Thank you to our Steering Committee for championing equity and inclusion efforts in Clackamas county.
On an early fall night, a diverse group of community leaders, local government officials, institutional partners, and members of the Coalition of Communities of Color (CCC) gathered at Clackamas Community College for a powerful evening of connection and celebration.
Cover art by Annie Hoang/ Instagram: @annie.hng
The event marked the launch of the “Cultivating Belonging in Clackamas County,” a research justice report led by the Research Justice Institute at CCC. This collaborative effort, developed over four years and guided deeply by community, focused on engaging Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) in the county to gather insights about their experiences, needs, and desires. What we found was a strong desire to have places and spaces where BIPOC communities can connect with both their own communities and cross-culturally.
This night was about much more than the completion of the report—it was about building personal connections, sharing insights, and reaffirming our collective commitment to advancing equity and inclusion in Clackamas County, despite the recent setbacks they’ve faced.
Today, we are continuing to move this work forward through a series of community-driven calls to action that support and strengthen racial equity efforts while fostering new initiatives for greater inclusion. If you’re interested in getting involved, take our mobilization survey for opportunities to advance these efforts collaboratively in Clackamas County.
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Dr. Mira Mohsini, PhD, CCC Senior Researcher
Read our Q&A with CCC’s Dr. Mira Mohsini, PhD, lead author of “Cultivating Belonging”:
Can you share why was this report is necessary?
We often hear statements like “Oregon is so white,” “Portland is the whitest large city in the country,” “Clackamas county is the least racially and ethnically diverse county in the tri-county region.” While these statements are not false, and often spoken with good intentions, they can erase the presence of communities of color and Indigenous communities from these places. Taken as fact, these statements can stop us from asking why there are relatively fewer people of color here. This report challenges these narratives by centering the experiences and histories of communities of color in Clackamas county.
The report is the first of its kind to tell the stories of people of color from across Clackamas county – what they care about, what changes they want to see in their communities and the institutions meant to serve them, and what a thriving present and future looks like for them. It’s an essential body of knowledge that comprehensively takes stock of the needs and desires of communities of color, as understood and articulated on their own terms. It’s a culmination of over four years of research guided by deep relationships and led by people of color who are closest to, and have lived experiences of, some of the most pressing issues the county faces. Finally, the report turns a diversity of evidence – stories, lived experiences, and relevant statistical and geographic data – into a set of community-desired calls to action that can support existing organizing efforts for racial equity and justice and catalyze new ones.
What are some challenges that BIPOC community members expressed to you?
As we developed more and stronger relationships with Clackamas county residents, we kept hearing how disconnected people of color are from each other. They often travel to other counties to find community, to access services in their languages, to worship, and to buy culturally appropriate foods, for example. We heard that there just aren’t the opportunities and spaces to connect. We heard from youth and students of color about how adults, teachers, and school administrators don’t take their experiences of hate and discrimination seriously or don’t respond in supportive and meaningful ways. We heard about the challenges that newly arrived immigrants face with finding work, navigating bureaucratic systems, and accessing culturally responsive services. We heard from employees of color working within dominant institutions and across the county about their unaddressed and persistent experiences of discrimination, othering, and intimidations. But despite these challenges, we heard so many people of color say that they want to stay in Clackamas county and be a part of its future where everyone feels like they belong.
Personally, what challenges did you face when completing this report?
Honestly, the hardest part was writing it. After spending four years being in relationship with so many generous and amazing people, hearing their stories, going to community events, hosting meetings with community-based organizations and dominant institution partners, organizing data collection engagements, and working to accurately interpret all this data with our steering committee members, we, the researchers, were faced with the huge responsibility of translating all this knowledge and wisdom onto the written page. The pressure was amplified because we knew we were not just writing a technical report that is driven by dominant forms of evidence, like statistics and other quantitative data. Rather, we were committed to writing the report in ways that center lived experiences and stories as trusted evidence for understanding realities and for making better decisions to address community needs and desires. This is not to say we don’t value dominant quantitative data – we understand its role in exposing disparities and holding dominant institutions accountable – but we wanted to write the report in a way that doesn’t privilege dominant data at the expense of people’s lived experiences. In writing up a research justice study – where the research is led by those most impacted by the issues being researched – we wanted to demonstrate how lived experiences and stories have the power to illuminate concerns and desired solutions. I believe we succeeded in this, but it was definitely the hardest part of this process. Ultimately, the learning that this process reaffirmed for me is to let the stories, the lived experiences, speak their truths.
Why is this issue important to those outside of Clackamas County?
Partners and community members gathered at Clackamas Community College earlier this year to celebrate the completion of the report.
Most of us recognize the power of stories and the power of sharing our lived experiences to build and strengthen relationships, community, and a sense of belonging. We care about stories because they’re fundamentally about how people have experienced the world, continue to experience it, and desire to experience it. In other words, stories can tell us about “what was,” “what is,” and “what should be.” The power of stories is why folks should care about this report. It details what it takes to design a community-led process that centers stories in all of their complexities – telling us what’s working, what’s not, and what repair and healing mean for different communities; how to gather stories using a diversity of methods and approaches; what it looks like to pair stories with other kinds of evidence; and how to use stories responsibly to create meaningful changes. If you’ve ever wondered how to uplift the power of stories, and qualitative data broadly, this report provides one model for doing this.
What are we doing to move the calls to action forward and how can people get involved?
We’ve been hosting calls with folks working in dominant institutions and community-based organizations and coalitions to provide guidance on what calls to action they can advance and how. Each conversation is tailored to the organization’s specific needs, access to resources, and experiences.
We’ve also launched a mobilization survey for Clackamas county community members who are both unaffiliated and affiliated with organizations in the county. In the survey, folks can tell us which calls to action they are most interested in advancing and what (if any) organizing experience they have. We’ll use this information to organize community gatherings in 2025 to discuss strategies for mobilizing around one or several calls to action. These are also spaces to grow and strengthen community, since the lack of connection was one of the main concerns that people of color in Clackamas expressed.