This release has been updated with Board of Commissioner remarks on the Resolution.
The Multnomah County Board of Commissioners today unanimously called for an immediate de-escalation and ceasefire in Palestine and Israel. In a 5 to 0 vote, the Board formally also called for the return of hostages, and safe passage and free access for humanitarian organizations to provide medical aid, food, water, clothing, fuel, power, and shelter to Gazan civilians.
The resolution is now being sent to U.S. Sens. Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley; U.S. Reps/ Earl Blumenauer, Suzanne Bonamici and Lori Chavez-DeRemer; and President Joe Biden.
The Board passed a resolution after a lengthy and emotional meeting in a packed board room on Thursday, March 7, in which 35 people testified on the resolution and another 28 submitted written testimony.
District 4 Commissioner Lori Stegmann brought forward the amended resolution that passed saying, “I know that some will say this resolution doesn’t go far enough while others will say it has gone too far. By adopting this ceasefire resolution, we are demanding that those in power stop the insane and inhumane actions that are occurring in this war.
“While this resolution may not accomplish world peace, it is foundational to building County peace. And if we can live together without hostility or conflict despite our differences, then maybe county by county we can have an impact on the world.”
Chair Jessica Vega Pederson said she believed the resolution was the right compromise that best reflects the shared values and intentions of the Board. She thanked commissioners and all who contacted the Board over the last few months.
“We have heard from so many in our community about how this situation is impacting each of you and of its importance to you,” she said “Thank you for showing up, thank you for taking part in our democracy, thank you for using your voices. You have helped us speak today with a collective voice, and I applaud your commitment and your efforts.”
You can watch the testimony and hear the full remarks by the Board of County Commissioners including Chair Vega Pederson, Commissioners Stegmann, Sharon Meieran, Jesse Beason and Julia Brim-Edwards.
The resolution is posted here.
Board of Commissioner statements on the resolution
Chair Jessica Vega Pederson
For months the world has been watching a situation in Israel unfold, starting with the violent attack by Hamas on Oct. 7 on the people of Israel and continuing to this day with the on-going, devastating warfare being waged on Palestinians in Gaza.
We have heard from so many in our community about how this situation is impacting each of you and of its importance to you. Thank you for showing up, thank you for taking part in our democracy, thank you for using your voices.
For weeks, our staff has worked closely together to put together the resolution we’ve considered, discussed and are voting on today. I want to thank all of them.
We have spent countless hours on this work. We have debated our words, our sentences and the many viewpoints they represent.
We have entertained many heated opinions – both among the group doing this work and from our colleagues and our community.
I believe that this resolution is the right compromise that best reflects the shared values and intentions of this board.
Though this has not been an easy process, it has been a necessary one. I want to thank my fellow board members for their commitment to this process, and especially Commissioner Stegmann for your brave leadership on this issue.
This process is a necessary one because through it, we’ve considered, and felt for ourselves, the hurt on all sides of this long and complicated conflict. This is hurt born of the pain of people who are living through this on a personal level and we know that many of those people live right here in our community. Many of them are employees of Multnomah County. And all of them deserve a voice.
I am the Chief Executive of a county that includes people of all faiths and backgrounds, including Israeli, Jewish, Muslim and Palestinian.
Our community, and the discussions we’ve had on this resolution as a Board, are a microcosm of this conflict as well as a direct reflection of our regional, national and international community – all of whom are wrestling deeply with how to address this crisis and move towards a place where safety is possible and lasting peace is possible.
I don’t come before you today with answers because there is no one among us who has the one answer to what we are living through. What we have is shared values.
I believe our goal in putting forth this resolution and calling for an immediate ceasefire is to speak with one voice as the elected leaders of our County in expressing those values and our desire to see a ceasefire – to our community, to our federal delegation, to President Biden, and to the world.
