two months into quarantine and it started to warm up and people were lookin to thaw. trying to find fairly isolated outdoor activities out here in seattle ins't hard. about four of us set out east to go for a hike. in the wake of the murder of George Floyd earlier in the week, i had been told there would be a protest in the evening and looked to get back in time to march. as we started coming back into seattle we hit a huge back up on the 90 as reports started coming in over the radio that the protest had turned violent and a curfew was put in place. after sitting in traffic for about an hour the city was eerily quiet. i got dropped off, got my dog in my apartment and started my way down pike to see what had happened. small groups of people were climbing back up the hill with clouds of smoke rising from downtown. it was an unnerving site to see, but nowhere near as unnerving as the news of police officer kneeling on the neck of an unarmed black man for 8 minutes while fellow police officers looked on.

kaylie and i got up early the next day to go downtown and see the aftermath.

we got down there pretty early. you could see plenty of broken glass and graffiti, but hoards of people had come up to clean what they could. i had mixed feelings about it. One the one hand it was powerful to see so many people to show up and come together to clean up the aftermath of a tumultuous event. On the other hand it felt like an effort to clean up and forget what happened. sweep the glass under the rug and forget inequities and desparity of lived realties that caused this explosion of emotion.

don't feed the pigs. their budget is bloated enough.

im refelcting on these photos months after they were taken. Biden gave an election victory speech just yesterday. Sure lets take a moment to take breath and a sigh of relief that the lesser of two evils will be sitting in that office come jan. 2021, but this is fight long from over. shit needs to change.