Moreau Center Social Justice Programs

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Day 4 Urban Immersion 2025

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Thursday morning we arrived at St. André Basset and were set up in the living space on the third floor. We had no idea we’d be staying in cozy furnished rooms so being able to sleep in beds and in a warm room was a very welcome surprise. We also had access to a cute kitchen and comfy living room. After we were set up, we joined the morning activities by handing out warm drinks and helping other volunteers get materials like warm clothing, backpacks, and hygiene packs, for folks lined up at a side window. It was great being able to see these people be supplied with much needed warmth on a cold day. After we were done, we walked over to Blanchet House where we were given a quick tour around the facility by the volunteer coordinator Michael who is actually a UP alum! We were then separated into roles like busser, server, drink server, and food plater. We helped out for the entire lunch service, which was wonderful as we were able to connect with those we were serving and with fellow volunteers. It was pretty busy but we learned from Michael that our shift was a relatively calm one (which is apparently normal for lunch hours).

-Emma

After serving at Blanchet House we headed off to Nehalem House which is the founding house of L’Arche Portland. This home is no longer operating but we got to visit before they sell it and hear stories from friends of L’Arche that face housing, financial, and other struggles due to a disability. It was really meaningful to hear from people with lived experience as a way to learn about the ways in which the systems in place create obstacles for people with disabilities to thrive in our communities. It truly opened my eyes to the reality of how intersectional everything is. 

After L’Arche we went to Rose Haven for a tour and some volunteer work helping organize their supplies for greater efficiency. Rose Haven provides day shelter, resources, emotional support, and community connections to women, children, and marginalized genders experiencing homelessness and poverty. While on the tour we learned about the many services that they provide such as general hospitality, mailboxes, bus tickets, on-site clinic, laundry stocked with needed supplies, warm and nutritious meals, showers stocked with supplies and even hair styling tools, clothing which is set up like a cute boutique, advocacy, wellness activities, children’s services, community celebrations, and a variety of classes and groups. Their space is incredibly beautiful and calming, designed with a trauma-informed lens! I think what stood out to me the most was the intentionality behind everything. I was impressed by how the team that works there hold themselves to a high standard— to me it showed their true commitment to and desire to offer genuine trauma-informed and intentional care in all aspects of what they do and in everything they provide. The Moreau Center is partnering with them for the upcoming MLK day on and our Urban Immersion group has already committed to returning to Rose Haven! 

-Lupita

Day 3 Urban Immersion 2025

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This morning we started the day by organizing clothes in St. André Bessette’s basement with Vanessa who is the outreach and environment coordinator. I didn’t realize how much work goes into offering clothing to the community. In the afternoon, Vanessa walked us down the block to the Artist Mentorship Program (AMP). Walking in, the walls were covered from floor to ceiling with bright colored paintings from local artists. The space features several guitars, keyboards, drum sets, and a recording studio. Monday to Thursday from four to eight, AMP opens their doors to people aged 15-25 that are experiencing housing insecurity. Music holds a lot of value to me, so it was inspiring to see how AMP makes it accessible and healing for anyone.

-Ash

Day 2 Urban Immersion 2025

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“On the second day of our immersion, we visited two more organizations that were supporting members of the Portland community in need of resources- Path Home and Street Books. Our first stop of the day was Path Home, which is provides housing for 18 different families, as well as food, clothing, support with jobs search, among other things. Contrary to many of the other organizations we’ve been to, Path Home felt quiet. This, one of the organizations leader explained, was intentional. The design of the building was intended to create a space of tranquility and peace for people who are amid a chaotic time in their life. Though, through the short time we were there, the quiet atmosphere seemed to translate into a lack of community. The visit started with two of the organization’s employees, Jen and Debra, explaining the importance, design and funding for Path Home. Something that stuck with me during that conversation was the knowledge and care the two women had for the organization. Next, we toured the facility and ended our time at Path Home doing yard work in their garden. There is diversity and complexity of why someone may end up on the streets- people experiencing homelessness aren’t a monolith. Just as there is a diversity of reasoning that may lead someone to end up there, there are many different paths that may help someone off the streets. Some may find they need a quiet and reflective space that is a contrast to what they are used to- Path Home is able to provide this space. Though we weren’t able to meet community members who lived in the housing they provided, we were able to hear more about what it’s like to run a shelter program while dealing with systemic problems such as a lack of funding. 

