In July, Malin Jiménez helped coordinate the delivery of over 500 postcards written by members of Northeast Portland’s multicultural Cully neighborhood to City Hall. Visually arresting photos and illustrations depicting the community’s vision for the future -- thriving neighbors and neighborhoods; safe, stable housing; intact, well-fed families--adorned the front of each. On the other side, greetings, some written in Spanish and others in English, but the overarching message to the Portland City Council was clear: In one voice they said, help us realize our dream and write the next chapter of our narrative. Support the development of Las Adelitas!

The Las Adelitas campaign, a movement in pushing for the construction of 141 affordable apartments on the land where a strip club once stood, is one of many community-led campaigns in Jiménez’s portfolio at Verde, a nonprofit that serves communities by building environmental wealth through social enterprise, outreach and advocacy. Additionally, she works regularly with the Cully Housing Action Team (CHAT) to set agendas and to identify and take action on housing issues facing low-income communities of color in Cully. This typically results in the creation of half dozen annual community campaigns like the one for Las Adelitas, or the recent Verde and CHAT-led door to door and postcards campaign advocating for the preservation of all of Portland’s mobile home parks. Building leadership skills for participants in Verde’s Cully Walking Group and Lideres Verdes, a Latinx leadership development program are also an important parts of Jiménez’s work. “It is important to me that people feel ownership over these programs, and I’m just here to help make it happen,” she says

An immigrant to Portland with roots in indigenous Guatemala, Jiménez’s choice to lead community organizing efforts in the nonprofit field and within the Latinx community is a personal one, directly influenced by her own story, which, for a time, included her status as a laborer picking berries in rural Oregon. She began volunteering in the nonprofit field in 2006 and, in 2013, she participated in a professional development program with the Immigrant & Refugee Community Organization (IRCO) where she was placed as an intern with Verde. Supporting Verde’s work, particularly on the development of Cully Park, she realized a passion for community engagement projects geared toward the community’s desire for a vibrant, livable community – particularly where affordable housing for renters like herself is concerned. In addition to Verde, she continues her work with IRCO providing Spanish and Mayan language interpretation services. 

“While I don’t live in Cully, I see the same environmental challenges in my neighborhood as here in Cully...There are no sidewalks, and it’s unsafe to walk.” she explains. “For us as indigenous Mayans, environmental justice means the land is our body, and the water is our mother…working at Verde I connect to my Mayan identity in the environmental justice work that we do.”  

Bottom Line for Portland: Jiménez has built relationships with over 100 program participants in six of Verde’s community programs, including the Cully Housing Action Team (CHAT), Lideres Verdes, Youth Programs, The Cully Walking Group, Living Cully Walks. Her work supports the empowerment of Cully residents and the continued growth toward the shared vision of development in Oregon’s most diverse neighborhood and beyond.

Words by Tiara Darnell

High ceilings, natural light, a massive tapestry detailing a lush mountainscape and a wall filled with cards and drawings adorn the walls of Open School East’s unofficial “kick it” space.” While Nawwal Moustafa insists her office is not a place for students to chill and have a kiki, from small talk to tough love, kindness to comic-relief, Open School East youth know where to go when they need to be heard.

“I’m open with them. I’m soft and I’m vulnerable with them. And that’s how we connect,” she explains. “I’ll be warm, but I have high expectations. If [they] need a hug [they’ll] get a hug, but I’ll still tell [them when they] messed up,” explains Moustafa, a self-described “warm demander” type.

Situated in the diverse, multicultural and quickly growing Rockwood neighborhood in East Portland, Open School East provides a culturally-specific and responsive educational experience for youth grades 7-12. The school experience and curriculum stand in sharp contrast to that of other area middle and high schools. Whereas those institutions have historically catered to predominantly white middle and affluent class families and function around a traditional one size fits all approach to education, Open School exists for youth and families in need of a culturally-responsive alternative. “What I appreciate about Open School,” Says Moustafa, “ Is that we are willing to call out and identify systems of oppression that do not allow our students to succeed. We’re willing to name that more than some other places that I’ve been and seen. That’s one of the things that drew me in. They’re naming it. They’re saying it. They’re saying they’re committed to changing that. I want to be in a place like that.,” says Moustafa. 

A young Arab femme, Moustafa says her identity is a source of strength, particularly when it comes to building relationships with students who are beginning to figure out and establish who they are. As a director, she has a pulse on just about everything. She supervises and supports 8 staff members and the learning curriculum, conducting programmatic activities such as testing, field trips, family and community partnerships, student conduct and discipline. She engages with community agencies involved with students and their families like AmeriCorps, the Department of Human Services and Drug Rehabilitation Program. And she is no stranger to working with students through personal challenges, such as last year when three of her students experienced the death of a close relative, or behavioral issues that stem from the trauma of racism. “At a small school, we get to take our time and space to help students build skills and understand the impact of the choices they make these relationships are close-knit and labor intensive, but we get the opportunity to do things differently.”

Bottom Line for Portland: From their academic to emotional well-being and progress, as the Middle School Director at Open School East, Moustafa oversees and supports her “children,” nearly 70 middle schoolers in a school of 160 students situated in one of the area’s most culturally-vibrant yet underserved communities.

