little coffee or something, I’m @marissayangbertucci on venmo, cash app, and paypal.
I’m wishing you very, very well. I want your protection, your joy, your rest, your proximity to beauty FERVENTLY as if they were my own. I want you to cause trouble and get away with it. I want it all for you.
xoxo,
bitchtucci * ੈ♡‧₊˚