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Last weekend, Beth Nakamura clipped herself into a bulletproof vest and walked with a colleague and personal security detail into a Proud Boys rally
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in Portland.
The (Portland) Oregonian photojournalist has covered protest movements in her career and made photos around the world. But the things she needed to cover the Southern-Poverty-Law-Center-designated hate group
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are things Nakamura never thought she’d have to do at home.
In fact, if you’d told her during a pandemic and an uprising that she’d emerge a conflict photographer, she would not have believed you.
“I have nothing to compare with what has happened in Portland and what continues to unfold,” she said.
A recent story Nakamura wrote and photographed captured a bit of hope, though, even if it was hazy.
Beth Nakamura is a photojournalist with The Oregonian. (Photo by Doug Brown) Top: Belle, Superman and Batman play with children at the Silke Field evacuation site in Springfield, Oregon on Sept. 10. (Beth Nakamura/The Oregonian)
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In mid-September, as fires spread across Oregon, Nakamura headed to an evacuation site in Springfield. The air was thick with smoke at Springfield High School thanks to the Holiday Farm Fire. Nakamura wore a respirator with particulate filters. She found tables set up with food and clothing as she walked around, getting a sense of the site.
Then, a man approached her, found out she was a journalist, and urgently beckoned Nakamura to follow him.
Behind the bleachers and onto the field, she saw why.
David Coddington, 7, of Thurston, plays What time is it Mr. Fox with Belle, Batman, and others. (Beth Nakamura/The Oregonian)
Belle, Batman and Superman were playing recess games.
“It was like a mirage,” Nakamura said.
The story she wrote
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the next morning captured that.
Against the backdrop of this grim, bewildering landscape, Belle sits on a bench and, with cheer and calm, begins to read.
“All of us in this castle were put under a strange spell some years ago by a powerful enchantress,” she tells the child seated next to her.
“I’ve seen you in the movies,” the young girl says, transfixed.
Before the pandemic, Nakamura worked on long-form projects at The Oregonian, including “Ghosts of Highway 20
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” and “No Mercy.”
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That kind of work takes a very different metabolism.
Now, she said, “it’s raining news. It’s pounding news every day on your rooftop and leaking into your carpet, and it’s been relentless. I mean it’s been that way everywhere right? We’re all going through it, but here I think we’re on 120 days of protests in Portland.”
And that requires stamina, something Nakamura thinks all local journalists should start preparing themselves to maintain.
Belle, aka Lexi Longstreet, owns Enchanted Parties in Junction City. The three decided to dress up in character and volunteer to help comfort and distract children at the evacuation site, where families are picking up food, clothing and other supplies after fleeing fire-ravaged areas. September 10, 2020. (Beth Nakamura/The Oregonian)
She hasn’t had time to stop and think about the challenges of covering a pandemic, an uprising and wildfires. It’s been enough to work, rest and rise to do it all again. But Nakamura knows it will all become part of history.
“I feel like we are in stories that are the things our grandchildren and great-grandchildren will be asking us about.”
There’s also never been a greater need for local journalism, she said, and it’s never been more under threat.
But it matters.
Near the end, Nakamura wrote that Superman’s “red cape hangs lifeless in the stagnant air.”
She had to acknowledge the despair surrounding them in the midst of this catastrophe and, right beside it, the presence of hope.
“It was a lifeless cape,” Nakamura said, “but he was still wearing that.”
Beth Nakamura heard from readers about her piece, including a local minister who planned to use for Sunday service. (Photo by Beth Nakamura/The Oregonian)
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While you’re here:
Next week, I’m going to take a short departure from profiling a local journalist and want to share three fantastic books I’ve recently read by local journalists. What books by journalists have you read that you recommend?
Congrats
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to the 2020 LION Award finalists!
Read about the iPad subscriber program
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from The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
My colleague Rick Edmonds wrote about two milestones
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for local news startups.
The Los Angeles Times’ coverage of its own reckoning with racism
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is an important, and rare, step.
Read about how Scalawag’s event strategy
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is working.
That’s it for me. Happy October!
See you next week,
Kristen
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