Words by Tiara Darnell

Brody Abbott is old enough to remember the vibrant black community that defined the Northeast Portland he knew as a young kid. He witnessed its undoing in the face of the crack epidemic and the War on Drugs, over policing, and of course, gentrification. Last year, when he moved back to the neighborhood where he grew up, a homeowner for the first time, he recalls the bittersweet irony of one of his new, white neighbors stopping by to “welcome” him to the neighborhood. Recalling the moment, he remembers thinking to himself, “No, no, you’ve got it backwards – welcome to MY neighborhood.”

The communities disproportionately impacted by the effects that drive gentrification also tend to be frontline communities, environmental wonk-speak for the groups most vulnerable to environmental pollution and the daily realities of climate change. As the Ecotrust lead on the Green Workforce Collaborative, Abbott works with a handful of local organizations to provide green jobs training and opportunities for two of these groups in Portland: black and indigenous young adults. 

The Collaborative recently developed and launched the Green Workforce Academy, a five-week training program that provides culturally-responsive workforce skill building, pre-apprenticeships, and complementary education and support services. The GWA utilizes a curriculum that includes 120 hours of training in foundational knowledge of the green economy, green job readiness workshops, financial literacy and lessons on hard and soft skills that are necessary for successful networking, leadership in the workplace and mentorship moving forward. As far as employment opportunities for graduates, the GWA prioritizes industries that have the potential to provide full-time living-wage careers so that 80% or more of academy graduates are able to step confidently into a stable job that will allow them to move grow into their environmental career. This pathway not only helps the individual, it also hits back at the chronic rate of unemployment as well as inequitable access to living-wage employment in high-growth industries within environmental fields locally. 

Drawing connections between the systems that historically have harmed black and other communities of color and their impact on his own life circumstances inform Abbott’s work at Ecotrust. “What really motivated me was my lived experience growing up and not having a lot of cards to deal that were positive, but playing chess to navigate the system that wasn’t meant for [black people],” as he puts it. It’s a natural fit, since Abbot finds alignment in Ecotrust’s approach to finding systemic solutions for systemic problems. “I appreciate that they recognize that ‘environmental issues’ doesn’t just mean protecting forests and land...It’s just so important to have the place where you grow up, live, and work be a place that supports your development as a person: your ability to not just get by, but to succeed and thrive.”

Bottom line for Portland: Last year’s pilot run of the Green Workforce Academy graduated 13 participants with new skills in urban “green” jobs, like urban forestry and stormwater management. The GWC is beginning to work directly with their employers to provide assistance with equity action planning, anti-racism training and strategies for effective, targeted outreach to communities of color. Funding has been secured to train three cohorts of 25 students annually.

Words by Tiara Darnell

It’s Wednesday afternoon and Kieran Chase is full of nervous excitment for the upcoming Catalyst Transgender Leadership weekend retreat. So far, thirty-seven transgender Oregonians have completed the program since its inception. And, given the small number of transgender people in Oregon, this is a big deal. This time around they’ll be bringing a baker’s dozen of emerging leaders together near Mt. Hood for the second of four retreats over the course of the year-long program. Each individual will spend time planning direct action projects that are personally meaningful and also advance justice, rights and equity in the day-to-day lives of transgender Oregonians, as well as greater understanding of the diversity of their experiences as a vulnerable population. 

Lessons learned from grassroots organizing in the areas of environmentalism, food insecurity, and youth development inform the work Chase does today. Their work with Basic Rights Oregon uses an intersectional approach to build a strong, vibrant and powerful progressive movement for LGBTQ+ equality in Oregon. Sometimes in partnership or in tandem with like-minded coalitions, fundamentally, their agenda is about advancing equity for trans people, particularly where those issues intersect with racial justice, immigrant rights, reproductive justice and more. 

Given, their very first organizing job was five months long, required sixty to seventy hours of work weekly and paid just $300 a month, advocacy around financial accessibility and fair pay in nonprofit careers is another area Chase is extremely passionate about. “The folks who should be doing [nonprofit] work are the people who’ve been most directly impacted by injustice...The folks who have been directly impacted by the systems we’re fighting against are the people who are going to come with solutions in mind...and will talk about what needs to be happening. They’re the ones nonprofits need to be seeking out...and nonprofits need to pay living wages to get the talent to make the changes they want to see.

Like clockwork, Chase receives five to seven calls or messages each day from LGBTQ+ folks in need of assistance. Each faces challenges unique to their circumstances, like crisis related to health, housing, employer and familial relationships among others. Connecting those in need to direct-action resources, particularly those in rural areas with few resources is especially meaningful, they say. 

A first-generation college student from rural western Nebraska, as a young person with an ambiguous gender presentation, they were subjected to discrimination and abuse common among LGBTQ+ youth living in small convervative towns. So they understand feeling isolated in a community with little to no resources, and seemingly no other trans people to relate to. Yet over the years, Chase has come to realize they weren’t alone. It turns out, there were and are others they weren’t aware of. And as their stories -- some triumphant, some tragic as a result of bullying and suicide--began to come out, the courage of these trans teens and adolescents have both inspired and galvanized Chase in their push to build a world where all LGBTQ+ people can see a future for themselves. “[They] stepped out of the closet and into their power [and demanded] recognition and respect from their peers and institutions. That’s huge.”

Bottom Line for Portland: Chase is the lead on Catalyst a free, year-long leadership development program for a selected cohort of 15-20 transgender people living throughout Oregon. They’ve led more than 50 equity trainings, reaching  3,000 people across private and nonprofit agencies, municipal government and other organizations and communities throughout Oregon.

By Tiara Darnell