Opinion
There’s room in Oregon’s economy for all to be secure
Ariel, a home care worker without the means of fixing her car’s transmission. Tai, an immigrant factory worker worried that rising rents may put his family out on the streets. Bertha, a nursery worker struggling to raise her school-aged daughter. Ariel, Tai and Bertha may have different stories, but they share the same anguish: how…
Director’s Desk: We’re inviting ourselves inside your home
A student asked me this week why some of the homeless camps are so hard to keep clean. I asked the student to imagine: The entire world stepped inside your home at this very moment. Not just anyone, but everyone. The evening news, elected officials, neighbors and friends. Strangers took photos of you and…
News
Native American art gives voice back to massacre victims
This week, the Clark County Historical Museum in Vancouver, Wash., unveiled an exhibit of Native American artwork commemorating an American massacre. The exhibit, “One November Morning,” features work by Cheyenne – Arapaho artists Brent Learned, George Curtis Levi and BJ Stepp, who are descended from survivors of the Nov. 29, 1864, massacre at Sand Creek,…
The trauma of housing instability
Shea Lott has been reading up on the psychological impacts of evictions, homelessness and unstable housing. Lott is not a social worker. He’s a clinical psychologist at the Avel Gordly Center for Healing, a multicultural treatment center at Oregon Health & Science University. But many of his patients – who aren’t necessarily low-income – have…
Timber’s fallen: Enforcement of forest labor laws spotty, lacks bite
This is Part II of a three-part series on the working conditions and treatment of Oregon's immigrant forestry workers. It was raining on the November morning 25-year-old Teodoro Ponce-Leon bled to death in the mountains northeast of Brookings. Before sunrise, a van had delivered him and other Latino immigrant forestry workers, some in the…
