Portland, OR. The President of the Portland Chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is feeling optimistic about the future of race relations in the Rose City. Rev. E. D. Mondainé, a renowned musician, and U.S. Army/Air Force veteran took the helm of Portland’s chapter in 2018. His voice has become increasingly important during this time of downtown protests and civil unrest. Mondainé’s says, “Even though times are bleak, we can make change. Portland is a perfect storm for change in this country and the ninety-plus days of noise is the start of revolution.”
While many organizations and individuals protesting are calling for a complete defunding of the police in Portland (and across the nation, for that matter), Rev. Mondainé says that the NAACP does not stand with the goal of abolition, but rather, reformation.
Starting in May 2020, demonstrations over the police killing of George Floyd have been held in the city of Portland, concurrent with protests in other cities around the United States and around the world.
When asked about the death of George Floyd and the reverberations across the nation, Mondainé’s said he believes Floyd’s death was nothing less than a “horizontal, modern-day lynching” and not to be convoluted else wise. (Former Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin is charged with murder and manslaughter in the death of George Floyd.)
Reverend E.D. Mondainé believes in Portland and the ability of residents to confront nationwide and global equality and equity. “We’re on a mission for justice, truth, and equality. And we’ll never stop fighting for that.”
The Portland NAACP has taken a stand on many issues including renter’s rights in 2019.
Mondainé’s spoke to Portland Society Page reporter Daniel Chilton about his views on the strategy of the Black Lives Matter movement and where the NAACP stands regarding the policing institution, as well as the prison industrial complex.
While the public conversation has primarily revolved around police institutions and police brutality, Mondainé also discussed the often-absent subject of the prison industrial complex. With Black inmates outnumbering whites by a large margin until very recently (according to Pew Research Center, this gap has begun to narrow) Rev. Mondainé says that the NAACP is trying hard to keep this conversation going and has major plans in the future to continue to address both police and prison reform; that one cannot exist without the other present.
Thousands marching into downtown Portland; a photo strikingly familiar to those of the 1960s civil rights march on Washington.
About the Portland NAACP:
Founded in 1909 in response to the ongoing violence against Black people around the country, the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) is the largest and most pre-eminent civil rights organization in the nation. We have over 2,200 units and branches across the nation, along with well over 2M activists. Our mission is to secure the political, educational, social, and economic equality of rights in order to eliminate race-based discrimination and ensure the health and well-being of all persons.
The vision of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is to ensure a society in which all individuals have equal rights without discrimination based on race.
To find out more about Portland’s NAACP branch and any upcoming events, including their monthly meetings downtown, click here. If you’re interested in donating to their cause, you can do so directly here. To register to vote for the upcoming election and make your voice heard for change, you can do so here.
Portland, OR. The KairosPDX educational nonprofit is individualizing its programming to serve kids at home. The program serves over 170 students in grades K-5. The focus of the nonprofit is working to transform education into a system that sees and nurtures the whole child. Through policy advocacy and direct service, the organization works to change a structure that has historically disempowered black and brown communities.
The nonprofit’s holistic approach has helped it weather the COVID-19 pandemic. “We were able to retain the same attendance levels that we had pre-pandemic and it was largely because we centered care and connection in everything that we did,” Ladd said. “Multiple times a week there were check-ins with families, and it was really just a space for families to come together and vent and ask questions and be in a safe space to experience what we were experiencing as a collective.”
Kairos focuses on the whole child and all their needs: academic, social, emotional, cultural, and more.
Similar check-ins were available to kids individually. Kairos was able to provide nutritional support, computers that had been donated, and Internet access so that each child could stay healthy and focused on learning.
Kairos prioritizes the “whole child,” in the classroom, including social, emotional, cultural, and identity-affirming aspects of wellbeing. The organization has done training with educators as well as people outside the educational system to work on how to better support whole kids.
“We talk a lot about the humanization of children being at the center of education,” Ladd said. “Seeing the humanity in each child means seeing all that they bring and seeing that as an asset. Schools have a tendency to dehumanize children and their value.”
Kids need this type of support more than ever amidst the rapid social changes occurring right now.
