Culture
Portugal. The Man wants to help quash the stigma around mental health
Portugal. The Man has lent its name to a lot of causes: raising more than $1 million for school musical instruments, supporting climate change advocacy, even handing over all the profits from a planned Charlottesville, Va., show to the city’s community foundation in the wake of the white supremacist rally. But the band’s most recent…
Opinion
Is the Portland area ready for participatory budgeting?
What is participatory budgeting? Participatory budgeting, or PB, is a deliberative democratic process wherein ordinary people decide how to allocate a portion of a municipal or public budget. PB started in Brazil in the 1980s and has spread rapidly to well over 3,000 municipalities on all continents around the globe. Since PB launched in Chicago’s…
SR editorial: Do not let federal threats foil safe injection sites
This week, U.S. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein penned an opinion piece in the New York Times in response to the momentum building around safe injection sites for intravenous drug users. Specifically, the column came on the heels of one of the strongest state legislative actions toward harm reduction in addressing the opioid crisis: California…
News
Street Roots vendors, nurses helping each other
Concordia University’s community health nursing instructor, Kinara Fender, was attending a free health fair with her nursing students last spring in downtown Portland when she struck up a conversation with Street Roots vendor Mark Rodriguez. “I was so impressed with him. I kept thinking about him the rest of the day,” she said. “He flew…
Trying youths as adults: Taking aim at Measure 11
Oregon’s practice of automatically trying 15-, 16- and 17-year olds as adults when they’re charged with a crime that carries a mandatory minimum sentence under Measure 11 may be challenged in this year’s legislative session. It’s one of four broad areas of reform to how Measure 11 is applied to juveniles that is under review…
Portland Talks: The No. 1 political issue in Oregon is…
Street Roots vendor Eric Sweger wanted to know what readers considered the most important political issue facing Oregon and what advice they would give to those in charge. Here are the responses he received: Misha: “Right now, I am really salty about all of the redevelopment happening. I really did not feel that our neighborhood…
SR editorial: Do not let federal threats foil safe injection sites
This week, U.S. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein penned an opinion piece in the New York Times in response to the momentum building around safe injection sites for intravenous drug users. Specifically, the column came on the heels of one of the strongest state legislative actions toward harm reduction in addressing the opioid crisis: California…
Oregon DOJ declines criminal prosecution of Measure 105 signature gatherers
The Oregon Department of Justice said Wednesday it has insufficient evidence to move forward with the criminal prosecution of signature gatherers accused of lying to students at Portland State University in order to obtain signatures to put a controversial initiative on the ballot. The initiative, which will give Oregon voters the option to repeal Oregon’s…
Environment
Oregon could lead on cap-and-invest for carbon emissions
As Oregon lawmakers prepare for this year’s legislative session, a bicameral and bipartisan committee has been hashing out the details of a top priority on the 2019 agenda: greenhouse gas reduction in the form of a cap-and-invest bill similar to those introduced during the past two sessions. This time around, Senate President Peter Courtney (D-Salem)…
