Grantee StoriesNovember 11, 2016

On a sweltering weekend last summer, Rahsaan Muhammad worked the crowd at the annual Peace & Unity Fest in Northeast Portland, stopping neighbors to talk toxics during lulls in the afternoon’s music.

A few miles across town, Mary Ann Warner chatted about the Willamette River’s polluted sediments with members of the Iraqi Society of Oregon during a riverside picnic at Kelley Point Park. She spent the next weekend feeding people experiencing homelessness while discussing the contaminated fish that many people catch and eat from the lower Willamette River.

Meanwhile, Irina Phillips planned a summit for Russian-speaking teens to explore training programs for jobs on the proposed seven-year, $746 million effort to address the cancer-causing soils lining the river from the Broadway Bridge to the Columbia Slough.

All three activists care deeply about the outcome of a federal effort to decontaminate the Portland Harbor Superfund Site, and all hail from communities that, too often, are excluded from discussions about our community’s future.

Through a $40,000 grant from the Meyer Memorial Trust, the trio are working as organizers for the Portland Harbor Community Coalition, a diverse alliance of community groups concerned about the social and environmental justice issues related to the planned cleanup of Portland’s waterway.

Their demands are simple: The coalition seeks a strong, fair plan that entitles those most harmed by the river’s polluted history to an equally outsized benefit from the cleanup.

That means fighting for cleanup standards that make the river’s resident carp, bass and catfish safe for everyone to eat. It means insisting that cleanup contractors hire a diverse, local workforce. It means prodding decision makers to involve people experiencing homelessness, immigrants and people of color in discussions about how the river will function after the health risks are gone.

For these three, the work is deeply personal. These are their stories.

 

Rahsaan Muhammad

Muhammad, an African-American business owner, activist and artist, proudly describes himself as “a central-city Portlander, all the way.”

But he admits it hasn’t been easy to keep a foothold in the city’s inner reaches. Portland’s black community, once concentrated near the harbor in North and Northeast Portland, has moved outward as those neighborhoods gentrified into predominantly white residential districts.

Muhammad saw a community that once lived, worked and fished along the river — deriving livelihood from the harbor while its toxic legacy threatened their health — at risk of losing out when the time came to address the mess.

He worried cleanup planners would focus their public outreach efforts on communities living close to the harbor and in doing so would fail to reach displaced black Portlanders.

“I can’t tell you how many pounds of carp and catfish all of our families have eaten over the years, not knowing the impacts,” he said. “Rectifying the environment should include rectifying things for the people, too, even if they don’t live here anymore.”

 

Mary Ann Warner

Warner is the child of Latino migrant farmworkers. For decades after the Delano grape strike of the 1960s, when farmworkers walked off the job to protest their exposure to dangerous pesticides and below-minimum wage earnings, her father refused to purchase grapes.

“‘We’re not eating food that makes the workers sick,’” he told his daughter.

Those early experiences influenced Warner’s work as an advocate for the Latino community.

Latinos are among Portland’s poorest residents, with nearly a quarter living in poverty and two-thirds earning below-average incomes, according to a report by the Coalition of Communities of Color and Portland State University. Language barriers prevent some from accessing information about the risks of eating fish from the Superfund site. Making matters more difficult, Warner said, regulators frequently make token efforts to include Spanish speakers but fall short of truly reaching them.

“You can’t just send out a postcard in Spanish and expect people to come to your public meeting,” she said.

Instead, Warner said, you must go to them. She frequently speaks about the health risks of the Portland Harbor at Latino community events and provides Spanish translation at public meetings about the Superfund site.

 

Irina Phillips

The issue of river health became personal for Phillips as a graduate student in the mid-1990s, when she experienced a life-threatening allergic reaction after waterskiing in the Baltimore harbor.

A legacy of industrial pollution from the city’s steel industry has tainted the harbor with toxic chemicals, and doctors told Phillips the contamination may have triggered the reaction that swelled her throat and constricted her airways.

“The water looked fine,” said Phillips, who immigrated to Oregon from Russia as a college student in the 1990s. “I just didn’t know there was so much bad stuff in it.”

