Oregon’s BIPOC Caucus Reflects on Major Achievements Published: 29 June 2021
The Monday after the 2021 state legislative session ended, nearly a dozen members of the Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) Caucus gathered remotely to discuss significant wins over a hectic few weeks many called historic.
Rep. Janelle Bynum (D-Happy Valley)“Our 12-member caucus presented an ambitious policy agenda to address the roots of structural racism and promote racial equity, accountability, justice, and healing,” Rep. Janelle Bynum (D-Happy Valley) said in her introduction. “This session, our caucus prioritized and delivered on affordable housing, and the houselessness crisis, public safety and police reform and accountability, environmental justice, education, equity, immigrant and refugee rights, economic opportunity and development, health care, infrastructure, health care access and affordability, mental and behavioral health, and cultural preservation and celebration.�
Chris Lehman Salem Correspondent
Chris Lehman covers the Oregon state capitol for JPR as part of the Northwest News Network, a group of 12 Northwest public radio organizations which collaborate on regional news coverage. Chris graduated from Temple University with a journalism degree in 1997. He began his career producing arts features for Red River Public Radio in Shreveport, Louisiana and has been a reporter/announcer for NPR station WNIJ in DeKalb, Illinois. Chris has also reported from overseas, filing stories from Iraq, Burkina Faso, El Salvador, Northern Ireland, Zimbabwe and Uganda.
Chris is a native of rural Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. He was born in the upstairs bedroom of his grandmother s house, and grew up in a 230-year-old log cabin in the woods. Chris traces his interest in journalism to his childhood, when his parents threatened to take away his newspaper if he didn’t do his chores.
Multnomah DA supports restoring voting rights to incarcerated people KATU Staff
Multnomah County District Attorney Mike Schmidt testified before the Oregon Senate on Wednesday, where he spoke in favor of a bill that would restore voting rights to incarcerated people.
Schmidt testified virtually in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Oregon Senate Bill 571 would allow people who have been convicted of a felony to register to vote and vote in elections, even while incarcerated. The bill specifies that for voter registration, the person s residence would be where they last lived prior to incarceration. Caption: Multnomah DA supports restoring voting rights to incarcerated people. (KATU)
Though often omitted from history books, African American people had feet on the ground side by side with early explorers of the Oregon Territory from Markus Lopius, a servant on the
Lady Washington in 1788 with Robert Gray, to York, a slave on the Lewis and Clark expedition, to Moses Harris, a free black mountain man and legend in the fur trade and later a sought-after wagon train guide. There s also James Douglas, chief factor at Fort Vancouver in the 1840s and concurrent governor on Vancouver Island and British Columbia. Somewhat simultaneous with Douglas rise to political power, legislated race restrictions known as Exclusion Laws were set for Oregon Trail immigration. Racial limitations also applied with the Oregon Donation Land Law in 1850. These federally enforced restrictions, present at the inception of Oregon, created major undeniable barriers. Bearing these inequities in mind, we ve set aside some ink this week to look at some of Oregon s modern a
Originally published on January 22, 2021 6:25 am
In normal times, the first day of the legislative session would find the hallways of the Oregon state Capitol flooded with people lobbyists, legislative assistants, the public, reporters.
But these are not normal times.
Instead of being a place of bustling energy, the halls of the state Capitol held silence on Tuesday, the first official day of the 2021 session. Lawmakers delayed gathering after heeding warnings from law enforcement that violent demonstrations could coincide with the inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden. The Oregon state Capitol’s first-floor windows were boarded up.
The last-minute delay of legislative action is a fitting beginning for a session lawmakers expect to be more focused on responding to urgent crises than pursuing sweeping policy agendas.