From the Co-Chairs Of Interfaith Alliance on Poverty
By Rae Richen
I have been reading Stacy Abrams’ book, Lead from the Outside. She discusses how individuals can have an impact and help change their circumstances even though they are outside the halls where decisions are made. She demonstrated her principles as she worked with teams to build belief in the power of voting. And Georgia’s citizens exercised their rights.
Of course, we know how that has worked in her home state of Georgia, but also we often have seen her principles at work here in Oregon.
Recently, a call went out from our partner, Street Roots, to help save the Portland Street Response. The Interfaith Alliance on Poverty helped by passing the message to our leaders and all our members. Our work helped boost that effort, but we were not the only partners of Portland Street Response who stepped up. Many community leaders, businesses and individuals worked together to spread the word.
The resulting petition of over 11,400 signatures was presented to the city commissioners along with a request for individual meetings with each commissioner.
Our friend and leader, David Groff, wrote a letter to the editor detailing his very positive interaction with Portland Street Response on behalf of a disoriented man. Many others in the community have written in support, often also with their stories of how well the Street Response personnel dealt with volatile or ill citizens.
We don’t yet know how the city commissioners will respond to the urgings of their fellow citizens. Will they create a separate budget line for Portland Street Response? Will they insist that it be defunded despite the cry for its support? We don’t know.
What we do know is that a very large portion of our community leadership believes in Street Response work, and the community worked together to show that support to the city commissioners.
And that is what informs our future. We will persist together. We will insist together that change for good happens in our region.
As one of my new-to-the-country students once said about teamwork, “Me alone, can’t do it. Together. Gotta.”