Digital Commons Network^™

Looking At The Past To Change The Future: Showcasing Featured Collections, Building Communities, And Co-Creating, Sherry Buchanan

Library Faculty and Staff Publications and Presentations

Academic libraries have the opportunity and the responsibility to promote and advance content that creates transformative and iterative learning opportunities. To that end, and in an effort to build communities and facilitate co-creation, Portland State University showcases three main Featured Collections in our open access repository, PDXScholar: Climate Justice, COVID-19, and Racial and Gender Equity, with a fourth pilot collection—Student Work: An Open Showcase of Outstanding Student-Created Research & Creative Work—under development. The collections include a broad range of audiovisual materials, such as podcasts and webinar series, as well as sustainability and equity work, student-created content, and numerous future-focused multidisciplinary …

Black Voices And Perspectives On Portland's Black Lives Matter Protests With Shirley Jackson, Shirley A. Jackson

PDXPLORES Podcast

In this episode of PDXPLORERS, Professor Shirley Jackson discusses research in which she examines how members of the Black community in the Portland metro region perceived the Black Lives Matter/George Floyd protests that took place during the summer of 2020. Jackson, a sociologist and expert in race, social movements, and gender, is interviewing members of the Black community in the metro region to better understand individual and community sentiments on issues including the government response to the Black Lives Matter protests, participation of whites in BLM protests, and "Defund the Police."

Click on the "Download" button to access the audio …

The Imperative For Climate Action At Portland State University, Stephen Percy

Office of the President Publications and Presentations

Portland State University President Stephen Percy announces the formation of the Climate Change Initiative.

Blacks In Oregon, Darrell Millner

Black Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

Periodically, newspaper or magazine articles appear proclaiming amazement at how white the population of Oregon and the City of Portland is compared to other parts of the country. It is not possible to argue with the figures—in 2017, there were an estimated 91,000 Blacks in Oregon, about 2 percent of the population—but it is a profound mistake to think that these stories and statistics tell the story of the state's racial past. In fact, issues of race and the status and circumstances of Black life in Oregon are central to understanding the history of the state, and perhaps its future …

Cultural Resource Centers Black Lives Matter Statement, Cultural Resource Centers Team

Cultural Resource Centers Reports and Resources

The official statement from the Cultural Resource Centers affirming their support for the Black Lives Matter movement and racial justice.

Racial Justice Is Climate Justice: Racial Capitalism And The Fossil Economy, Julius Mcgee, Patrick Trent Greiner

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

The narrative of oppression moves through dialectical pressures. Capitalism evolved from the feudal order that preceded it, creating new forms of racial oppression that benefited an emerging ruling class [1]. Racial tensions evolve alongside economic oppression that subjugates labor to capital. The preceding racial order molds to emerging mechanisms of expropriation and exploitation by way of force and resistance. Beneath the surface of these tensions lies the interconnected threads of ecological and human expropriation. At the heart of all oppression, lies the manipulation of reproduction. The social processes necessary to reproduce black and brown communities, the ecological processes necessary to …

How Oregon’S Racist History Can Sharpen Our Sense Of Justice Right Now, Walidah Imarisha

Black Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

Writer Walidah Imarisha on eight years of talking about the brutal history of race in Oregon.

Name a small town in Oregon. I have most likely been there, talking about race.

For the past eight years, starting as part of Oregon Humanities’ Conversation Project, I’ve stood in front of thousands of attendees in packed libraries, community centers, senior homes, college campuses, and prisons.

I’ve seen it all: multiple people arguing the Ku Klux Klan was and remains a “civic organization,” chiding me for focusing solely on the “negatives” while adamantly denying they support racism or are themselves racist. I’ve received …