-Erin

The second part of our day consisted of meeting folks at Street Books, hearing their stories and what Street Books does, and helping them move a ton of books and book shelves  in their storage room. Several people working at Street Books have a history of experiencing homelessness, including the co-founder. It was so inspiring to hear how they use their experiences to help fuel their action in the community and also how Street Books has given them a feeling of purpose. One main principle that they stick to and uphold through the program is harm reduction. This means that they try to provide people on the streets with materials that will allow them to heal at their own pace and work through their addictions safely without forcing them to give up drugs and alcohol cold-turkey. They understand that they can’t get everyone to just be sober, but what they can do it reduce the mental and physical harm that comes with being on the street and/or being an addict on the street. Some of the materials that they give out as part of this harm-reduction work are books, coloring books, gel pens, medical supplies, hygiene products, camp materials, materials for safer drug use, and clothing. They have built and extremely strong relationship with the people they serve and use traveling nature of their program to check in on people and provide a sense of community and support. It was also cool to see how connected they were to other organization.  

At the very end of our day, we watched a documentary on Fairview Training Center, which was an institution for people with mental and physical/developmental disabilities for 102 years (1907-2009). While from the outside it seems to be a beneficial institution as it provided specialized care, housing, and education for the residents, it had an extensive history of being a very isolating and harmful place for people with disabilities. Low funding and damaging beliefs about how to treat people with disabilities lead to many deaths, traumas, and low quality of life for the people living there. Many of those people had families that were unable to care for them due to poverty or lack of knowledge/ability, or no family at all. The documentary also went over the history and timeline of the public opinions on disabilities, medical treatment, disability activism and rights, community homes and care for people with disabilities, government funding, and the condition of other institutions in the country. One interesting aspect of this film was the differing opinions that were shared regarding the closure of Fairview. Many were overjoyed as Fairview had felt like a prison to them. But many felt that it left many people worse off due to how much their relied on the services it provided. Our group discussed why this could be and what we thought of it but weren’t able to really come to any conclusion on what is the best way to think about it was, just like the documentary and the people talking within it.”

-Emma

Day 1 Urban Immersion 2025

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Today we visited Dandelion House and were welcomed by Lisa, Julian, and Fumi the three Catholic Workers who maintain the house of hospitality. The property was located in a grounding forested area, with a large garden that they use to feed their community. Instead of being a service provider, they told us, they are a community provider and support one to two people experiencing houselessness at a time while they pursue their goals. They live a countercultural lifestyle favoring sustainability, gathering, and peace. We were really moved by their commitment to make a large impact in a few people’s lives and their dedication to building relationships with the people that stay with them. After a lunch together, we worked with the three of them to split wood, weed the driveway, and expand the mulched area that would become their food forest.

After our morning at Dandelion House, we drove to the Neakahnie L’arche home to meet the residents and Director of Community Life, Jessica. Julia, the Executive Director, told us that the house was custom built to be accessible with wider hallways, low counters and special details such as a view of the front door from the kitchen. L’arche homes are distinct from care facilities in that residents with disabilities live in tight community with shift-scheduled assistants working alongside them. Everyone was friendly and we cooked and shared a meal with them, by the end of the night we felt welcomed into the family that they had built there.

Here’s to four more days!!!

-Stella and Ash, the mulchers

3/5/24 – Eloheh Farms

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We woke up bright and early today to prepare to visit Eloheh Farms.

