Happy Summer 2009
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The Summer of 2009
Jan 2, 2009 – Connecting Organizers of Community Conversations for Connecting and Planning
Connecting Organizers of Community Conversations for Connecting and Planning
Notes – Jan 2, 2009 – Connecting Organizers of Community Conversations for Connecting and Planning (event on Sunday, 1/11/09 in Portland info below.)
Jas: hosted community conversation. Had five areas: housing, shelter, food, finances, health, well being. conversation at Awakenings the week before thanksgiving. Reports came out of it – resource sharing website created by brian and a sense of regular gatherings coming together from abundance and sharing and helping each other: Art, healing, nurturing touch, food share, clothing share, networking needs board and a time for council to discuss what’s up for each of us. Event sponsored by several non-profits.
Also, as individual, been involved with community activism for decades, political management… neighborhood activist, chair of Multnomah county citizen involvement, etc. also a web designer and made neighborhood networking site. Wants to take that model and develop it for everyone. Urbanvillages.net
Sharon: new to this group. Working on the Vision into Action coalition – cross between city and community. Got 17,000 people engaged in sharing their vision. Now the coalition is a group of individuals and organizations working to move forward to that vision. Hybrid of city and community – interesting position. We need the City but it can’t be only the City. The three values from the community: community, equity and sustainability. The coalition is made of two full time staff people in the bureau of planning, a steering committee of 20 volunteers, a coalition of ? organizations. Event in early December had 150 people.
Rebecca: with Theodor, part of A Circle Group collective, offshoot of eco-psychology conference at Lewis and Clark last year. ACG interested in relationship building and social change, supporting activism. Everyone in group one foot in social work, counseling, therapy and another foot in community organizing. Interested in what helps groups thrive and what creates conflict – facilitate a process where orgs don’t get stuck. In the recent econ crisis, sent some emails asking how people are responding in an emotional way… this led to a community conversation at people’s coop with 100 people there. The energy in the room was very positive, hungry for community. People wanted more so we held another at st. francis church. 50-60 people showed up. Third one coming in late jan. people interested in relationship building and also training themselves to organized their own neighborhoods, communities, scenes. Social skills and information. Strong demand and hope.
Jeremy: CNRG co-chair and Portland Peak Oil – Peak Oil task force. Also permaculture designer. In his own house got all fruit needs last summer. Emergency response and sustainability has connections … going to expo gun shows and talking sustainabiliut
Albert: most recently thinking about Portland 3000. Part of sacred circle dance community. Rabble rouser. Started Freecycle Portland. Interested in helping catalyze this movement, transitioning from this society to one that shops less, makes less stuff. Transitioned own life out of consumption years ago and can support others now. Writes a lot on it.
Brian: working with Jas. Two things: food project, organizing local communities to grow more of their own food. Really interested in what others are doing. Looking at one block in a neigborhood and helping organize that block to grow more food. Help with seeds, worm bins, etc… share. Second: ran in southern Oregon 30 years ago—sharing network. People come together with different skills and share – no tracking and no accounting. Got 80 professionals to join in two weeks. Incredible response. Good way to spread people with high needs and low skills with this kind of economy. Plugged into a network of high producers, loosens the charitable act idea and more into co-supportive system. Will post to community support network: supportpdx.com . sections for food, shelter, health care, etc. social networking site. Post resources. Make requests.
Edie: economic downturn good for people consuming less stuff!
Howard: working as a writer at Ecotrust for 9 years. Touched on a lot of all the activities at Ecotrust – systems level type projects. Recent project: writing and editing an online journal called People and Place. Interested in what about what’s going on is replicable elsewhere, worth spreading. Upcoming issue of People and Place on that topic. Looking for writers. peopleandplace.net
Melora: work with ReCode – city and state level to change building codes to legalize sustainability and remove barriers to sus dev. More community networks so that the community can inform the city on what they want. Talked with Judith on facilitation training, getting those skills out to as man people as possible. Build basic foundation of communications. Personally into urban agriculture. People have fear because they don’t know where their food comes from, basic processes.
Jenny: here as a Cross-Pollinator. Spent the last two years listening and meeting with groups and people working on all types of grassroots social change, seeing redundancy… so many similar ideas and challenges but we don’t connect, link, talk, share, listen. Finding creative ways to do this. Through working at Southeast Uplift, City Repair and TLC Farm, connected with so many groups and now seeing network level patterns and opportunities. Also, was out of the country during election and economic collapse – missed it all! And was in Zimbabwe witnessing FULL systems collapse. Perspective.
