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Wendy Willis

Wendy Willis is a writer, lawyer, and advocate for democracy. She is the founder and director of Oregon's Kitchen Table, which is housed in National Policy Consensus Center in the the Mark O. Hatfield School of Government at Portland State University and the Executive Director of the Deliberative Democracy Consortium. Wendy has served as Executive Director of the City Club of Portland, as an Assistant Public Defender for the District of Oregon, and as a law clerk to Chief Justice Wallace P. Carson, Jr., of the Oregon Supreme Court. She is the author of a textbook, a book of essays, and two books of poems. Her most recent two books, A Long Late Pledge and These are Strange Times, My Dear, were both finalists for the Oregon Book Award.
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    Music, Poetry & Arts

    It’s about damn time: Let Lizzo lead the way to constitutional reform

    Wendy Willis
    https://www.facebook.com/wendy.willis.14
    https://twitter.com/WendyRaeW
    https://www.instagram.com/wendypiepdx/
    November 11, 2022
    It’s about damn time: Let Lizzo lead the way to constitutional reform

    Willis is the founder and director of Oregon's Kitchen Table at Portland State University and executive director of the Deliberative Democracy Consortium. She is the author of a textbook, a book of essays and two books of poems.

    Is everybody back up in the buildin'?
    It's been a minute, tell me how you're healin'
    'Cause I'm about to get into my feelings
    How you feelin'? How you feel right now?
    -Lizzo, “It’s About Damn Time”

    On the third stop of her latest tour, the pop phenom and human rights activist Lizzo performed at the Capital One Arena in Washington, D.C. Part way through the show, a small phalanx of security guards came on stage and handed her a crystal flute originally owned by President James Madison. She shushed the fans: “It’s like playing out of a wine glass, so be patient.” She played a few notes, then raised the flute over her head: “History is freaking cool, y’all.” The crowd roared with delight. Like almost everything that happens in D.C., that handful of notes — accompanied by a celebratory round of twerking — stirred up both breathless jubilation and pursed finger wagging.

    A bevy of pearl-clutching men took to Twitter to register their displeasure. Matt Walsh complained: “Simply desecrating American history just for the sake of it.” Ben Shapiro argued that Lizzo’s performance “speaks to the, sort of, gentility of America's founders being brought into a context that is vulgar. It's the vulgarization of American history.”

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    There’s a lot to unpack here: outrage over the audacity of a Black woman, revulsion at the realities of women’s bodies and joylessness, for starters. But it’s hard not to see the metaphor. The poem, as we say in our house, writes itself. Or in this case, the essay.

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    constitution

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    Democracy Pie

    C’mon, come out wherever you are: On democratic urgencies

    Wendy Willis
    https://www.facebook.com/wendy.willis.14
    https://twitter.com/WendyRaeW
    https://www.instagram.com/wendypiepdx/
    August 26, 2022
    C’mon, come out wherever you are: On democratic urgencies

    Some events and efforts inspire immediate action. But sometimes we need to be patience to achieve our goals.

    Photo by Elena Di Vincenzo/Archivio Elena Di Vincenzo/Mondadori Portfolio via Getty Images

    Willis is the founder and director of Oregon's Kitchen Table at Portland State University and executive director of the Deliberative Democracy Consortium. She is the author of a textbook, a book of essays and two books of poems.

    Hey
    C'mon come out
    Wherever you are
    We need to have this meeting
    At this tree
    Ain' ever been
    Planted
    Yet
    -June Jordan
    “Calling on All Silent Minorities”

    I just got up from a late afternoon nap. Now I’m doing a little work in the languid early evening sun – the near-cool breeze and goldish horizontal light a giveaway for the seeping of autumn, like fresh water trickling into a saltmarsh. Earlier, I went for a pickety walk through my neighborhood, hobbling on a slow-to-heal foot injury. And then an unhurried brunch with husband, where I sipped my oat milk latte and we took turns reading aloud from the latest outrage storm swirling around Twitter.

    So many conversations are like that now. My mom and sister and I nursing cocktails of our choice and chittering over Facetime about the FBI executing a search warrant at the home of the former president of the United States. My best friend and I trading videos of white nationalists declaring they are preparing for civil war. Co-workers walking to coffee and exchanging gossip about House members giving tours to insurrectionists. It seems like so much and so little all at the same time.

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