When Phillips learned about the Willamette’s polluted sediment, she was driven to inform Portland’s Russian-speaking community about the risks. She also sees the cleanup effort as an opportunity to create upward mobility for a Slavic community plagued by poverty.

“There will be jobs available to do the cleanup,” she said, “and the cleanup plan should prioritize training local people do to the work.”

Grantee StoriesNovember 7, 2016

The cottonwoods that tower over McDowell Creek still amaze Richard Bates.

It’s been nearly six years since the Sweet Home-area farmer, desperate to stem the gradual erosion of his land into the creek, worked with the South Santiam Watershed Council to plant saplings along a quarter-mile of its banks.

The planting was a happy marriage of convenience: Council workers saw the project as an opportunity to provide shade for the creek’s threatened steelhead, and Bates found a solution to his disappearing property line.

Now, Bates says, “it’s starting to look like a jungle.” And those eroding banks? “Where things were getting tromped to death by cattle, now they’re being held together by trees.”

Bates couldn’t have known when he agreed to the project that the saplings would also benefit the basin’s economy. But the unique partnership that nourished those trees from seed to forest has provided jobs for dozens of Willamette Valley workers and consistent business for five local, family-owned nurseries.

The partnership is called Contract Grow, and it’s an example of the widespread benefits stemming from an unprecedented push to restore the Willamette River and its tributaries. It’s also a testament to the power of combining restoration dollars with crucial support to help groups do more restoration, more effectively.

A long-term commitment from Meyer Memorial Trust’s Willamette River Initiative, the Oregon Watershed Enhancement Board, the Bonneville Power Administration and the Bonneville Environmental Foundation empowered the basin’s conservation workers to tackle larger, more ambitious restoration projects than ever before.

Many watershed councils had done restoration on a small scale, working with a handful of property owners at a time. The new investment meant they could partner with hundreds of landowners, with hundreds more interested in joining.

Recognizing that the new capacity could trigger growing pains, Meyer in 2009 began funding a full-time staff position at the Bonneville Environmental Foundation to support watershed councils as they scaled-up their impact.

The groups until then had been buying plants in small quantities: a few bigleaf maples to shade a sliver of riverbank, a few Oregon grape to fill the understory. They purchased potted plants at retail value, about $3 apiece. To a home gardener, that might seem reasonable; for a watershed council buying plants in volume, it was neither affordable nor convenient.

“I was literally calling six different nurseries to get the plants, then stuffing them into my car to get them to the site,” said Sarah Dyrdahl, executive director of the Middle Fork Willamette Watershed Council.

The need for a better system was clear.

Kendra Smith, who had observed the success of a bulk plant-buying contract developed by the Portland Bureau of Environmental Services and then adopted by Clean Water Services in the Tualatin River watershed, saw an opportunity to replicate the model.

Under her leadership, the basin’s conservation groups began combining forces to submit one large, annual order to nurseries contracted to grow plants for their projects. In doing so, they gained control over the type, quantity and quality of species they transplanted.

Pre-ordering also allowed them to specify bare-root plants, which are far more affordable than potted plants. The switch saved millions of dollars in materials alone, while also eliminating the waste and physical strain of transplanting trees from plastic pots. And because the groups placed their order two years in advance, nursery owners gained certainty that the seeds they sowed would be in demand when the time came to harvest.

“It’s one of the things that has allowed our business to achieve a sustainable point,” said George Kral, owner of Scholls Valley Native Plant Nursery in Forest Grove. Today, the Willamette Basin contract has become the nursery’s second-biggest source of business.

But somebody needed to get all those saplings in the ground, and then maintain them while they grew into established trees.

Enter Rosario Franco. The Aumsville resident began his career replanting forestland after logging. But when conservation groups began launching projects that required Franco’s skills, he saw a niche to fill.

“This planting is good for the habitat, the water, the fish,” Franco said. “It’s a good feeling to know your work is doing that.”

In the years since, the basin’s restoration groups, together with area landowners, nurseries and businesses like Franco’s, have planted more than 4,000 acres. They’ve increased the pace of restoration sixfold since 2009.

