By Donita Fry, Contributing Columnist
Portlanders may be aware of the city’s reputation for being progressive, one that infuses sustainable theories and practices in all aspects of economic and community development. Portland also prides itself on tolerance, social equity and diversity.
Yet, as I became informed and active in social justice and equity issues facing people of color in this city, I discovered that Portland still has room for improvement in becoming a healthy, sustainable city. I affirm this statement through my experiences as a woman of color living in a region that has some of the worst disparities facing communities of color in the nation.
Elders from my tribe say everyone has a song to sing. This song is the reason we are on this earth. When we are doing what we came on this earth to do, we know true happiness. These are principles of traditional knowledge practiced by many cultures. How will we know our song? We are experiencing exciting times; collectively, we are working toward more profound measures of social reform and creating truly sustainable development. Together, we are embarking on innovative and uplifting projects that are shaping equitable, healthy, outcomes for our families and environment. Together we are envisioning and creating connected neighborhoods that support the needs of our relatives — familial and ecological. I would like to highlight work emerging from the community in the Cully neighborhood in Northeast Portland. This project is recognizing the potential inspired when we are singing our song. Cully residents and community-based organizations are creating an enabling strategy to accelerate neighborhood-scale sustainability.
According to the Coalition for a Livable Future’s Equity Atlas, the Cully neighborhood suffers from multiple environmental harms — poverty, lack of food access, lack of parks, and lack of access to nature:
- 18 percent of Cully residents live in poverty, compared to a regional average of 9.9 percent
- 24 percent of Cully residents live within one quarter-mile of a grocery store; the regional average is 34 percent
- 24 percent of Cully residents live within one quarter-mile of a park; the regional average is 49 percent
- 5 percent of Cully residents live within one quarter-mile of habitat; the regional average is 64 percent
Many of Portland’s low-income people and people of color spend their daily lives in places that suffer disproportionate environmental impacts in environmentally-deficient places like Northeast Portland’s Cully neighborhood. Beginning in 2010, three locally trusted community-based organizations came together and established Living Cully: A Cully Ecodistrict. The project’s vision is a long-term, community-driven and equity-based strategy to introduce environmental assets into Cully in response to existing community needs and connect underserved residents to the design, construction and use of these assets. The community is reinterpreting sustainability as an anti-poverty strategy.
First and foremost, Living Cully produces equity benefits. This requires an equity lens of asking at the start of each day: How do we produce outcomes that benefit low-income people, people with disabilities and people of color? It’s a necessary approach to address some of the disparities shown in the Coalition of Communities of Color’s recent research documenting deep and growing disparities in our region. We are asking ourselves, what would our communities look like if everyone prospered and developed to their fullest potential?
Living Cully is a strong partnership of Hacienda Community Development Corporation, the Native American Youth and Family Center, and Verde — nonprofits joining ongoing neighborhood-based efforts to build community, build environmental wealth for low-income people and honor the unique cultural traditions of the diversity of people in the Cully neighborhood. Living Cully partners have individual signature projects that combine environmental, economic and social justice goals, build community priorities, and provide equity: Let Us Build Cully Park!, Rebuilding Clara Vista, Columbia Biogas, Cully Pathways to Nature, Habitat for Humanity housing and revitalization efforts, Colwood Open Space & Park, and Safe & Connected Cully (sidewalks and street improvements).
A great example of this collaborative effort is the Let Us Build Cully Park! project. Cully’s 13,300 residents have only one park (with only a dog park and limited trail) in the neighborhood. Neighbors have been advocating for a park for a long time and successfully advocated for development of a park atop an old landfill near Northeast 72nd Avenue and Killingsworth. I served on the committee that developed the master plan to turn this neighborhood blight into a park. Part of our charge was to think outside the box and ask, “How do we lift up individual song?” and honor the diversity of the neighborhood. It is with great pleasure that we discover human nature is motivating this work.
Let Us Build Cully Park! engages low-income youth and youth of color in deep and meaningful ways. Seventh- and eighth-grade students at Scott School integrated the design of the community garden at the park into their school curriculum last year, learning about landfills, community gardens and working alongside a landscape architect to create the design. Homeless students at the Community Transitional School, along with students at Scott, Rigler, and Hacienda CDC’s Expresiones program, are nearing completion of the design of the play area. For many of the students, sustainability is not new, but this experience brings them closer to ownership of the means by which Portland develops and builds wealth, which is defined from diverse worldviews. For the first time in a long time, local Native American community members participated in a ground blessing ceremony to acknowledge and welcome the reclamation of land at the Cully Park site. The Native American community also engaged in the design of a Tribal learning garden as a feature in the park. There are plans to replicate and practice this work at other sites around Portland.
The Cully Park project is integrating social and cultural conditions, social practices, and community values and attitudes into a completely new context. Cully residents serve as examples of conscious transformation of a social type, resulting in a reinvigorated and revitalized community with economic prosperity, renovated civic pride and deep community involvement.
Together with all the neighborhood-serving organizations, we are building the community’s capacity to design, plan and build the assets needed for a healthy and vibrant neighborhood. We are working to anticipate and address the displacement of low-income people, as has so often happened in Portland neighborhoods when investments are made. In a time of dwindling public resources, we are establishing new partnerships, strengthening existing relationships and maximizing our resources toward one common goal: building a healthy connected neighborhood that produces needed assets and multiple benefits (green jobs/job training, minority/woman-owned business opportunities and community engagement).
Portland possesses great natural attributes and social capital that enhance neighborhood livability. Watch what is happening in Northeast Portland and what is possible from authentic community development in Cully!
Donita S. Fry is an enrolled member of the Shoshone‐Bannock Tribe of Fort Hall, Idaho. Fry coordinates and facilitates the work of a grassroots advocacy group called the Portland Youth and Elders Council at the Native American Youth and Family Center. She is a participating partner in multiple commissions and programs with the City of Portland.
Formed in 2001, the Coalition of Communities of Color (CCC) is an alliance of culturally specific community-based organizations with representatives from six communities of color: African, African American, Asian and Pacific Islander, Latino, Native American, and Slavic. Representation on the CCC is determined by individual communities, and all decisions are based on consensus.
The mission of the Coalition of Communities of Color is to address the socioeconomic disparities, institutional racism, and inequity of services experienced by our families, children and communities; and to organize our communities for collective action resulting in social change to obtain self-determination, wellness, justice and prosperity.