Message from the Executive Director
Dear Community,
“…The only way to get a thing done is to start to do it, then keep on doing it, and finally you’ll finish it,...”
– Langston Hughes, The Big Sea, (1940)
I am delighted to connect with you again and share the incredible range of work that our team at the Coalition of Communities of Color (CCC) has undertaken over the past months. Suffice it to say and as Langston mentioned above, we have been steadfast in our determination to “keep on doing it.”
Our Advocacy, Environmental Justice, and Research Justice Institute teams have so many irons in the fire that I could not begin to share the full depth and breadth of activities and successes. The highlights below are just a smattering of CCC’s accomplishments and milestones over the last several months:
Playing a leading role in the implementation of changes to the City of Portland’s form of government, districts, and elections.
Winning a national grant—our largest ever—to advance health and climate resilience by bringing together local government and community-based partners to build a data ecosystem.
Launching a major new project to evaluate state efforts to reduce suspensions of our youngest children and entering the final phase of our major research report on communities of color in Clackamas County.
2024 will be an exciting, fraught, tumultuous, challenging, and uncertain time but, for it to be successful for Oregon and communities of color, it will take all of us.
Remember: “The only way to get a thing done is to start to do it, then keep on doing it, and finally you’ll finish it.”
Let’s get busy.
Warm Regards,
Marcus C. Mundy, Executive Director
Thank you for making our annual fundraiser a success!
Thank you World Forestry Center for donating the space for our Summer Soirée!
A record 500 community members and 86 sponsors joined us on June 9th for our annual Summer Soirée—making it the largest fundraiser in CCC’s history! Thanks to our wonderful sponsors and community members, we exceeded our goal by raising $292,156 in contributions.
A special thank you to OnPoint Community Credit Union and JPMorgan Chase & Co. for being this year’s Legacy Sponsors. The Summer Soirée was a soaring success because of our collaborative efforts—we are so thankful for your support!
Be on the lookout for next year’s Save the Date coming soon! If you’re interested in sponsoring next year’s Summer Soirée, contact our Development Manager, Lucero, at lucero@coalitioncommunitiescolor.org
Environmental Justice Update
Climate Justice Planning PowerEd by community
Community and local government partners met this spring to create vision, build power, and develop solutions for climate justice.
Over the past year, CCC’s Environmental Justice Team has been collaborating with Multnomah County to develop its first Climate Justice Plan through a community-based process. This approach aims to shift away from the traditional top-down planning model in government while centering frontline communities. Community-based organizations, local government, and community members met on Earth Day, April 22, 2023, to contribute to the planning process. Findings from the summit and other engagement opportunities were used to develop a Climate Justice Framework that will help guide the rest of the planning effort. Ongoing engagement with additional interested and affected parties will continue over the next year to create the plan.
Our new zine blends quality data and community experiences and artwork together.
Environmental Justice Zine
At CCC, we believe data is a powerful tool for driving change and it should be more readily available for frontline communities to utilize. That’s why we’re proud to share a new environmental justice zine that brings together stories, art, and climate data. The zine is a collaborative project that includes maps (created by the Multnomah County Environmental Health team) based on 11 scientifically grounded environmental health indicators showing where environmental injustices are happening within the county and the magnitude of their impacts. You’ll also find bright and moving climate art that reflects the visions and dreams that BIPOC communities have for our county. Each piece within this publication showcases the remarkable talent of local BIPOC artists and their vision for a more equitable and sustainable future. Click here to download the zine.
Oregon Water Justice Network
On July 15th, CCC joined a group of water justice advocates and their families from across the state to celebrate another year of the Oregon Water Justice Network. Participants spent the morning on a guided canoe ride on the Willamette River with the Lower Columbia Estuary Partnership and spent the rest of the afternoon making art and building community.
The statewide network is a space for Tribal partners, community leaders, community-based organizations, and environmental justice organizations working on water justice to share, build community, and collaborate. The Oregon Water Futures Collaborative created the space in response to conversations with partners across the state sharing their desire for more collaboration and community-building related to water justice across the state. The network is actively seeking new participants. To learn more about the Oregon Water Futures Collaborative visit their website: www.oregonwaterfutures.org
Research Justice Institute Update
Partnering with the Modernized Anti-Racist Data Ecosystems (MADE) for Health Justice Grant
This $1.2M grant from the de Beaumont Foundation and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation will support the co-construction of a local data ecosystem with community partners. The data ecosystem will organize and house mostly community data that can be used by our local government partners in upstream decision-making. Read our announcement to learn more.
INCORPORATING QUALITATIVE DATA FOR DECISION-MAKING
The RJI has been working with several dominant institution partners to collect and analyze qualitative data in ways that can meaningfully impact decision-making. This year we have partnered with the Portland Bureau of Transportation, Multnomah County Library, and Oregon Health Authority on the following projects:
Creating safer transportation in Portland: We partnered with the Portland Bureau of Transportation and Division Midway Alliance to plan and host an engagement session where folks from six communities shared their thoughts and experiences about what makes the public spaces in their neighborhood feel safe. We analyzed the qualitative data from the engagement session and the Division Midway Alliance is now using that information to create concrete recommendations for the bureau of changes they can make to help communities feel safer in their neighborhoods.
