Speak. Listen. Heal.

The Oregonian

The Oregonian

Thursday, April 17, 2008

Speak. Listen. Heal.

Blacks and whites come together to talk — and hear — about loss, race and the damage of gentrification


The Oregonian



The Oregonian invited Noni Causey and Charles Ford, the panelists at First AME Zion Church on March 17, as well as participants of the Restorative Listening Project to share insights in their own words.

White and black, young and old, they file into the First AME Zion Church on North Vancouver Avenue on a mid-March evening.

It is not a church service. It is not a neighborhood meeting. Blacks have come to speak. Whites have come to listen.

For decades, the neighborhoods surrounding this historic black church formed the heart of Oregons African American community. Then whites moved in, housing prices and rents soared, and many blacks had to move. Now some blacks who stayed, and some whites who came are asking: How can we get along?

Through the city-sponsored Restorative Listening Project, African Americans are sharing their experience with gentrification with mostly white audiences in an effort to understand the friction and move beyond it.

Leaders Judith Mowry, who is white, and John Canda and Celeste Carey, who are black, came to the project out of frustration. Whites were arriving with no sense of history:

That blacks were funneled to inner North/Northeast Portland after the 1948 Vanport Flood. That investment - from home loans to city services - lagged behind investment in other parts of town. That blacks made do only to see whites realize the very opportunities and improvements that they - in those same neighborhoods - were denied.

Not knowing that history, many whites did not understand the resentment. Not understanding that resentment, they lacked humility. Whites reported blacks for loud music, for kids hanging out, for broken-down cars at the curb that no one used to mind.

Blacks complained about disrespect, about dogs at coffee shops, about white irreverence at Last Thursday on Alberta Street behavior, such as public drinking, that used to get blacks arrested.

Mowry, Canda and Carey were called upon to work out these conflicts Mowry as a professional mediator; Canda and Carey as colleagues at the Northeast Coalition of Neighborhoods.

"I had thought, 'There's got to be a place where we can have some conversation and try to have some understanding,'" Carey says. "There's got to be a place where we can start with a critical mass of people and create that positive ripple that goes out."

Mowry, now with the city Office of Neighborhood Involvement, designed the project from her background in restorative justice, which aims to mend harm by inviting the sufferer to describe the harm, revealing, for both sides, their shared humanity. "The one who strikes the blow doesn't know the force of the blow," Mowry says. "Only the one who has received the blow knows its force."

Some see little point in storytelling when the damage is done. Others say the listening project is misguided.

Willie Brown, who leads the Black Citizens Coalition of Portland Neighborhoods, says the project fails to address the economic injustice underlying gentrification.

"If we had the money and the jobs, there would be no question whether we had to move or not," Brown says.

But telling the stories, says Mowry, raises awareness.

"Once your curiosity is ignited," she says, "it's not long before you're able to see those systemic injustices and act on them."

Since the project began last year, 15 African Americans have shared their experiences. In total, 225 people have participated. The results are small but powerful, a series of revelations that suggests a path forward.

Blacks, for example, mourn the loss of familiarity and the feeling that in this part of town, they could be themselves. But they also miss a sense of connection. And that is something that many people seek and can attempt to revive - by getting to know one another, acknowledging one another, sitting on the front porch rather than in the backyard.

"If we don't at least feel a sense of cohesion, where I become responsible as an adult on the block for your kid, if no one is watching, then anything can happen," says Canda, now a consultant and grant writer.

At the AME church session, John Cunningham, 50 and white, says he felt paralyzed by the chasm between whites and blacks but realized he must start with the small things.

He stands during a discussion after the panelists speak. He describes a scene from his walk to the church:

He saw young black men on a porch and in the sidewalk ahead of him. He wanted to cross the street. But he reminded himself that he was headed to a session on race relations. So he kept walking.

Cunningham saw their beer cans. He stiffened. But as their paths crossed, one of the young men looked at Cunningham. Their eyes met.

"What's up, man?" the young man said.

"Hey," Cunningham replied. "How's it going?"

Before passing, Cunningham tells the gathering, he and the young man shared the faintest of smiles.

Erin Hoover Barnett: 503-294-5011; ehbarnett@news.oregonian.com