COMMENTARY | ‘Surviving police brutality is a different type of trauma known to an endless number of Black people,’ Street Roots staffer Sophie Maziraga writes My first encounter with the protests following the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapoli ...
10 Jun 2020 - Sophie
COMMENTARY | Today, it’s Trump’s ban on immigrants who need assistance, but medical injustice for people of color has roots 155 years deep On Jan. 27, the United States Supreme Court voted 5-4 to approve the Trump administration’s “public charge” law, als ...
7 Feb 2020 - Helen Hill
BOOK REVIEW | ‘One Person, No Vote: How Voter Suppression is Destroying Our Democracy’ by Carol Anderson Following news reports, it is well known that the Republican Party has attempted to restrict the votes of those they deemed unlikely to vote for Repub ...
3 Jan 2020 - Dave Gamrath
BOOK REVIEW | “Free All Along: The Robert Penn Warren Interviews” by Stephen Smith and Catherine Ellis In 1964, Robert Penn Warren, the famed white writer, interviewed a number of black leaders – organizers and writers – and eventually published a lengthy ...
7 Jun 2019 - Mike Wold
The city can work with the feds on a case-by-case basis, without condoning unjust profiling This week, for the second time, the city of Portland withdrew its partnership with the Joint Terrorism Task Force, an outcrop of the Federal Bureau of Investigatio ...
15 Feb 2019 - SR editorial board
COMMENTARY | If we don't begin with an understanding while taking it seriously, we undermine the prospects for real and lasting change Tokenism seems to be a topic that folks want to avoid, but the argument against addressing it usually looks somethi ...
3 Aug 2018 - Darleen Ortega
COMMENTARY | 50 years after the Fair Housing Act, segregation and discrimination persist in Portland I won’t try to define progress, but I know it when I see it – to paraphrase that famous Supreme Court case on obscenity – and when we look back 50 years t ...
20 Apr 2018 - Allan Lazo
COMMENTARY | Let's slow down, explore our biases, listen to people of color and truly address racism A few years ago, I wrote about race in social work and the structural and interpersonal racism that went undiscussed in Portland. Portland seemed to ...
13 Apr 2018 - Shannon Singleton
SPARC is working with Multnomah County as part of a nationwide effort to change the conversation about racial disparities and homelessness Why does homelessness affect communities of color at higher rates, and how can we make sure that we respond to homel ...
23 Mar 2018 - Kaia Sand
Those who have the least are being displaced and forced to downsize – to discard the possessions they hold dear “I can only carry so many backpacks on my back at the same time with my precious items,” Barbara told me. She was tired, upset, exhausted. Stan ...
16 Feb 2018 - Kaia Sand