As we learned the previous night, Eloheh Farms is an indigenous owned regenerative farm. What this means is that they use organic, non-gmo, open pollinated seeds which are then stored and kept to be replanted.

Eloheh is a Cherokee word which means harmony, wholeness, abundance, and peace. All of which are values which the owners, Randy and Edith Woodley, embody in their day-to-day lives. They’re truly such loving, welcoming people, and it was an honor to get to hear from them. One thing Randy said that stuck with me was how he believes indigenous practices, the ones used by the original caretakers of our land, are instrumental in helping to restore a hurting mother Earth, a perspective which I found insightful.

After getting a tour of the farm, we spilt up to work on the farm. Some tasks we accomplished included helping build a coop house, make compost, snip poison oak, or pull out Himalayan blackberry roots in my case. Some of the blackberry were growing right under the fence so it was difficult to get out, but you could say I got right to the root of the issue and preserved.

We finished with questions, getting to view their rather impressive seed collection, and reflection. All-in-all, the day felt highly successful, and I think I can speak for everyone when I say we learned a lot on the farm.

P.S. Shout out to the cats on the farm, they were the real stars of the show.

Grace Ireland

3/4/24: Artivism, Hoyt Arboretum, and Broken Treaties

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Today we met with J’reyesha and Santi at the Student Commons at PCC. We were formally introduced to each of them, their history in the environmental activism scene, what their current occupations were, and how they approach environmental Justice in communities around Portland. Specifically, they introduced to us Artivism, which is the use of art as a means to promote activism. J’reyesha highlighted a few of the projects she helped coordinate, such as the painting of electrical boxes to help brighten up communities. Afterwards, they introduced the activity we did, which were zines. Zines are a collection of different text and images to display particular message. Each of us created a singular page for our own zine using a variety of different magazines, focusing on what environmental activism meant to us. Once everyone finished, we glued each of our pages to the zine layout to finalize our art. 

After meeting with J’reyesha and Santi, we went to the Hoyt Arboretum to go on a hike. We encountered a variety of interesting plant life, including the only redwood to produce pinecones in the western hemisphere. 

Later in the day, we watched the documentary “Broken Treaties”. The documentary covered the extensive history of the colonization of indigenous Americans in the Pacific Northwest by White Americans and the American government. The documentary covered the numerous treaties in which indigenous tribes gave up their tribal land in exchange for resources and commodities. The resources and commodities were never provided due to the treaties never being ratified in Congress. Thus, indigenous American groups, tribes, or nations were forcefully migrated to unwanted land with no resources or commodities to help them survive.

Brandon Pham

3/3/24: The Braided River Campaign

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Today was the first day of the immersion and we got to spend the day with Sarah Taylor. She is a founder of the Braided River Campaign, as well as a midwife and a retired principal. 

Learning about the history of the development of the river was very interesting. I didn’t know that the Willamette River was originally a braided river with many shallow branches and nearby ponds that supported the local indigenous tribes. However, it was altered to be a deep, single channel river. Furthermore, the heavy industrial infrastructure that has been built up has severely polluted the river and contaminated much of the riverbed’s sediment, making it harmful to swim or eat many of the river organisms. 

It was also cool to see the gallery that Sarah Taylor and the Braided River Campaign created in the Lloyd Center. The gallery is full of the stories of many local marginalized people as well as interactive activities that address the local environmental and social justice issues. 

Much of the conversations we had with her have inspired me to try to do more and attempt to get UP more connected with the community and with current environmental justice issues in the area.

-Jenner Easland

5/16/2023

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After a night on Eloheh farm, we headed back to UP to meet with today’s presenters.

First, we met with the Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) for a presentation. We met Patricia “Patsy” Kullberg, a retired primary care physician who worked mainly with disadvantaged folks; and Samantha Hernandez, a climate justice organizer. As physicians, they approach environmental justice from the angle of improving public health outcomes in their community. From her time in the healthcare field, Patsy told us she saw a major flaw in the healthcare paradigm. Healthcare workers only engaged their patients in an attempt to fix what was wrong with them, rather than addressing the root cause: the social and environmental conditions they were living in.

