When I first moved to the home where I now live, I noticed a patch of asphalt that had writing carved into it. It was a little hard to read, but it was a memorial to someone who had been killed.
Yesterday, as I was walking home from Whole Foods, I looked up and noticed that the signcaps on top of the street signs had Amharic writing. I stopped. How had I never noticed this before? Were these signs new?
I was a little surprised to find that the signcap at the top of my street was the same. How is it that I never looked at the sign? I have a vague memory of noticing that signcaps had been installed a few years ago, but I had never bothered to read what they said. Most of the signcaps in this part of Portland, just say the name of the neighborhood, so I never looked. I just assumed.
Once home, I did a little research. I learned that the signs were put up on November 13, 2018 to commemorate the 1988 murder of Mulugeta Seraw, an Ethiopian immigrant, by white supremacists. That was a Tuesday, so I would have been at school and missed the ceremony that occurred. And I put two and two together and realized that the section of asphalt I’d never been able to read must have been about Mulugeta Seraw’s murder. After doing my research, I went back out to read the asphalt.
It had been paved over.
So here I am, putting together a lot of things we’ve all been thinking about these last few days.
What are other things I have seen but never looked at?
What other things are being paved over?
How can I do better?
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