She came to Portland inspired to help the houseless community, and the Red House propelled her into activism
Raven Ellaine came out West in an effort to provide mutual aid, which, as she describes it, is a way people come together using their resources or skills to take care of one another.
Five years ago when Ellaine was living in Virginia, she visited Portland and was taken aback by what she saw on the streets of a town often labeled as green, idyllic and liberal. She saw people who didn’t have anything — people who were living on the street in tandem with cars getting on and off freeway entrances and people jogging and riding their bikes.
Because of what she saw, she said, she vowed that she would come back and, in her own way, “do something about it.”
But before she could help others, Ellaine said, she had to address her mental health. She is a proud, Black transgender woman, but in Virginia, her family wasn’t seeing her authentic self.
“They didn’t accept me,” she said. “I was in a really sad, depressed place. I decided I needed to make some changes because I didn’t want to live like this, and I was closer to the end of things. I got into therapy and worked hard, and I started traveling. I started loving and caring for myself, and I found the will to survive and live. I wanted to take this energy to Portland because I just wanted to help people, in any way I could.”
She also hoped that in moving across the country, she would find people who accept her for who she is: a beautiful woman, impervious to time, who is always on the go and getting things done — often for others. Long, flowing dresses are a staple of her wardrobe — the type that catch the wind and catch your eye as they trail behind her, along with her long black hair. She speaks with an intense voice, but in an approachable way. She describes herself as a cut and dry talker: straight to the point, straight from the heart.
Ellaine kept her promise. She traveled to Portland in November of 2019.
She brought with her a few belongings, a framework of mutual aid that she had learned and nurtured for herself, and the drive to assist the houseless population in whatever way she could. As soon as she got to Portland, she started talking with her now-partner, Gordon Weller, who lights up any time Ellaine walks into a room.
“We met in pre-COVID times and just kept talking shop that whole first meeting. We talked about the things she wanted to do for mutual aid, or the things she wanted to do with art. And I loved the way she carried herself that night, the way she communicated; it’s not just someone blowing steam,” he told Street Roots.
With Weller by her side, Ellaine began serving the community on North Mississippi Street during the first summer of the pandemic, cooking at the Red House occupation camp.
Cooking led to her involvement on the Red House’s media team, and she produced videos that garnered attention from national and local outlets, often went viral and were the catalyst for Ellaine’s professional track into videography. The exposure also helped propel her photography and videography business, Stahfysh.
It was at the Red House that for the first time Ellaine felt seen and felt safe. She said this was because there were people there who looked like her, and she was feeding her newly found community. The Red House was a launching pad of sorts for Ellaine, one that would catapult her into direct action through mutual aid, and direct action through political avenues.
•••
On any given day, a group of eight Portlanders put on hoodies with a screen-printed black fist, roll up their sleeves, open up refrigerators and say to themselves, “What are we to make today?”
This core group of eight make up Food 4 the Community (F4TC), an under-the-radar group of organizers who rescue food and deliver tasty and nutrition-rich meals to houseless communities all over Portland, every single day.
F4TC began at the Red House, where every day, anywhere from 50 to 150 people or more, some of whom were houseless, would gather. With a swath of people comes the need for food.
Ellaine and Gary Floyd, whom she now refers to as a father-like figure, cooked day in and day out, and they loved doing it.
“I call Raven ‘Baby Girl’ because she calls me dad,” said Floyd. “She has done nothing but distribute. Her strength is amazing.” Floyd stepped down as the head of F4TC and turned the work over to Raven. “Not only does Raven deserve to have a voice in the protest community, she’s also an amazing administrator, and she’s a multi-tasker. She has a creative ability unlike any other, just her mind all together. She has my 100% trust for F4TC,” he said.
Ellaine remembers when she spoke with Floyd about her and Weller taking over the effort. “It was one of the best conversations I ever had. We could see it, we could envision it. It really has taken off, it’s become everything and more,” Ellaine said. “We made it our thing, it’s what we do, it’s who we are.”
Before the food — which Ellaine calls “5-star meals” — gets delivered to houseless camps throughout the city, it needs to be “rescued.” F4TC sources food from grocery stores around town, such as Trader Joe’s and New Seasons. Next, the team makes food boxes and then sends them to volunteer “home cooks,” who cook 50 meals or more per food box. There are a few instances when F4TC has also cooked out of Portland restaurants.
When asked about the food that’s made and distributed, Ellaine’s eyes widen. “Oh, it’s good!” she said. “It could be anything from steak to chicken to salmon. It’s really something else.” She said at this point, F4TC has served thousands of meals.
F4TC continues to pop up at different outdoor events around town.
“People see what we’re doing, they’re showing up at events, they’re letting us cook things, and sometimes they donate money to our tip jars,” she said. “It’s become a life of its own, and we’ve embraced it.”
Ellaine loves cooking. She said it feels good to be in a kitchen with people, cooking for people.
She said that the food being delivered is always well received, and most camps like the surprise of not knowing what meal will be served that day.
Weller said that even when she’s not cooking for F4TC, Ellaine is cooking for her roommates and friends.
“She’ll always make me a plate of food, even when I’m not hungry,” Weller laughed. He said his favorite meal that Ellaine makes is collard greens. “She just loves cooking, that’s one of those things where she’s most at home, you can see it in her eyes. She just wakes up and cooks.”
Weller said he recognizes the importance of honoring a transgender person’s humanity.
“You need to listen if a trans person shares their lived experiences. You won’t get it; you don’t have that experience. You can read about it all you want, but until you listen, you won’t know,” he said.