Again, the UP river campus came up in our conversation. Patsy mentioned that UP is an under-engaged community, though they hold an important pivoting point with the river campus. They emphasized the importance of engaging individual contaminators and landholders on the river, rather than the city as a whole. It’s a million small acts that will build a better future, Patsy and Samantha told us.

(Pictured: Patricia Kullberg and Samantha Hernandez of the Physicians for Social responsibility with the 2023 EJ Immersion participants and leaders)

After lunch we met two organizers for the Coalition for Communities of Color (CCC) Isabel Sanchez and J’reyesha Brannon, a UP alumni. The CCC consists of eleven groups all focused on uplifting communities of color. The coalition specializes in policy analysis, collecting culturally appropriate data, and environmental justice.

J’reyesha began her career as an environmental engineer and took a non-traditional route into climate Justice organizing. Now, J’reyesha is the president of the National Society of Black engineers, as well as an organizer. Hiking and outdoorsing is often seen as an exclusively White activity, J’reyesha tellsus, so she invites BIPOC youth to take interest in and connect with their environment through her volunteer work.

Isabel and J’reyesha also told us about Oregon Water Futures Collaborative: a project that aims to create a safe space including exclusively BIPOC voices and perspectives to be heard.They engage in research and outreach in the community to gather data for their yearly project reports: available here. J’reyesha and Isabel discussed their upcoming OWFC zine to be published in summer of 2023. It will include the qualitative data collected by the coalition and highlight individual stories and experiences resulting from climate change. The zine will be publicly available in Oregon libraries and online when finished.

When asked what kind of change they would like to see from the University of Portland, they asked for greater transparency about the demographics of UP students and teachers. J’reyesha had organized a scholarship for Black engineering students, so it was important for her to know exactly who these funds were going to, and if and how UP is maintaining a diverse student body.

To learn more about the Oregon Water Futures Collaborative, visit oregonwaterfutures.org

Those interested in an internship or shadowing at CCC can apply at https://www.coalitioncommunitiescolor.org/take-action

(Pictured: Isabel Sanchez and J’reyesha Brannon of the CCC with the 2023 EJ Immersion participants and leaders)

We finished the day at the Cinema 21 screening of the “Once a Braided River” documentary written and produced by Barbara Bernstein. This documentary summarized the issues and impacts of the Willamette superfund and featured several community activists including the familiar Sarah Taylor of the Braided River Campaign. Stay tuned for future screenings of “Once a Braided River” at UP! – Stella Stueck

Home Along the Columbia River

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View along the Punchbowl hike in Hood River

We started our day off with a little hike to punchbowl where we explored the gorge together and had some time for individual reflection a nd meditation. Then following a quick trip to shower , we met with the former mayor of Mosier, OR, Arlene Burns who graciously presented her story . Mosier is a small town, with a population of about 500 people along the Columbia River popular for wind surfing and beautiful wild flowers . Arlene Burns was a river guide in many locations before settling in Oregon and becoming a volunteer mayor for 10 years where she greatly impacted not only the small town of Mosier , but Oregon, and nearby communities as well. Arlene was mayor at the time of the June 3rd , 2016, crude oil train derailment. Thankfully this accident occurred on a non windy day, but the fire and oil spill still have lasting impacts on the community and river. The near by wastewater treatment plant was able to catch about 25,000 gallons of the oil spill saving most of it from entering the Columbia River and severely impacting the salmon and fish populations. The tracks are very close to the town’s elementary school and town so they evacuated the children from the town from their parents for multiple hours due to the highway closure which also made it difficult for emergency responders to help. The nearby native tribes came to support the town and conducted a ceremony down by the river following the accident. The Columbia River Gorge is a large thorough fare for oil train transportation making many of the surrounding towns susceptible to these accidents in the future.

