Teressa Raiford was born and raised in Portland. She remembers when, in 1981, two Portland police officers dropped four rotting possum carcasses on the doorstep of a northeast Portland restaurant. She remembers because her grandfather was the owner, after all.
“I turned 11 that year. I knew something about justice, and I knew something about injustice,” Raiford told the Multnomah County Board of Commissioners Thursday. In the ensuing years there have been commissions and committees, review boards and policies.
“So things should be getting better, right?” Raiford asked. She founded a local movement called Don’t Shoot Portland to highlight disparities in Portland’s law enforcement policies.
“When we talk about black and brown people being safe in Multnomah County,” she said began, “We’re not safe anywhere.”
Raiford was one of a dozen people at Thursday’s board meeting, who testified about discrimination they face and the fear thy feel as people of color in Oregon. The hearing came after increased attention to police shootings of African American men across the country and the August death of an African American Portland teen named Larnell Bruce.
A white supremacist with a prison record allegedly mowed down the 19-year-old in his Jeep after an altercation at an east Portland convenience store. Russell Courtier is charged with murder and intimidation.
Now nonprofits and advocates are seeking to turn the national conversation about racial disparities into real local change.
“We have to step up and into this messiness,” said Charese Rohny, a civil rights lawyer who is white. She said this movement must be led by leaders of color. Her role is to follow.
“We have to dismantle white supremacy instead of just fueling white guilt,” she said. “We can’t be Portland polite or impartial. That won’t heal our world.”
Commissioner Judy Shiprack thanked the speakers for their courage and honesty. She said she felt awkward as a white Portlander and elected official hearing the stories of people whose lives are so very different from her own. But, she said, “you can’t change it if you don’t acknowledge it.”
“It’s hard to listen to sometimes,” she said. “And I feel that to push change demands moments like this.” She said she hopes she can make good on some real change in the final month of her tenure on the board.
Commissioner Jules Bailey said he lives in a bubble of privilege that perhaps hasn’t changed as much as he would like to think. And it feels increasingly common to hear racial slurs and a homogenous world view. “It does feel like we’re moving backwards,” he said. “I’m not sure it’s moving backwards so much as moving again into the light.”
A Portland State University student said she thought slurs were a thing of the past, something from her mother’s era in 1980s New York City perhaps. Then someone screamed a slur at one of her Latina friends.
She said when she moved from Puerto Rico, she was stunned at the ignorance and sometimes downright disdain of the people she’s met in Oregon.
“If you don’t know where Puerto Rico is, you should look it up. It’s a U.S. territory. My ID is therefore valid here in the U.S.,” she said “I don’t need a passport. I was born a U.S. citizen.”
People ask “What are you?” Or “Where is Puerto Rico? Is that in Mexico?” And she said, she just doesn’t feel safe. When she sees a big car, she wonders, “I don’t know who’s in that car. They might want to run me over.”
Larnell Bruce’s family was in the audience, as as they listened to the testimony, Larnell’s brother’s face crumpled and he dissolved into tears. The room was quiet.
Commissioner Loretta Smith spoke to the families of those who had lost their sons and brothers.
“I don’t know any mom who has kids of color who don’t worry until they come home at night,” she said. When her son was in high school, and later college, he would borrow her Lexus SUV to go out at night. And she would wait up, worried, until he came back home.
“I was afraid he would be pulled over by police. And he had been pulled over,” she said. Police wanted to know why a young black man was driving such an expensive car. And he would try to explain, “This is my mom’s car.”
She tried to teach him not to argue, not to interrupt, not to give police any reason to claim he was being belligerent.
“I had to tell him every time, “Be quiet,” Smith said. “Kids, they want to explain themselves.”
Smith told the activists that the board needed them to push leaders and demand change, and needed the rawness of their stories. She also said the current board has been working to make real change.
Some of that change comes through partnerships with culturally-specific nonprofits run by people who come from the same communities they serve, nonprofits like El Programa Hispano Catolico, which serves more than 15,000 people a year.
“Many don’t speak English. Many are undocumented. Many don’t have driver's licenses,” said Executive Director Patricia Rojas. “And they feel targeted.”
But Rojas said she came not so much in her role as a leader, but in her role as a mother.
“My son is 15. His name is Marcus. He’s learning how to drive,” she said. She was there when his grandfather told him to keep his license on the dashboard.
“Why?” Marcus asked. “That’s what glove compartments are for.”
“Because you could get shot,” his grandfather said.
“Do we have a problem?” Rojas said, choking back tears. “Absolutely.”
Chair Deborah Kafoury listened to the testimony with sadness and growing anger.
“The very fact that Commission Smith’s son walks out of his house and has a very different experience than my son when he walks out of our house is completely unacceptable,” she said.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry we haven’t done more,” she said. “We have worked, and we’ve made changes but it’s not enough. And until every child feels safe, and until every parent don’t have to worry that their child isn’t coming back, we will not rest. Thank you so much for coming today. Thank you. Thank you.”