•••
Ellaine has many talents. She’s an artist, a photographer, videographer, public speaker, makeup artist and organizer. Her visual art and portraiture is often sensual — full of movement, and expression. And she’s dabbled in political ads. Before November’s election, Ellaine was asked by a person involved with then-Portland City Commissioner Chloe Eudaly’s campaign to help film a short piece about Eudaly.
But she said people, including in Portland, don’t always see her as the multi-faceted woman she is and, instead of getting to know her as a whole person, put her in a category.
“Being a trans woman means being put in a bubble. It means people putting limitations on what you can do, especially as a trans woman of color,” she said. She described the message she receives, at times overly loud and overly clear, as, “I will never amount to the same things as a cisgender person.”
But Ellaine knows that’s not true. “I’ve done many things a lot of cisgender people would never touch on. At this point, I just keep going, I push through, I say, ‘Anything is possible.’ I’m not going to give up because I’ve gotten too far.”
Ellaine said that the most important thing allies can do is to treat transgender people like human beings. And to make transgender people feel visible.
“Visibility means being understood for who I am, not what I am. Because I’m Black and trans, people disregard me sometimes. They don’t take the time to get to know me at all. My work and what I do in my everyday life and what I create shows you that there’s so much more to me than what just meets the eye and what people expect,” she said.
She also said Portland can better support the transgender community by acknowledging the trans community, generally. “I often think that not acknowledging trans people and treating them as if they’re invisible or as if they don’t exist is the biggest issue, the biggest problem. If there are transgender people visible in all types of spaces, there needs to be trans people invited into the room, and being part of it all,” she said.
“All my adult life I have been in spaces that are a predominantly hetero scene. You wouldn’t expect a transgender girl to be in a certain space, but I’ve always made myself a part of every single space, even if I felt uncomfortable in it. And if I felt uncomfortable, I knew I was doing something right. Sometimes you have to prove to yourself that you deserve to be there, too,” she said.
Fear, for some people, fuels the vitriol and hatred often espoused and directed at trans people. And fear, for Ellaine, is what she thinks fuels the limitations and less-than feeling she at times gets from people. “People are afraid to give me a chance, but every time I knock it out of the park,” she said.
Ellaine said she also believes fear is driving the anti-trans legislation being introduced across the country. “All of it boils down to fear. I don’t think they can fathom the magnitude of what we go through, how these lows and trauma gets in the way of us living. They don’t have the compassion to understand that,” Ellaine said. She said fear drives willful ignorance.
She also thinks that these anti-trans bills and those who are trying to enact them into law are trying to stop the progression of the trans world and what everyone is capable of doing.
“By making these laws that just emphasize gender and dehumanize folks while doing so, shames us, it limits us,” she said. “Let me show you my talent. Let me show you what I am a part of, what we are a part of. My gender is a non-factor in this. I’m a proud, Black trans woman, but it’s a shame that some people just put me in that one category, and can’t see that I do all of these other things.”
•••
For Ellaine, mutual aid can take many different forms. Sometimes it’s direct action, sometimes it’s supporting a political movement, and sometimes it’s sharing a story that maybe, just maybe, someone will hear and know that they, too, are expansive and valued.
Following the March for Trans Lives in Portland on April 17, a few hundred people sat down on Irving Park’s grassy fields wearing bright, loud colors, holding signs and listening to those around them. People were celebrating and honoring both the living and the dead as part of this annual event, led this year by Black trans people.
Ellaine is just one of many transgender Portlanders dedicated to helping their community, and it was at the march where she met Bianca Mack, who is also a Black trans woman and local activist, who Ellaine suggested Street Roots talk to as well.
Mack leads weekly support groups for trans women, volunteers with the Snack Bloc and is active in organizing for causes impacting BIPOC communities. Mack said the greatest obstacles facing trans people in Portland are employment, education, health care and housing.
“There’s a housing crisis of sorts here, and trans people are adversely affected by it,” Mack said. She said for trans people, living on the street means being exposed to the general public, which can lead to violence and attacks.
She also pointed to the many fees and other hurdles that come with changing your gender identity on paper as a challenge the city could do more to alleviate for transgender people. She’d like to see the city waive fees and find a way to update the entire system at once because every time a transgender person contacts yet another government employee to request making a gender change on their documentation, it’s another contact with someone who may have a bias.
“If you get the clerk who doesn’t like that they have to do ‘too many things’ for trans people, you never know what their tipping point is, or what sets the person off. You can’t train all the biases out of people. If we could — oh what a world we’d live in,” she said.
What Portlanders can do, she said, is honor the trans people in their lives by respecting their chosen name.
“If someone knows the name I was assigned at birth — forget it as quickly as possible or never use it. That’s called ‘deadnaming.’ It’s a means of intentional disruption and, dare I say, violence.”
•••
As Ellaine stood before the crowd at Irving Park after the march, she wore a black minidress, denim jacket and a pair of floral-print Nikes. She noted to Street Roots that she applied her makeup and styled her long, black hair that morning. There’s no podium, just a mic, and for Ellaine, definitely some nerves.
“It was something I felt driven to do,” she said. For the next five minutes, and for the first time in Portland, she spoke to a large group of people about her experiences in Portland as a Black trans woman. She discussed the treatment she’s received from people, some who have been supportive, some who have not. When initially planning for the march, Ellaine thought she would write down what she wanted to say, but instead, she “just spoke from this feeling, I wanted to speak from the heart.” She talked about the importance of self love and beauty. “We are doing what we are we are supposed to be doing,” she said. “We are living our lives!”
And for Ellaine that means that tomorrow, as the sun rises as it does every day, and as people ride their bikes, jog and houseless communities also begin to wake up under that same sun, she has work to do. She has business appointments to keep and food to rescue for food boxes, and she’ll make sure hundreds of people experiencing homelessness get fed.
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