Judith: at ONI – Effective Engagement Solutions. Try to come up with ways to systematically address places of conflict, engage civically for higher good focused on chronic issues between developers a land use chairs. Sene f what people don’t want to change. Restorative listening project, restorative justice principles looking at racism in NE Portland. Interested in what is it that makes us decide that you are the other and worth more or less than me, please to continue to perpetuate oppression. We have a lot more common in our interests and needs than separate but live in boxes. Project: six conversations on change with the neighborhood coalitions. Talk about what change means to all of us and our picture of the world. E example: historic preservation proponent talking about outer southeast small houses, unpaved – not “livable” like mount tabor houses but much more sustainable. Invite people to become critical thinkers and curious. Have us determine what govt does. Usually public involvement means that the ask each person or group what’s important but not prioritize together. Also interested in progressive fringe thinkers and groups to connect into city system so that they can shape policy more. Example: in black community the idea of consuming less hits a cultural issue about people having less historically. Talking with Melora about creative a network of facilitators. Was a mediator/facilitator or 20 years and good facilitation skills are undervalued – can make a really big difference.
Kate: works with Our United Villages.—local non-profit on N. Mississippi. Community outreach is three people – convene, consult and catalyze community building. Historically worked with one neighborhood at a time . now working with individuals. Hosting dialogues on improving race relations in Portland (all dialogues chosen by community). Second one tools for community building. Now in series called working together though challenging times – had two and next one is Jan. 10. Two more scheduled in southeast in diverse areas. Workshop on feb. 7. We do our work in ways that honor that some people want to get together to talk and others are project, action oriented… separate opportunities. Consulting: we are available to any individual or non-profit – we listen and see if there’s any way we can help. Maybe it looks like we give them a survey hat we’ve created or lessons learned or linking people together… any way to help. Free service.
Judith adds: OUV is funded through the ReBuilding center. RBC created so that the community work had a funding source that’s not outside. Social enterprise model.
Kerry: worked for 35 years with battered women and abused children. Concluded that without hands on mentoring and walking people through a process where people gain ownership in the things they want to change, they can’t change. They need to rewire themselves – give away ownership. Decided that watching people cycle in and out of the system is not rewarding and there has got to be another way. To be successful it must be open ended, not exclude. Poverty and violence will get worse unless people feel safe. Sharing food with community means less likely to steal it. There are so many languages that people use. Somewhere on the way we decided that we don’t have enough. Working with Judith on Restorative listening Project. Homelessness huge issue. Was at the homelessness protest at City hall. Saw Commissioner Leonard talking to someone who said “I have one question: if there was a natural disaster, what is the plan to take care of all you rich people? That would be a great solution for the immediate need.” It’s al one big system. We are all connected. If we don’t all succeed we all fail. If we can’t go to the gun show, then we lose a huge part of the population.
—————–
Our first Abundance Gathering (aka Hope Gathering) is coming up THIS
Sunday and we’d love for you to be there to help co-create this
community support event. The two main initiators of this event (Jas
and Brian) have recently been manifesting Nirvana last weekend, but we
are looking forward to next weekend now and would love your help!
We have amazing people in our community who can help facilitate each
of the following areas. We are all artists, healers, facilitators and
networks. Any one of us can help create the areas below. Please
volunteer if you feel inspired to help create any of the following!
Food (and clothing) exchange / potlatch area
Networking Board area (should have paper and pens and a way for people
to post and respond to needs)
Healing and nurturing connections area (can anyone help haul mats and
blankets from Awakenings)
Art and self-expression area
We also need a facilitator for the Council at 4pm
Please reply to brian @ nanotech-now.com
Thanks!
jas
Come share in Abundance and Hope with Food, Art, Healing and Community:
Because when we share, we all have more!
ABUNDANCE of HOPE GATHERING
Sunday, January 11 ~ 1:30 – 6:30 PM
John’s Healing Oasis ~ 537 SE Ash #42
A month ago, we held a Community Conversation at Awakenings where over
50 participants focused on how we can come together as community from
a place of well-being and abundance to face the challenges and changes
ahead. Sacred Circle was one of the sponsors of that gathering, and
the report from that event is included below. A clear desire among
those gathered was to come together periodically to share resources,
our healing gifts, food and community.