The values we affirm today as a Board and as a community are that:
- All life is precious and we value the sanctity of human life
- The targeting of civilians is unacceptable
- The ongoing war people are currently living through has taken an immeasurable toll on human life
- As a community, we call for an immediate ceasefire, a return of all hostages and lasting peace in the region
I am proud to speak up today. To speak about this at the local level and call on our elected federal officials to do more and engage more directly in the work needed to end this war and move towards peace.
I want to again thank my colleagues on this Board – and especially their hardworking staff – for staying at the table throughout a difficult process to bring forward this call to action.
And I very much want to thank the many many people who have written, called or showed up in this board room to express clearly and directly their perspectives about our way forward as a people and a community.
You have helped us speak today with a collective voice, and I applaud your commitment and your efforts.
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District 1 Commissioner Sharon Meieran
I mentioned several weeks ago at the beginning of this process that I was willing to sign on to a ceasefire resolution. I was willing to immediately sign on to the Multnomah County Democrats or the Washington County Democrats resolution because it felt like these had gone through their own processes over weeks and even months, and timing was of the essence. That wasn’t the way the board chose to go, and I respect their collective voice.
I appreciate Commissioner Stegmann taking on the responsibility to bring a resolution forward. And her and her team’s effort to create a process where all people could feel safe and be heard. To bring people together and create bridges. I appreciate Becca’s efforts to engage with me, and Layan going through this process at all, let alone with the grace that she did.
I’ve thought about a lot of things that people shared with me after I first made my comments at the board meeting a few weeks back, and I have tried to follow up and learn and take those words to heart.
I amended my own personal comments based on this feedback, which I will be posting on my website.
In a situation that feels hopeless, fraught and so entangled with history, mistrust, misunderstanding, persecution, and existential threat, it’s hard to imagine a path forward. And it’s all too easy to imagine a path spiraling into an abyss of hatred and destruction.
But I hope that we can find that path forward. A way to move through words that can hurt us so deeply just by their utterance, so that we can get to the heart of our collective humanity.
I believe in an immediate ceasefire and unrestricted restoration of humanitarian support and aid to the people of Gaza. This must be met with the immediate return of all hostages.
The next steps will be hard. After an end to hostilities, restoration of humanitarian support and aid to the people of Gaza, and return of hostages, we need to see US and international investment in the rebuilding of Gaza and support of its people.
And ultimately, only a true two state solution and meaningful peace can enable the people of Gaza to recover, rebuild, heal and thrive, and the people of Israel to live in stability, security and peace.
People are not their governments, but they suffer from the actions, and reactions, of those in power. We must use whatever power we have to call for an end to the horrific suffering and violence.
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District 2 Commissioner Jesse Beason
"Among so many longstanding ethnic, religious and colonialist tensions across this globe, despite clear imbalances of power and all sides committing atrocities, people and their governments often disagree about who committed the first wrong, who is ultimately to blame for where they find themselves. That blame is often based not on an accurate account of history, but on when we choose to start the clock and with whom we may find the strongest sympathy, kinship or political allyship.
Despite my amateur scholarship, my identity, lived experience or career rarely make me feel qualified enough to weigh in on so many global conflicts with expertise. And bridging the differences across such deep conflict, when they feel like chasms, can seem impossible—especially when the wounds are ongoing, the living still dying
And yet. If you believe in a world where we all belong, then bridging differences is imperative. If you believe in a world where we all belong, then critiquing or condemning the warlike and immoral actions of governments or factions is not a condemnation of an entire people but an expression of a freedom every human deserves. If you believe in a world where we all belong, then all acts of targeted violence committed by individuals or their governments—whether in prejudice or in retribution—are unacceptable and wrong. All ceasefires are permanent. And all deaths are grievable.
As Bayard Rustin, the Black, gay quaker who helped lead America’s civil rights movement wrote many decades ago, “If we desire a society of peace, then we cannot achieve such a society through violence. If we desire a society without discrimination, then we must not discriminate against anyone in the process of building this society. If we desire a society that is democratic, then democracy must become a means as well as an end.”