The surge in business has enabled Franco to pay 33 full-time, year-round workers — a rarity in the seasonal planting industry.

When crews finished planting Bates’ property, the farmer gained a stable riverbank, new fencing to keep his cattle out of the stream and a tranquil campsite for his grandchildren’s frequent visits.

Even fish and wildlife seem pleased with the results: A family of beavers has taken up residence in the newly-wooded waterway. Their dam, built in part with branches from Bates’ trees, traps water in cool, shaded pools that make a perfect haven for steelhead.

Grantee StoriesDecember 5, 2015

For nearly 30 years, Pacific Rivers has been a key player in protecting and maintaining healthy rivers and watersheds in Oregon.

Their mission: to use advocacy and policy work to assure river health, biodiversity and clean water for present and future generations. Since helping to pass the nation’s first and largest federal river protection act in 1988, Pacific Rivers has been dedicated to enshrining protections for rivers and watershed ecosystems in the Northwest.

Part of their focus is to ensure that Oregonians have access to drinking water free from chemicals and pollutants.

Pacific Rivers has prioritized educational initiatives to bring to light dangerous and harmful environmental practices affecting the watersheds in remote and rural communities, and they work to create space to educate the public about the environmental impact risky business can have on rural communities. A three-year, $150,000 grant for organizational development and communications in 2015 supported their efforts to increase the visibility of their work throughout 19 counties across Oregon.

At a recent standing-room only screening of Behind the Emerald Curtain, supporters in Portland learned about an endangered community 90 miles to the west. The film focused on the coastal town of Rockaway Beach, in Tillamook County, where logging and chemical spraying are having a negative impact on the health of neighboring residents and waterways. The event helped teach and mobilize Oregonians about harsh environmental practices affecting rural areas outside cities and what they can do to help. Pacific Rivers will be screening the film throughout western Oregon until February to engage and inspire community members to help reform the Oregon Forest Practices Act and then releasing it online for a national audience. A schedule of screenings can be found on Pacific Rivers' home page.

Following the film, Pacific Rivers Executive Director John Kober facilitated a group discussion led by local community members and field experts. During the Q&A, he exhorted Portlanders to do their part in defending the future stability of Oregon’s watersheds and the health of rural communities dependent upon them.

Along with the development grant, Pacific Rivers received a technical assistance grant of $15,000 to partner with the Center for Diversity and Environment to guide their ongoing diversity expansion efforts. Pacific Rivers, which was already committed to equity, diversity and inclusion, recognizes that environmental progress depends on a diversity of voices and residents, said Kober.

“Pacific Rivers plays a valuable role in protecting clean water and watersheds across Oregon. We also really appreciate their genuine commitment to equity,” said Jill Fuglister, director of Meyer’s Healthy Environment portfolio. “With the combination of support for branding, communications and diversity training, we’re grateful to help Pacific Rivers make its work more relevant to all of the state’s diverse communities.”

Grantee StoriesDecember 22, 2015

Living Cully’s efforts to purchase the Sugar Shack aim to ensure that Cully residents can stay and rise with the neighborhood at a moment when gentrification is displacing low-income residents priced out of urban communities around Oregon.

Back in 1998, the year Street Roots started publishing a newspaper focused on homelessness and poverty across Portland, residents of the Cully neighborhood in Northeast Portland got some bad news: The old Young’s Marketplace building, about two miles south of Portland International Airport, was about to become an adult video store with "related businesses," as The Oregonian reported.

That set off alarms. The neighborhood had been fighting a crime problem for years and making progress. A porn shop was a step in the wrong direction.

Neighbors tried to stop the plan, but couldn’t. Over the next few years, the L-shaped building turned into a sort of porn supermarket, featuring not only videos but strippers, dancers and, reportedly, prostitution. The black-and-white checkered Sugar Shack building was a neighborhood black eye. Neighbors groused but had little recourse.

