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‘City of Roses’
Volume XLIV
Number 30
www.portlandobserver.com
Wednesday • July 15, 2015
Established in 1970
Committed to Cultural Diversity
PHOTO BY O LIVIA O LIVIA /T HE P ORTLAND O BSERVER
Adrienne Cabouet (from left) and jamilah bourdon work within the All-African People’s Revolutionary Party to lift up disadvantaged members of Portland’s black communi-
ty in ways similar to the Black Panther movement of the 1960s. The women are pictured at the In Other Words Feminist Community Center, 14 N.E. Killingsworth St., which
has volunteered to accept food donations for the party’s free breakfast program and where the group meets.
Empowering
Lives
Outreach evokes
Black Power
movement of the 60s
O LIVIA O LIVIA
T HE P ORTLAND O BSERVER
A local organization is bringing more
than free meals to local students. Members
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of the All-African People’s Revolution-
ary Party are working to bring lessons of
sustainability and empowerment to black
communities in Portland, taking a page
from the Black Panther movement of the
1960s, such as a free breakfast program
and other efforts to help the disadvantaged.
Organizers hope to inspire other communi-
ties to engage in similar programs.
Back in October, members of the polit-
ical group discussed bringing back a free
breakfast program to Portland along the
lines of the feeding program the Black
Panthers started in 1969 in Oakland, Calif.,
an effort that eventually fed up to 10,000
poor inner city children every day before
school.
The breakfasts were intended then to
give marginalized communities a sense of
agency and self-determination, allowing
low-income students to meet their basic
needs while also learning about feeding
themselves and each other. The break-
fasts and other social programs expanded
to Portland in the late 1960s as well. By
the end of 1969, the Portland Panthers had
started a Children´s Breakfast Program at
Highland United Church of Christ—where
they fed up to 125 children each morning
before school—as well as the Fred Hamp-
ton Memorial People´s Health Clinic, ex-
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week on North Russell to anyone of any
race.
The magnitude and powerful impact of
the breakfast program was such that the
federal government adopted a similar pro-
gram for public schools across the country.
The breakfasts and other programs how-
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1979 many of the Panther’s outreach ef-
forts came to a close in Portland.
Decades later, as free breakfast programs
and government spending on low-income
services have slowly disappeared or grown
smaller, grassroots activists felt the spirit
and goals of the original program could
stand to have a revival.
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