Arlene ended her presentation with the motto of Mosier: “small enough to make a difference.” I think this is so important to remember especially today where power and greed are huge political driving forces but we, as the young generation, do have a voice. We can help amplify the voices of those who need to be heard, whose stories need to be shared to preserve the history. Also, as Arlene stated, we can also find advocates who have influence and power who can amplify our voices as w ell . However, to create change and progress we need to provide the facts and find a way to tell the story without anger and frustration. After speaking with the current Mayor of Mosier and driving down to the derailment site, we learned how the town is planning to use federal grant money on a few projects such as improving the wastewater
treatment plant, providing restrooms for more bike traffic , and a net zero fire station and community center.

Table display of native food and baskets of the Yakama tribe

To end the day we had dinner with and listened to the stories and insights of the Yakama Tribe. They graciously welcomed us into their village on the hill of the Columbia River . To the Yakama tribe food, land and community are everything. Their ancestors chose homelessness and starvation over being relocated to reservations because of their strength and commitment to their land and history along the river. The native tribes are greatly impacted by “green” energy installed on their land including solar, wind and hydro-energy sources. The dam has significantly decreased the salmon population in the Columbia River. After hearing their perspective and side of the story I now realize how proposed sustainable energy sources aren’t sustainable for everyone. The large solar panels are destroying the land the tribes rely on for roots and food to feed their communities. As someone who is currently studying civil and environmental engineering, listening to the stories really opened my eyes as renewable energy is a major topic discussed in university, but we don’t always discuss all of the major implications of installing them. We learned so much from their insights and want to help educate others by sharing their stories and using our platform to amplify their voices. Please treat the earth as you would treat your own mother.
Graciously,
Morgan

Linnton Walking Tour and Brigham Fish Market

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Today our group visited two places, the Linnton Walking Tour with Sarah Taylor and the Brigham Fish Market.  Our tour with Sarah was both very hopeful and sad. On our tour Sarah went over the history of Linnton and what’s being done now. Linnton was a small town that was eventually annexed by Portland. For a long time, it was a very close knit community that was home for many immigrant families. Unfortunately, several different industries, particularly McCormick and Baxter had bought up most of the land and converted it into a space for fossil fuel facilities. They set up massive facilities that pollute the river water sediment, which are devastating to the communities that live along the river as well as the surrounding ecosystem, such as the salmon. They have also lined the Linnton area with oil lines that run even through residential areas and schools. These facilities devalued the homes of many families, displacing them. Those who chose to stay were and currently still are being intimidated by these industries to move. Sarah talked about how on different occasions, people pointed welding guns at her and once dropped heavy metal at her feet. Thankfully, Sarah talked about how the remaining residents are fighting extremely hard to keep the land they have left and are advocating for environmental policies and politicians that seek to restore polluted areas and protect what we have left.

Oil transport in Linnton

The two biggest things that were screaming in my head during this walk were industries and communities. Industries are responsible for the destruction of so much and on this walking tour I could see it first hand. I feel the awareness of the impact of and education on industries is incredibly lacking, especially at lower levels of schooling. Growing up, I was taught that climate change was mostly OUR fault, with things like carbon footprints. And while there’s no denying that we do have an impact, the devastation industries have created among the environment and communities is something I was not taught till my high school years. These industries have so much power and influence that it sometimes feels like there’s nothing we can do. But listening to Sarah had given me so much hope. Despite all the things Sarah and her community have been put through by fossil fuel industries, they are still fighting to keep their community and future communities safe. We had a chance to walk through different areas of the community, like this carpentry shop, and it was moving to see the worker and Sarah talking about keeping the building in the hands of the community.

Linnton

Our visit to the Brigham fish market was very pleasant. It is not very often one gets to eat food caught locally, especially as local as just down the street. You could really taste the difference with the fresh, sustainable, locally caught fish compared to other establishments and grocery store products. I believe it really demonstrates the benefits to sustainable practices and how it not only enriches the environment but our own lives. – Brandon Pham