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The Census Is Political: Hard-To-Count Communities Must Be Reached, We Count Oregon, Julia Michel

Metroscape

We Count Oregon is the first woman-of-color-led statewide census campaign in Oregon purposefully designed to undermine exclusionary census norms. The We Count Oregon 2020 campaign reflects the values, cultures, and needs of hard-to- count communities. In Oregon, these are primarily communities of color (including Black, Asian and Pacific Islanders, Latinx, Indigenous and native communities), LGBTQI communities, children under the age of five, disabled people, rural communities, and people experiencing homelessness. Hard-to- count communities in Oregon had less than a 73 percent self-response return rate in the 2010 census. Due to the history of the census and a variety of contemporary …