January 13, 2016
M artin L uther K ing J r .
2016 special edition
Page 13
Making Black Lives Matter
Activist shares
how she got
involved
o livia o livia
t he P ortland o bserver
The Martin Luther King Jr.
holiday is a good time to recog-
nize the young leaders from our
community who are following
his example of advocating for
social justice and civil rights.
Leila Hofstein is an activist
with Black Lives Matter in Port-
land and longstanding organizer
at the PFLAG Portland Black
Chapter, a gay and trans rights
group that specializes on the
local African American commu-
nity, the one of only two of its
kind in the nation – the other in
Chicago.
Hofstein says that amidst this
past year’s political upheaval,
the dignity of black life pushed
itself into the forefront of nation-
al conversation and inspired her
to get even more involved.
“I joined Black Lives Matter
Photo by o livia o livia /t he P ortland o bserver
this year and that was the begin- Leila Hofstein is an active member of Portland’s Black Lives Matter chapter and co-director at PFLAG
ning of a new chapter of my life,” Portland Black Chapter, a local LGBTQ rights and advocacy organization that focuses on the African
she says. “It was the way I radi- American community.
by
calized and became more awake
than ever before to the united ex-
perience of African Americans.”
Hofstein describes herself as a
transplant who came to Portland
in 2006. She also follows in the
footsteps of several black mem-
bers of her own family who have
advocated for racial progress, in-
cluding a grandfather, Dr. Allen
Haile, who was director of com-
munity and government relations
at California Polytechnic State
University.
“My family had a lot of peo-
ple challenging expectations for
what black people could accom-
plish and I felt like I could do
that too,” she says.
Hofstein came to better under-
stand the institutional racism that
exists in law enforcement when
her white stepfather joined the
police force.
“It was so close to home, to
see the man my mother married
change as a he stayed on the
force. I realized in other fields,
people are usually taught about
the history of their profession.
But many police officers have
no idea about the history of the
C ontinued on P age 19