Danez Smith has won and been nominated for a lot of big prizes for their poetry, including the UK’s Forward Prize, the National Book Critic Circle Award and the National Book Award. But in 2020, Smith stopped writing. In the depths of the pandemic,

The COVID-19 pandemic and the Black Lives Matter uprising have highlighted problems that Leslie Gregory has been working to change for a long time. Gregory is the founder and director of Right To Health, a Portland-based nonprofit that highlights...

Zachary Stocks recently started as the Oregon Black Pioneers’ first ever executive director. As the latest Black Lives Matter movement has sparked efforts to rename racist geographic locations across Oregon and take down racist monuments, Stocks has...

After Portland protests and federal law enforcement’s treatment of protesters made national headlines, stories and photos of predominantly white mothers in the Portland Wall of Moms received national attention. But Black mothers like Julianne Jackson...

Matt Bors lives and works in Portland as a cartoonist and founder of The Nib. Bors says making a living was challenging at the beginning of 2020, but with the pandemic, he says between childcare and healthcare, he just can’t make it work. We talk with...

As cases of COVID-19 continue to rise in Oregon, people of color are disproportionately testing positive for the virus. The Oregon Health Authority has pledged to increase outreach and testing to vulnerable communities. Dawn Mautner is the OHA senior...

Brian Bennett moved to Portland last year from Chicago. Bennett is the only Black dancer in the full company at Oregon Ballet Theatre. (There is also a Black dancer in the role of apprentice at OBT.) He says the artistic director who hired him was...

Some restaurants in Portland are slowly beginning to reopen. But will they be able to make money? Will they be able to hire back the staff they let go? What kind of food service makes the most sense until we get a vaccine? Lisa Schroeder (Mother’s...

After COVID-19 cases spiked at the Eastern Oregon Correctional Institute in Pendleton, families of inmates have gathered at the prison to protest conditions there. Lydia Jarrell has been attending those protests. Her husband is an inmate at the EOCI,...

A new group of Black-led community groups called a press conference today with Oregon elected leaders. They have developed a two-year plan to begin dismantling systemic racism in Oregon. Nkenge Harmon Johnson, President and CEO of the Urban League of...