“With both the racial justice and COVID pandemics, for many it’s like a trauma in the sense that it’s thrown people’s lives into chaos and everything that they knew is no longer,” Ladd said. “That is a traumatic event that will have an impact on children’s mental health and wellbeing.”
Creative projects support academic engagement
The executive director said that this turbulent time has provided some opportunity for the community to come together around important issues. Kairos partnered with some other black-run organizations and faith-based communities to do a food distribution. The organization also partnered to offer free COVID testing for the surrounding community.
“I found in this time, while there were challenges, our community did what it often does, which is come together to support one another,” Ladd said. “It wasn’t about who runs what organization, it was about how we support the children and families that we serve and this greater community and how we utilize each other’s strength to better support them.”
This is also an opportune time in terms of racial justice. Kairos is working with other black-run organizations across all sectors to lobby members of government for policy changes. Ladd said that with the awareness raised by protests in Portland, policymakers are more open to legislation advocating for racial equity.
Kids need support in academics now more than ever.
“Obviously our work is very much in the heart of racial justice and economic justice … the work is not new work for us, but I think the new global and statewide attention has definitely created more work,” Ladd said. “I think this is a period of time to continue to lift up the voices of leaders in the black community and other communities of color. ”
These leaders are working hard to lobby as a collective, run their individual organizations, and care for their own homes and families. Ladd said her biggest challenge right now is that there is not enough time in the day.
“It’s been a lot of extra work, a lot of late-night zooms,” she said. “There’s so many important things to do. And it’s a marathon, not a sprint, but still, you gotta keep running.”
From KairosPDX: KairosPDX is an education nonprofit focused on transforming education through a model built on love and inclusion that elevates the voices of historically underserved children, their families, and their communities. ‘Kairos’ is an ancient Greek word meaning the right or opportune moment (the supreme moment), or a moment of indeterminate time in which something special happens.
Portland, OR. Although Unite Oregon’s office has been closed since March, the nonprofit continues to strive for intercultural justice through direct aid and policy advocacy. It did so last summer with a program called Rise for Refuge seen above.The organization’s mission is to serve the community by building a unified movement of people of color, immigrants, refugees and working-class people of all backgrounds.
Communications and policy associate Andrew Riley explains that recent events prompted a critical look at police activity. “I wouldn’t say yet that we are an abolitionist organization but we are having these conversations about what is the ultimate solution to this challenge … there can sometimes be friction with folks who have been doing abolition work for a long time, but finding ways to work together and finding folks with all these different orientations and all these different tactics working together has been really encouraging.” Riley continued, “I think that that has been a big change from previous uprisings and previous protest movements.”
Differences with regard to the best strategies for organizing have also divided activists in the past, but Riley said recent protests have shown more unity.
“I think one of the things that’s really good to see is that there’s a better appreciation of a diversity of tactics, in organizing, in the sense that there’s a lot more people pushing back against the idea that there’s a good way to protest and a bad way to protest,” they said. “I’ve seen a lot of folks working really hard to deconstruct that, because that’s a dichotomy that’s gonna just ultimately serve people in power.”
The nonprofit works to create safe and equitable communities for immigrants and refugees.
The workload at Unite Oregon has increased over the past couple of months, with efforts going both to anti-racist advocacy and the needs of community members during this economic crisis. Riley hopes to sustain this level of work over the coming months.
While Unite Oregon used to rely on community meetings to discuss the current challenges people were facing and how those needs could best be met. However, large gatherings are not feasible in light of public health concerns; furthermore, many members of the communities UO serves don’t have regular access to high-speed internet or technology, so switching meetings to Zoom is not an option. The organization has opted instead to check in with people through individual calls.
Unite Oregon has been distributing aid to community members since the pandemic hit, especially focusing on a donation-based relief fund for those who are not eligible for state programs like unemployment or stimulus checks. These funds go to grocery store gift cards, rent payments, and more. One current initiative is to provide translated and linguistically accessible public health informational materials to immigrant and refugee communities.
“We’ve been really fortunate to get a lot of support for the fund from the Portland community,” Riley said. “We’ve had a call to donate and a lot of folks have given to that so it’s really enabled us to meet some communities’ needs.
