Catherine Stauffer is an anti-facist activist who infiltrated the Oregon Citizens Alliance in 1990 during the early lead-up to Measure 9. If passed, the ballot measure would have amended the state constitution to prohibit “all governments in Oregon” from using money or properties to “promote, encourage or facilitate homosexuality, pedophilia, sadism or masochism.” These “behaviors” the measure would have codified as “abnormal, wrong, unnatural and perverse” and “to be discouraged and avoided.”
The Oregon Citizens Alliance, or OCA, was one of many ultra-right groups across the country that sought to pass anti-gay laws during a time of heightened religiosity in American politics.
While she participated in marches, sign-making and protest photography for Just Out magazine, Stauffer (pictured, top left) didn’t relate to some of the more mainstream methods used to resist the OCA.
At the time, activists with the No on 9 campaign put a heavy emphasis on uplifting and centering what elders in the movement describe as “mainstream” Queer folks. As a strategy to defeat the bill, organizers sidelined people of color, the fetish and kink community, Trans folks and anyone who couldn’t easily appeal to the heart strings of middle-America.
By infiltrating the OCA, Stauffer took a solo path to fighting fascism in her community. Her goal was to gather valuable information — such as member rolls, financial statements and strategy plans — and pass those on to people who could use the information to fight the radical right and prevent the passage of Ballot Measure 9.
After a year undercover as a sympathizer, Stauffer was exposed. At a public OCA meeting in a church, OCA leader Scott Lively physically assaulted her in front of 200 people. Undeterred by the violence she faced, she turned the assault into a strategy to stall the OCA by filing a lawsuit for damages.
As a consequence, the OCA did slow down and its financial resources were stymied. She went to trial a month before the ballot measure was defeated. And she won her case.
But in 2000, the OCA was at it again. So Stauffer partnered with a young, radical environmental lawyer to bury the group once and for all in litigious warfare under grounds of nonpayment and money fraud. The erratic courtroom antics of the OCA’s other public figure, Lon Mabon, landed him in jail for 42 days and saddled with fines that defunded the group. Ultimately, Stauffer’s suit was responsible for shuttering the organization’s doors.
“Fighting the OCA was always, at its core, anti-fascist work,” Stauffer said.
In reflecting on today’s organizing challenges, she said the people who choose to actually fight fascism will “feel the full brunt of the state’s willingness to terrorize citizens.”
Stauffer now works with people seeking treatment from the effects of mental illness and is passionate about creating support systems that can help activists struggling with the trauma of their work.
“I think that the paralysis some people feel right now might come from a desire to adhere to protest tactics that aren’t going to work for confronting fascism,” she said. “I would say that many of us have an unconscious investment in systems that are harming us. We aren’t going to be able to vote our way out of this, for example. Nonviolent protest parades aren’t going to do anything either (unless we refuse to go home). Nonprofits can’t fundraise us to freedom. The collective action required from us to meet this moment is really going to challenge us.
“To combat this we need to develop an anti-carceral consciousness. Support activists who put themselves at a high level of risk. If you are one of them, take the best care of yourself that you can. This is going to be really hard. Please be brave.”
‘Reigning supreme’
Henry Felton (pictured, middle left) was awarded Sweethearts of Portland’s eponymous title in 2015, a recognition to drag performers who raise a significant amount of money for a charitable cause in their community. As the drag queen Kimber Shade, Felton became the first Black Sweetheart to complete her term, “reigning supreme,” as Felton puts it. During the 2020 Black Lives Matter movement, Felton was an active marcher who advocated for the necessity of Black and organizers of color telling their own stories.
Felton says he applies “creative problem-solving strengths in a range of areas: drag artistry as Kimber Shade, makeup artistry in film and TV, and juggles representing the LGBTQ2SIA+ community.”
Felton has also worked with public history projects supporting and capturing Black history and was a participant writer for House Resolution 3, legislation that honors the history of Black drag in Oregon.
Currently, Felton is outreach and community events coordinator with Pride NW. There, he introduced the Black Rainbow Initiative, which honors Black LGBTQIA2S+ artists in the Portland area.
Asked how he would advise new activists, Felton said, “Do your research. Portland is a special place, but it’s also a guarded place. The real activists here are not a part of a trend.”
‘We struggled with our similarities and differences, but it was home’
Cliff Jones (pictured, bottom left) first found activism in 1981, with the organizers of what was then called Portland Gay Pride Week.
Alongside activists Kathleen Sadaat, Elizabeth Waters, Rupert Kinnard, Amani Jabari and others, Jones founded Black Lesbians and Gays United. More than an organizing space, BLGU also served as a place for forging community.
“It was a true community, it was powerful,” Jones said. “It touched every sector.”
BLGU “interrupted the isolation, it gave us analysis around the impact of racism, it gave us agency to participate in the community with a voice. We struggled with our similarities and differences, but it was home.”
In 1993, Jones co-founded and was first executive director of Brother to Brother, whose mission was to “support an advocacy organization for African American gay and bi-sexual males and their families living in the Portland metropolitan area.” Brother to Brother was a lifeline for many Black Queer men in Portland, it provided both camaraderie and a much needed support network.
