Opinion
Opinion | The American Rescue Plan Act: A promise of what could be
Out of the wreckage of the COVID-19 pandemic, federal legislation full of promise has arisen. The American Rescue Plan Act, enacted by Congress in March, could have a profound impact on the lives of Oregonians. It could go a long way toward increasing economic security, especially among communities that too often have been left behind.…
Opinion | How excessive mandatory sentencing continues slavery’s legacy
Ga lo Vann is an enrolled member of the Cherokee Nation of Eastern Oklahoma and a prisoner at Oregon State Correctional Institution in Salem. Read more of his columns. Lennard Ward is a 52-year-old Black man. His family ancestry has been traced as far back as 1735 to a white man named Newitt Ward Sr.…
Kaia Sand | Go big, Mayor Wheeler. Our city needs Portland Street Response.
Mayor Ted Wheeler’s budget allotment for Portland Street Response falls short. And this is not the time to short-change a non-police response Portlanders have demanded. For this column, I write the name of Robert Delgado for the third straight week, as an insistence: Our city must design a system that refuses to accept his death…
Environment
Proposed ‘wildlife council’ would be a publicly funded marketing agency for Oregon’s hunting, fishing industry
State lawmakers are considering a bill that would create an Oregon Wildlife Council. But it’s not what it seems. House Bill 3187 proposes a council of representatives from hunting and fishing businesses, as well as individual hunters and fishers. Their task is to create a pro-hunting public relations campaign “with a third-party marketing or advertising…
News
Proposed ‘wildlife council’ would be a publicly funded marketing agency for Oregon’s hunting, fishing industry
State lawmakers are considering a bill that would create an Oregon Wildlife Council. But it’s not what it seems. House Bill 3187 proposes a council of representatives from hunting and fishing businesses, as well as individual hunters and fishers. Their task is to create a pro-hunting public relations campaign “with a third-party marketing or advertising…
Street Roots is once again welcoming new vendors
After a long hiatus due to the pandemic, Street Roots is training new vendors again. Prior to COVID-19, new-vendor orientation was a weekly event at the Street Roots office. Often between six and 12 new vendors gathered to watch a 25-minute video of vendors offering sales tips and talking about their experience selling the paper.…
Latino farmworkers press Oregon Legislature for overtime pay, other protections
State Rep. Shelly Boshart Davis (R-Millersburg) knows what’s best for workers on her family’s Linn County farm, she told her fellow Oregon lawmakers March 8. One thing they neither want nor need, Boshart Davis testified before the House Business and Labor Committee, is the same overtime compensation guaranteed to practically every other worker in the…
Bills we’re tracking that affect Oregon’s migrant farmworkers
Some of the bills affecting migrant farmworkers and the low-income Latino community include: Low-income farmworker housing House Bill 2096 would provide tax incentives for developers to construct low-income farmworker housing. It was last seen at a work session April 19 before the House Revenue Committee. Recovering civil penalties House Bill 2205 would have established a…
Wyden takes Oregon street response model nationwide
In the year since Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) first introduced the CAHOOTS Act, much has changed to suggest that this nationwide incentive for non-police crisis response could become a reality. The bill was first proposed in 2020 amid the condemnation of George Floyd’s murder at the hands of former Minneapolis police Officer Derek Chauvin. At…