Our first Abundance Gathering will be Sunday, 1/11, at John’s
Healing Oasis located at 537 SE Ash #42. Please spread the word!
We will designate separate spaces where we can enjoy food, engage in
art, share our healing gifts, and post requests and responses on a
networking board. There will also be a Potlatch Table where you can
leave food and clothing for others to take.
At 4pm, those who wish are invited to sit in Council together to
explore how we (individually and as community) deal with the huge
changes our society faces as we seek to live in greater harmony with
our fellow human beings and the planet.
Bring food, your artistic talent, your healing gifts, and an open mind.
If you have any questions, please call or email Jas or Brian.
See you next Sunday!
Also check out the new support website: https://www.communitysupportnetworkpdx.com (no longer active – 1.7.13
Contact Info:
Jas: jimjas at gmail.com / 503-544-3838
Brian: brian at nanotech-now.com / 541-840-8155
Portland3000
This is a post I wrote on BlueOregon yesterday. The comments are interesting and worth reading.
“I’ve been walking around my neighborhood lately, and have noticed lots of spray-painted areas where sidewalks are cracked and are to be repaired. My thoughts when I see this is: are we really spending all of this money to replace something that’s just going to break (either through tree roots pushing up sidewalks, or regular wear and tear) again in the not too distant future? If we were thinking 50-100-200 years into the future – we might consider different solutions – perhaps leaning towards removing asphalt rather than replacing it. And all of the money going into turning corners into easier-to-use corners (ADA accessible), that really makes me wonder – isn’t there a cheaper way to turn what we have into something that can be biked/skate-boarded or roller-skated on and off of – like a small ramp instead of completely re-doing, and re-pouring the sidewalks seems like a good start to me. Anyway, that got me to thinking about how we might be doing things differently if we were planning for a Portland 100 or 1,000 years from now.
We all know cheap oil is going away – so that probably also means the cheap fixing of our streets is also going away. So, I’m mostly wondering out loud here, but I guess I’m posing the question and I’m curious what people think about the concept of long-range planning.
For instance: we all know that putting on chains and studded snow tires wrecks our roads. So, why didn’t the message come out loud and clear over the past 2 weeks: Please don’t drive unless it is absolutely necessary. Why wasn’t that transmitted loud and clear by every government agency with a loudspeaker/blog/radio transmitter/e-mail/TV, etc.? Instead, we heard that we should support the economy through shopping, and get to work, if possible. During the storm I wondered to myself, do we have the ability to stop if we need to? I’ll rephrase it – when it makes sense for our society to come to a stop – for our own good, for our own economic good – are we capable of doing so? My sense is that the damage done to our roads by people driving with chains and studded tires far outweighed the profits made by area retailers. And I know, local retailers are hurting, no doubt about that. I’m not trying to be insensitive here, but am trying to make a few points about how looking down the road a few years, we might do things differently.
We seem to be on a very “live for today” diet in this country. If we were looking further down the road how might we do things differently? Portland Mayor, Sam Adams wants to plant 80,000 trees in a year. If we were envisioning a future where we had to grow more of our food (I do), might we want to plant 80,000 fruit and nut trees a year, starting now? How about policies that make it really simple to grow food in your yard and sell or share that with your neighbors – how about a City Urban Ag department – helping Portland transition into a city that grows more of its own food?
What kinds of changes would you suggest as you consider Portland 100, 200 or 1,000 years from now? And, fill in your City/State here: Bend 3000? Oregon 3000?
We can do better.
Oregonian Voting Party
Host a Voting Party!
We got great coverage of our voting party in Sunday’s Oregonian. And when it rains, of course it pours – a LTE of mine made it into the paper today vis voting no on Measure 64.
Text of the voting party article:
Oregon leads the way in loving vote-by-mail
by Michelle Cole, The Oregonian
Eecole Copen (center) does the “voter dance” at a Portland voting party. About two dozen people attended the house party, where they drank wine, sang, debated the issues and marked their ballots. The host wore an Obama T-shirt and played “So Happy Together” on his guitar. His guests sang along, drank wine and ate homemade pie bursting with elderberries and apples picked in the Columbia River Gorge.
Forget about stuffy polling booths, hanging chads and long lines — this is how Oregon votes. We throw parties where people mark their ballots. Or we sit with family at the kitchen table and discuss our choices.