Then in 2014, the owners of the Sugar Shack were indicted on charges of tax fraud. It was the opening the neighborhood needed. The building and land went up for sale and a community organization called Living Cully, a collaboration between several groups representing Latinos and Native Americans in the neighborhood, rallied support to buy the lot for $2.3 million, putting up the first $55,000. Hundreds of Cully residents raised another $50,000 towards the purchase.

Meyer Memorial Trust awarded $200,000 to secure the loan to the collaboration of Verde, Hacienda Community Development Corporation (Hacienda CDC), Native American Youth and Family Center (NAYA) and Habitat for Humanity Portland/Metro East.

Today, what was once a neighborhood blight is a vessel of hope for the Cully neighborhood, one of Portland’s most racially and economically diverse neighborhoods. While the area around the Sugar Shack is becoming increasingly gentrified, making it harder for low-income people and people of color to stay in the neighborhood, the new Living Cully Plaza aims to ensure that Cully residents can stay and rise with their community.

Tony DeFalco, the Living Cully coordinator for Verde, said local stakeholders will define the future uses of the site.

"We’re looking at a whole range of things," DeFalco said. "Community-serving retail, potential for job and economic activities for people to work at or grow their businesses out of."

DeFalco said the 26,000-square foot building will reflect the character and face of the neighborhood and its goals. For months, volunteers have been cleaning up the property, picking up trash, landscaping, and even painting a mural. In 2016, they expect to decide how to use the space.

DeFalco said what’s happening with the Sugar Shack property shows what can happen when groups work together.

"The biggest thing it shows is the power of a real collective impact model," said DeFalco. He said that when groups with a variety of interests merge their thinking and their power, they can attract the support they need to make change happen.

Grantee StoriesJanuary 5, 2016

Poverty is a familiar bedfellow in Oregon. Statistics tell the alarming trend. Theater helps shift the numbers into dialogue.

In the first decade of this century, the numbers of people living in areas of concentrated poverty in the state grew to make Oregon home to one of the most severe increases in the nation. Proximity to clusters of poverty is a cruel amplifier: low-income families living in concentrations of poverty face higher crime rates, poor housing conditions and fewer job opportunities.

The problem is both rural and urban: A recent report estimates that roughly one in three of Multnomah County’s 760,000 residents earn less money than required to meet their basic needs. Children, communities of color, immigrants and refugees, single-parent households and persons with disabilities are disproportionately impacted by poverty — with poverty rates for these populations far higher than their rates in the population as a whole, according to a 2014 county report.

A Portland theater recently took on the issue of poverty, with solutions in mind.

Founded in 1999, the Sojourn Theatre blends performance and dialogue to engage communities in conversations about race, class, leadership, demographic change, public education, civic planning, housing and community sustainability.

Their February 2015 run of “How To End Poverty in 90 Minutes," turned the Portland Playhouse into a social-science laboratory. The goal of the experience of the play/lecture/workshop/theatre piece/public conversation: to erase the silence around poverty and provide a starting point for dialogue. Meyer was proud to support the theater's work with a $25,000 grant in October 2014.

During performances, the ensemble members gave each of 100 attendees the opportunity to learn about and actively engage with the realities of poverty in Multnomah County. Together, they decided how to best direct $1,000 of each evening’s receipts — $17,000 total over the run — toward poverty eradication.

“We wanted to host a conversation about poverty where we invite different perspectives and ideologies into a room to wrestle with this often silent issue,” Sojourn Theatre founder Michael Rohd told PDXMonthly. Rohd left Portland in 2007 to teach at Northwestern University, where he developed the show.

After each 90-minute performance, each audience member was handed a ten-dollar bill and asked to spend it on one of five approaches to ending poverty: System Change, Education, Direct Aid, Making Opportunities, and Daily Needs. The exercise aimed to help participants overcome the sense of helplessness that comes from being overwhelmed by issues of poverty.

A reviewer in the Oregonian wrote of the sell-out production: “Sitting alone writing a check to alleviate poverty feels like throwing a pebble into the abyss, while passionately exploring the issue with 99 other theatergoers leads to action with real weight behind it. The revolutionary insight of this production is that solutions are to be found only when we work as a community.”