Serving all families of color within Multnomah County Libraries: We conducted a year-long data equity evaluation to understand how the library can better serve marginalized communities. Drawing on over twenty qualitative interviews with library leadership and staff, we developed recommendations for implementing more equitable system-wide strategies for data collection, analysis, and use.
Understanding student health: We are training a team of Oregon Health Authority staff staff to rigorously analyze qualitative data from this year’s Student Health Survey. This is the first time ever that the survey has included qualitative questions. The analysis will be a powerful account of Oregon students’ needs, challenges, and desires and will inform policy decisions and programmatic investments.
New Publication
We are excited to share a new publication called "Centering Communities of Color in the Modernization of a Public Health Survey System: Lessons from Oregon" published in the journal Health Equity. The article discusses how a collaboration between government and community partners, using a data equity approach, identified the strengths, gaps, and limitations of two public health surveys: the Oregon Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System and the Student Health Survey. The article exemplifies why meaningful community leadership is needed for public health survey systems to provide more actionable pathways toward improving population health outcomes. It is co-authored by CCC researchers Dr. Mira Mohsini and Dr. Andres Lopez as well as Dr. Daniel F. López-Cevallos (UMass-Amherst), Dr. Kusuma Madamala (OHA), Dr. Roberta Suzette Hunte (PSU), Dr. Ryan Petteway (PSU/OHSU), and Tim Holbert (OHA).
READ OUR Community Briefs
CCC’s Research Justice Institute recently released a new kind of publication: community briefs. These are short and accessible overviews of the work we completed with our dominant institution partners. The two community briefs posted to our website discuss how data equity was centered through the process of collaborating with the Oregon Health Authority to modernize two statewide surveys.
Advocacy Update
Portland Adopts First-Ever City Council Districts
Last November, 58% of Portland voters approved Measure 26-228, city charter reform, to change the structure of the Portland city government and elections. One of the voter-approved changes is adopting geographic districts for Portland’s City Council elections. In August, an Independent District Commission unanimously adopted a District Plan, which formed Portland’s four geographic districts. You can find which district you live in at PortlandMaps.com!
Each district will be represented by three city council members—ensuring that all parts of the city have fair geographic representation and promoting a better understanding of the local problems and issues that each district faces. CCC is excited about what this new system will mean for East Portland, which has lacked access to services and representation for decades, and additionally believes that having multiple city council members per district will help to capture more of the perspectives of the communities who live there. The mayor and city auditor will still be elected at-large and represent the entire city, meaning that all voters can vote for them regardless of which district they live in.
Portland Voters Allowed to Rank Candidates Starting November 2024
Oregon Ranked Choice Voting Advocates’ staff (left) and CCC’s Advocacy Director (right) pictured tabling at NAYA’s Summer Free for All Event, sharing voter education information with the community.
CCC is excited about the opportunity ranked choice voting will bring for communities of color to be better reflected in local government. This change to our elections is voter-approved and is part of the city charter reform package included in Measure 26-228. Ranked choice voting will allow voters to rank candidates in their order of preference. (You can still choose to rank only one candidate if you prefer!) Ballots are counted in rounds. For the mayor and city auditor’s offices, candidates will need over 50% of the votes to win. For city council offices, each candidate will need over 25% of the votes to win in each district. Using ranked choice voting, if your first choice is eliminated from the race, your vote automatically counts for your next choice. The first election using ranked choice voting within Portland’s new districts will take place in November 2024. CCC looks forward to hosting more voter education events in the coming months to ensure Portlanders understand these important changes. Stay tuned!
2023 Legislative Recap; Looking Towards the 2024 Lawmaking Session
We are proud to have worked alongside our members and partners to secure wins for racial justice from our 2023 legislative agenda, despite the complex challenges that arose from the Republican-led walkout. For more details about our full list of priorities and outcomes, check out our longer blog post. The missed opportunities of legislation that did not pass this past lawmaking session are critical for our state lawmakers to continue to address in the future—from policies that will ensure all Oregonians have access to food regardless of their immigration status, to increased investments for affordable childcare, to stronger workforce development support in our public defense system, and much more.
CCC is in the process of planning for the 2024 lawmaking session. We’re invested in holding legislators accountable to ensure that advocates have their moment to advance their missed opportunities. Republican lawmakers must commit to showing up this upcoming legislative session and do the job that Oregonians sent them to do: pass policies that improve the well-being of all Oregonians.
Annoucing New CCC Staff
Reema Mendoza joins our Research Justice Institute team as a senior researcher.
Join us in welcoming our newest members to CCC: Dallas Haley, Data Ecosystem Manager; Reema Mendoza, Ph.D., Senior Researcher; Jen Samperio, Senior Communications Manager and Lucero Valera Brambila, Development Manager.
Welcome to CCC: Jen Samperio (left), Dallas Haley (middle), and Lucero Valera Brambila (right).
To learn more about our team, please visit the staff page.