“We have a social responsibility to vote, and it should be a community effort, not just a solo effort,” said Jef Murphy, who joined two dozen others at a voting party in Portland on Wednesday night.Ten years ago, Oregon became the first and only state to agree to vote by mail exclusively. Just as with our bottle and beach bills, Oregon is proud of being first.
The trend is catching on. This year, an estimated 30 percent of the nation’s voters will cast ballots either by mail or by visiting the polls ahead of Election Day.
So what might Oregon’s experiment with vote by mail teach the nation?
First, it’s a different way of voting, but it hasn’t proved to be as “un-American” as some people claimed.
In the 1980s, when the Oregon Legislature first approved voting by mail on a limited basis, critics warned that the integrity of the process would be undermined.
“There was always this accusation of fraud, of voting under duress, people taking your ballot and somehow tampering with it,” said Senate President Peter Courtney, a Salem Democrat who sponsored a vote-by-mail bill in 1981, his first year in the Legislature.
Voting Q & A
Voters across the country are rightly concerned about the security of their ballots. To answer those questions about Oregon, The Oregonian talked to Secretary of State Bill Bradbury, State Elections Director John Lindback, and Multnomah County Elections Director Tim Scott.
Q: What’s all this about some group called Acorn registering fake names and fake addresses, including the starting lineup of the Dallas Cowboys football team? Is that happening in Oregon?
A: Acorn, or the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, is a national nonpartisan group that registers voters. The group is being investigated in Nevada and several other states for turning in duplicate or fraudulent cards. There have been a handful of complaints regarding out-of-state registration groups in Oregon, but none related to Acorn. Oregon prohibits paying registration canvassers for each registration they collect, which has been a problem with Acorn.
Q: So let’s say I register to vote for the first time. How do you know it’s actually me?
A: Your registration card goes to the local county elections office, which inputs the information into a centralized database. If you’ve listed a driver’s license or identification number, the system automatically checks the DMV database for a match. If you don’t have a driver’s license and have provided the last four digits of your Social Security number, the system checks against the federal SSA database. If there’s no match, the county elections office will contact you to get further documentation.
Q: What happens if I never send the requested documentation?
A: You still get a ballot and you can cast that ballot, but none of your votes for federal races will count. Your votes in local and state contests still count.
Q: How many people are out there who haven’t provided documentation?
A: Very few, say elections officials. For example, there are 3,100 cases pending in Multnomah County where people have not met federal identification requirements. That’s 0.7 percent of 435,000 registered voters.
Q: How often do counties purge voter registration rolls?
A: National law requires voters to be notified before they’re purged. In Oregon, voters move to the “inactive” list if they haven’t voted in five years. At that point, the county sends a card asking to verify their registration. Voters stay on the inactive list through two more federal election cycles, though they won’t get ballots, and then they’re canceled.
Q: What happens to ballots after they’re mailed in?
A: Each county has its own system, but the basics are the same. In Multnomah County, elections staff check signatures and sort ballots by precinct as soon as they arrive. One week before Election Day, citizen boards open the ballots and check for erasures and stray marks that might mess up the scanner. The ballots aren’t counted until Election Day.
Q: How do I know I’m registered?
A: Go online and plug in your name and birth date: www.sos.state.or.us/elections
Q: I’ve moved. What should I do?
A: Call or stop by your county elections office to update your information. You can do that until 8 p.m. on Nov. 4, which is when voting ends.
— Janie Har
Courtney said he and his colleagues had no “grand design” in mind. They simply wanted to improve voter turnout. But they were lambasted by critics, he remembers.
“People said: ‘If you respected the right to vote, you ought to be willing to go to the voting booth. It’s your duty.'”
Oregon officials cautiously waded into vote by mail by allowing it only in some local elections. People still had to go to the polls to vote in primary and general elections until 1998, when voters overwhelming approved Measure 60, which made every Oregon election vote by mail.
Phil Keisling, the former secretary of state who championed Measure 60, said there have been “scattered examples” of voter fraud involving mail balloting.”No system is failsafe,” he said. “I prosecuted a county commissioner in Curry County who forged his wife’s signature on a ballot involving his own recall election. He handily won the recall attempt, but he lost his office because he was convicted of a felony.”
The voter’s signature on the back of the return envelope is a key component in ensuring the system’s integrity.