In a society with rockets and bombs and drones and tanks, I recognize that ending violence is much easier said than done.
In a society where Jewish and Muslims, Palestinians and Israelis, have been dehumanized, attacked and killed for their beliefs, their opinions and their pain—or just for existing—well, in this world I recognize that ending discrimination is much easier said than done.
And in a society where international democratic institutions, ones that our own country helped build, conclude with evidence that thousands of innocent Palestinian adults and children have been unjustifiably killed, that our humanitarian obligations require a ceasefire and yet we are not close to one—well then I recognize that building a democracy that unites us is much easier said than done.
But peace, equality and democracy still matter to me as both ideals and as daily practices. I want them for myself and for every single human on this planet.
Our County has no power or jurisdiction over what horrific terrors befall the Palestinian and Israeli people thousands of miles away. Feeling powerless to end suffering and war for fellow humans across the globe is a unique kind of aching grief.
Regardless of our jurisdiction, we have heard from hundreds of residents who would like us to say something. We have heard from County employees who would like us to say something. We have heard from many residents who would like us to say nothing.
As a board, before my time here, we seemed to believe we ought to say something just days after unspeakable horrors befell Israeli people. We wrestled with what to say and we could not agree then. We have these many months later finally chosen as a board to say something after unspeakable horrors befell Palestinian people as well.
Were I the only author, this is not the resolution I would have written. I imagine others feel the same.
But it is the resolution I believe this board has bridged our differences to come to agreement on. Thank you greatly to Commissioner Stegmann and your staff for your work on getting us here today. And I am voting yes."
###District 3 Commissioner Julia Brim-Edwards
We each have our own perspectives and histories and relationships with those living in Israel and Gaza and with their friends and families. So a resolution is an imperfect way to express our individual voices. I have low expectations of this having a significant impact on our government representatives and I feel the urgency of the moment.
I have called for a negotiated and immediate ceasefire, a return of the hostages, and expedited humanitarian aid to Gaza several times, including at previous Board meetings.
The Resolved portion of this resolution calls for that and I will support it for that reason.
I also supported a resolution to recognize those killed and taken hostage in the Hamas attack on Oct. 7th.
For those who have come to testify who have shared the devastating impact on your friends and family of October 7 or the months after in Gaza — and those of you who have written or called me because you didn’t feel safe sharing your story publicly, — I witness and hear your pain, sadness and heartbreak.
In addition to public statements, as a community leader, I take — and share — a responsibility to educate and interview when I encounter anti-Palestinian, anti- Semitic, anti-Israeli, or Islamophobia in my community.
In closing, a negotiated ceasefire and a return of the hostages and immediate safe passage of humanitarian aid does provide the best chance for an end to the violence and for peace.
I support this resolution for these reasons.
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District 4 Lori Stegmann
Audre Lorde said “ And at last you'll know with surpassing certainty that only one thing is more frightening than speaking your truth. And that is not speaking.”
Standing up for justice is not easy. It requires us to confront our own biases, acknowledge our privilege, and be willing to listen and learn from those whose experiences may differ from our own. It demands that we step out of our comfort zones, take risks, and make sacrifices for the greater good.
Being a global citizen means recognizing that we are all interconnected and that our actions have an impact on others around the world. Whether it's climate change, economic inequality, or violations of human rights - embracing our interconnectedness fosters empathy, cooperation, and a sense of shared responsibility for the well-being of all people.
Let us stand together today, united in our commitment to justice and serve as the agents of change in our communities. Together, we can build bridges of understanding, sow seeds of compassion, and strive for a world where the inherent rights and freedoms of all individuals are respected and upheld.
I want to thank those who have testified, have called, have emailed and met with me. And I want to thank each one of you for joining us today and for attending previous board meetings. Your voice matters and without it this day would not have been possible.
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