From Unite Oregon:
You can help the work at https://www.uniteoregon.org/covid19_support_fund
Led by people of color, immigrants and refugees, rural communities, and people experiencing poverty, we work across Oregon to build a unified intercultural movement for justice.
Portland, OR. “We are the Rose City! A History of Soccer in Portland.” That’s the focus of a new exhibit coming to the Oregon Historical Society (OHS) in late July. The Oregon Historical Society Museum will be reopening its doors to the public on Saturday, July 11th at 10:00 A.M. It has been closed since March 14th due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The Timber exhibit photo above features Mamadou “Futty” Danso, Jack Jewsbury and Steve Purdy celebrated a win following the Timbers first home game in the MLS era. (Photographer Craig Mitchelldyer, Courtesy of Portland Timbers.)
“We’re looking forward to reopening,” said OHS Executive Director Kerry Tymchuk. “We’ve got lots for people to see, and we’ll be following of course all the guidelines required by the state and the county as far as face coverings and social distancing.” Museum-goers will be able to check out OHS’s permanent exhibit, “Experience Oregon,” which debuted last year and chronicles “the good, the bad and the ugly,” of Oregon’s history, according to Tymchuk. Additionally, the new exhibit entitled, “Soccer in the Rose City,” will explore a full history of Portland’s soccer culture.
Capo Tina leads section 108 during a 2019 Portland Thorns game. (Courtesy of 107 Independent Supporters Trust.)
Over the past few months, OHS has been busy producing a weekly newsletter and keeping the community updated and informed through social media.
“We’ve been very proud of all the work and material we’ve been able to provide through our social media outlets,” Tymchuk said. “We’ve been putting out great material on the pandemic, such as the Spanish flu pandemic of 100 years ago and how it impacted Oregon and lessons learned and not learned. And then we were able over the past couple of weeks to put out just a phenomenal amount of material on racial justice and equity.”
Just before having to shut its doors on March 14th, the museum was getting ready to debut an exhibit entitled, “Nevertheless, They Persisted: Women’s Voting Rights and the 19th Amendment.” Museum-goers will still be able to check out the exhibit when OHS reopens. “[It’s] a phenomenal exhibit—artifacts and documents, chronicling the fight for equal rights for women and giving them the right to vote,” Tymchuk said. “We’re anxious to give that a showing to everybody.”
March in 1913 in support of women’s right to vote. Photo featured in OHS exhibit, “Nevertheless, They Persisted.”
Additionally, the OHS has a variety of virtual programs that can be found on the OHS website that will still be available after the museum reopens.
According to Tymchuk, due to good financial planning and the Multnomah County levy, which provides the museum with funding, the OHS has not had to make any mass lay-offs or budget cuts. “We’ve been very fortunate,” he said.
Tymchuk encourages anyone interested in supporting the OHS to visit the museum after it reopens, to make a tax-deductible donation, or to become OHS members. “A membership in OHS is a great deal, and we encourage people to become members—that way they get all the material that we put out,” he said. He also provided this reminder: “Here in Portland, because of the Multnomah County levy, all Multnomah County residents have free admission [to the museum].”
“We’ve been actively fulfilling our mission during this time,” Tymchuk said, referring to the pandemic’s effect on the OHS. “We certainly live in a time where people are becoming increasingly aware of the importance of history.”
OHS Executive Director Kerry Tymchuk and Oregon Governor Kate Brown in June 2013.
Following re-opening, public museum and store hours will be Wednesdays – Saturdays from 10 am – 5 pm and Sundays from 12 pm – 5 pm. The OHS Research Library remains closed for renovations that began in January 2020. More information on library services that are available during the renovation can be found at ohs.org/libraryreno.
About the Oregon Historical Society:
For more than a century, the Oregon Historical Society has served as the state’s collective memory, preserving a vast collection of artifacts, photographs, maps, manuscript materials, books, films, and oral histories. Our research library, museum, digital platforms & website (www.ohs.org), educational programming, and historical journal make Oregon’s history open and accessible to all. We exist because history is powerful and because a history as deep and rich as Oregon’s cannot be contained within a single story or point of view.
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