Jones also joined the fight against the HIV/AIDS epidemic, as the first Black staff person at Cascade AIDS Project and as a member of the Oregon Minority AIDS Coalition.
As one of the Cascade AIDS Project’s 2021 Hero of AIDS recipients, Jones described in an interview with Street Roots how his experience as a Black man coming out as gay in the 1980s set him up for bridge building.
“It was the intersection in myself that really set me up to do work building alliances across differences, facing and understanding oppression, looking at various forms of internalized oppression and how that contributes and holds us back,” he said.
Today, Jones said, he “continues working to advance a-racial and cross-identity solidarity to contradict the ways oppressive systems intentionally divide us across differences to maintain power.”
‘Changing my little corner of Oregon is my task’
Oliver Rocha (pictured, top right) moved to Hood River in 2023, with his wife, who is also Transgender. The couple tried to obtain separate required letters of support for gender affirming surgeries from a therapist through Hood River’s Center for Living, a mental health provider that accepts patients in Wasco and Sherman counties who have the Oregon Health Plan. But the therapist denied their requests, telling them both the organization didn’t have a practice of providing such letters, according to Rocha.
Rocha wasn’t new to community organizing. Back in 2022, he had started meetups for Trans and Queer folks in his home town of Maupin, a rural desert town on the east side of Mt. Hood with a population of 421.
“My start in community building and organizing was born out of necessity. I was the first openly Transgender teen in Maupin, Oregon,” Rocha said. “I have always been fighting for myself, and that fight extends to others like me.”
So, like before, he was willing to make the change he and his community needed.
He contacted Kit Clasen from the Columbia Gorge Pride Alliance and an ombudsman at the Oregon Health Authority. Accompanied by family and friends, an informal coalition campaigned for the mental health provider to adapt its practices and train therapists to provide letters to approve the gender-affirming care patients needed.
“With Trans people being such a small minority, and our presence being challenged fundamentally by the current administration, it is important for allies to be educated about the challenges we face” Rocha said. “We are constantly fighting for our right to exist. This is just one example of that. I changed this policy because I knew that if I had been denied a letter of support for top surgery as a younger Transgender man, I don’t know if I would have lived past that.
“As a disabled person, I have learned I can only take on so much. So changing my little corner of Oregon is my task.”
Rocha’s advice for folks feeling paralyzed by current events is to “seek joy in your community, get involved in other queer people’s lives. We are all we have at the end of the day. Listen to punk rock music, and use that anger to grow a strength inside you that is formidable.
“Change is not always having a meeting with a director of a large facility, sometimes it’s DMing your neighbor saying you have their back in case of an emergency.”
‘My activism began out of survival’
Laquida Landford (pictured, middle right) is the founder and executive director of Afro Village PDX — a movement that addresses the needs of Portland’s houseless community, with a special focus on making space for Black and Brown folks to foster community. Afro Village is all about building community while not backing away from critical conversations about the intersection of homelessness: food equity, hygiene access, mental and physical health, climate resilience and digital justice.
Landford has been involved in Portland changemaking since 2019, with housing justice at the center of her work. She is a regular at community events: during extreme weather she’s setting up stations for people to cool off or warm up, she’s in Old Town fighting for wi-fi access for homeless Portlanders, or she’s showing up to support a fellow organizer.
“My activism began out of survival,” Landford said. “I didn’t wake up one day and decide to be an organizer — I became one because the systems around me weren’t designed for people like me to thrive. I started by advocating for my family and neighbors, helping navigate services, and showing up in rooms where we weren’t expected to be.
“Start small and stay human,” she said. “You don’t have to fight everything at once. Rest is resistance. Joy is strategy. Choose one area where you can show up consistently and let that be your offering. And know this: You are not alone. There’s power in community. Even when things feel bleak. We keep each other going.”
You can support Landford’s work and Afro Village PDX by visiting their new space at the Lloyd Center on Wellness Wednesdays throughout the summer.
‘Most of us want to vanquish the isolation of self and cultivate communal experiences’
Emily Crabtree (pictured, bottom right) joined the Yachats Pride planning committee after its second year. The original inspiration for holding a Yachats Pride occurred during a vigil for the Pulse nightclub shooting in 2016. The following June, Yachats Pride was born. Small town Pride events are a lifeline for rural Queer folks experiencing isolation and oppression.
They “have less access to public services and ways to connect with other LGBTQIA+ folks,” Crabtree said. “Small town Prides show, first off, that we exist and importantly, we can organize, stepping up to show how gathering together is powerful and potentially a stronger community is made.”
Under Crabtree’s leadership, Yachats Pride started the Saturday afternoon Trans Tea Party which involves a panel of Transgender speakers who talk about their experiences, particularly in rural Oregon. Saturday nights include a themed prom followed by a puppy parade the following morning. Yachats Pride happens over the course of a weekend each year in early June.
“If you don’t see the community you need, then make it,” Crabtree said. “Start small, but with an eye on growth. Try and include more generations and allies as more people are deeply in need of connection to others. You’ll find most of us want to vanquish the isolation of self and cultivate communal experiences.”
According to the Pride NW website, there are 14 Pride events across Oregon.
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This article appears in June 18, 2025.