When thunder boomed briefly on Sunday, July 21, followed by a smattering of rain, I felt a small bit of relief from the buzzing anxiousness of everything.

Within the hour, President Joe Biden announced he wasn’t running again, and threw his weight behind Vice President Kamala Harris. It was one moment of certainty among so much disruption.

The authoritarian bellicosity of the Trump campaign is, for the time being, a given, not something to be wished away. Even if he loses at the ballot box, we now know a ‘January 6’ is possible.

The wild weather of a disrupted climate now means more crises. Gov. Tina Kotek declared this a more volatile season already, with more than half a million Oregonians under fire danger warnings this past weekend. Forest fires both displace people into homelessness and contaminate the air for people who are already homeless.

The man who grazed former President Donald Trump’s ear with a bullet, killing one person and injuring two others, seemed to fit the profile of a mass shooter more than one motivated by political ideology, driving home once again the regularity of this threat in the United States.

COVID-19 cases are increasing. An update from cybersecurity software firm, Crowdstrike, went awry and grounded flights.

Billionaires commandeer digital spaces relied on by so many of us, their whims holding outsized sway. Biden announced he was going to quit the presidential race on the same platform that mongers untethered rumors — X, formerly known as Twitter.

I write this not to be an alarmist, but to take stock. There’s no wishing for a better, easier time in the United States.

We must root further in our humanity despite it all.

It’s easy for people to be scapegoated in times like these. Look no further than the anti-immigrant rhetoric that’s the currency of the Trump stump speech.

Look no further than the threats to humanity lobbed at people experiencing homelessness.

For the past five years, the Martin v. Boise ruling felt like a moral bedrock. The Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ruled it was cruel and unusual punishment to criminalize the mere existence of someone who, in fact, did not have adequate shelter. The Oregon Law Center’s successful defense of it in Grants Pass was a deepening vindication.

In a deeply destabilizing move — one among many — the Supreme Court undid all this on June 28.

Oregon legislators had the foresight to codify the logic of Martin v. Boise into state law as ORS 195.530 with the passage of Oregon House Bill 3115 in 2021.

Now, it’s become a bit of a local political obsession to crack open opportunities for cruelty. While the Portland City Council has tried to push the extent of the state law with legal interpretations, some Oregon lawmakers are threatening to challenge the ordinance in the spring session.

“Americans have a powerful and unique urge to blame homeless people for their own circumstances,” Sara Rankin, Seattle University School of Law professor, wrote in Street Roots discussing Martin v. Boise in 2019.

So it’s important to set the table with the facts of discord. These are not easy times, and they won’t be easy times, and despite all that, we must steady ourselves against scapegoating people who are struggling with desperation.

I have a memory from the early pandemic that serves as a salve. Housed people were sheltering in place, so there was a bit less emphasis on unhoused people being an eyesore, a blight, a problem to be fixed superficially.

The forest fires were raging, and the air was rough to breathe. Tucked into a concrete alcove in Old Town, people living in tents around the block had set up a barbecue. They were pitching in, feeding each other.

When I walked by, they offered me a burger. Possessing little, they sought to share it.

Despite the pandemic, the fires and homelessness, in this instance, people fed each other. They did not turn on each other.

That’s the humanity we need to root ourselves in.

Street Roots is an award-winning weekly investigative publication covering economic, environmental and social inequity. The newspaper is sold in Portland, Oregon, by people experiencing homelessness and/or extreme poverty as means of earning an income with dignity. Street Roots newspaper operates independently of Street Roots advocacy and is a part of the Street Roots organization. Learn more about Street Roots. Support your community newspaper by making a one-time or recurring gift today.