Voters’ signatures are scanned into a computer database and then examined by elections workers who have been trained by an Oregon State Police handwriting expert. Those that don’t match get a letter with a new registration card asking them to complete and return the new card. If a new card is returned and the signature is matched, the ballot can be counted.
All that is fine, said Curtis Gans, director of the Center for the Study of the American Electorate at American University and a critic of vote by mail. Oregon doesn’t have a history of fraud, he concedes. But Gans still worries about the trend toward mail balloting in other states.
“There are places where we know votes have been bought,” he said. “We established the secret ballot to eliminate the pressure of party bosses.”
James Hicks, research director of the Early Voting Information Center at Reed College, said Oregon remains the only state to use mail balloting exclusively, though Washington is close to it.
Twenty-eight states allow what’s called “no excuse” absentee mail balloting. Thirty-one states allow voters to cast ballots ahead of Election Day.
Based on early voting so far, Hicks said, this year may see a record number of people voting ahead of Nov. 4.
Oregon officials learned early on that voters liked casting ballots by mail.
Even before Measure 60 passed, Vicki Paulk, director of Multnomah County Elections from 1984 to 2002, encouraged voters to take advantage of loosening restrictions on absentee voting.
Was Paulk, who used the name Vicki Ervin back then, forging ahead of the change?
Not quite, she said, laughing. “I’m all for public education. … Let’s just say I made it easy for them to take advantage of (mail voting).”
Counties have seen their postage costs increase with all-mail balloting. At the same time, elections officials say, the overall cost of running a mail election is far lower than a poll election.
At one time, Multnomah County had 2,000 people working at hundreds of polling places. This election, there will be 200 to 300 people working at a single office, said elections director Tim Scott.
A few promises made about vote by mail haven’t proved exactly true.For example, political scientists say vote by mail hasn’t translated into a huge increase in voter turnout in national elections, though local and off-year elections have seen a boost.
A study by Gans’ Center for the Study of the American Electorate showed Oregon had the fifth-highest turnout of eligible voters in the 2004 presidential election. But nine states and the District of Columbia recorded greater increases in turnout than Oregon.
Proponents of all-mail voting once suggested that Oregon would see fewer negative ads or last-minute attack ads. And critics, including Gans, said early balloting takes away a voters’ choice if circumstances change.
Statistics indicate, however, that Oregon voters are waiting longer to return their ballots. And it doesn’t take a political scientist to debunk the myth about fewer negative ads.
“The dynamics that have encouraged negative advertising have been even fiercer in the last decade than even I suspected,” Keisling said.
Still, in the decade since Measure 60, he said, one of his biggest surprises is just how much Oregonians love voting by mail.
That sentiment was echoed at Wednesday night’s voting party in Portland.
“I’m glad we’re here as a group, trying to figure out these things together,” Tuolovme Levenstein said.
Albert Kaufman (center) leads celebratory voters, including Danielle Lavario, to the mailbox after a party to discuss issues and mark ballots. Kaufman threw the voting party after attending one in a previous election. Led by their host, Albert Kaufman, partygoers spent more than two hours working their way down their ballots. They spent only 30 seconds talking about the presidential candidates and a minute or two on the U.S. Senate race. But the group carefully considered candidates for the Soil and Water Conservation District and spent several minutes debating the state treasurer, teacher merit pay, open primaries and a proposed zoo bond.
About 9:30 p.m., Kaufman offered stamps to those who wanted them, and then he and several others walked to the mailbox.
Levenstein decided to hold her ballot a little while longer. She enjoyed the debate, the give and take, she said. But she hadn’t made up her mind on a couple of things.
After all, vote by mail not only allows voters to gather. It also gives a voter time to think.
— Michelle Cole
Here are tips on how to vote together!
Welcome to albertideation – a home for ideas and ideation to flourish!
Welcome to the new home for albertideation – thinking = ideation.
This is where friends and colleagues can come together to work on ideas whose time has come.
Often an idea just needs a little tweaking, advocacy or a push to become a reality. Some of the ideas I intend to flesh out on these pages are place-specific to Portland, Oregon – but all can probably be templated/replicated and used anywhere. Sometimes the ideas are mine, and sometimes they are shared with others – in my ideal world, ideas are open-source and I offer each of these ideas in this spirit.
Albert Kaufman
Please join my newsletter here.
