M artin L uther K ing J r .
January 11, 2017
2017 special edition
Page 37
Role Models of Color
c onTinued froM P age 33
senate districts, and now her mom
in county government.
Stegmann wept as she reflected
on what her election might mean
for residents who feel unheard or
unseen.
“My election isn’t about me.
It’s about my community, East
County,” she said. “Their voices.
Their concerns.”
Stegmann plans to work on
finding solutions to homeless-
ness, the rising costs of housing,
and disparities in criminal justice.
She supports programs such as the
Law Enforcement Assisted Di-
version pilot launching this year
in downtown Portland which will
divert drug users from arrest to re-
covery.
The Multnomah County Board
was entirely white and male until
1974, when Alice Corbett -- a for-
mer teacher, hardware-store own-
er and state senator -- was elected.
Gladys McCoy, a social work-
er from Georgia, was elected in
1978, the first African American
member of the board. And in 1987
voters ushered in the first all-wom-
en board. The commissioners in-
cluded Gretchen Kafoury, mother
of current Chair Kafoury.
Deborah Kafoury remembers
as a girl her mother talking about
how she was treated as a first-term
legislator in the state House of
Representatives. “People would
call her sweetie, and honey and
pinch her butt,” Kafoury said.
Gretchen Kafoury dedicated
her adult life to getting women
elected to office, as co-founder of
the Oregon chapter of the National
Organization for Women and lat-
er the Oregon Women’s Political
Caucus.
“She was all about women and
women’s’ rights. Gender politics
was her thing,” Deborah Kafoury
said. “It wasn’t that she was a
politician who happened to be a
woman. She was a woman.”
Like the Kafoury women, Sha-
ron Meieran has learned to navi-
gate male-dominated arenas, first
as a lawyer, then as an emergen-
cy-room doctor, then sitting on
boards and committees mostly led
by men.
She champions access to men-
tal health services for people in
crisis and culturally-appropriate
services for immigrants and ref-
ugees. She’s also advocated for
reproductive health, especially for
low-income women and women of
color, who experience the highest
rates of unintended pregnancies; a
driver that perpetuates poverty.
Meieran supports the philoso-
phy of the group One Key Ques-
tion, which asks simply, “Would
you like to become pregnant in
the next year?” “If the answer is
‘yes,’ then let’s make sure you’re
as healthy as you can be,” she
said. Maybe that means folic acid
supplements or controlling diabe-
tes. “It honors women who want
to become pregnant. It honors a
woman’s choice.”
Multnomah County is home
to more than 50,000 Latino resi-
dents, but the county has had few
elected Latino leaders. Serena
Cruz was the first Hispanic Amer-
ican elected, in 1998, followed by
Maria Rojo De Steffey three years
later.
Jessica Vega Pederson is the
county’s third Latina commis-
sioner. She previously served in
the Oregon House where she was
the first Latina elected and where
she fought for access to govern-
ment-issued driving cards for un-
documented Oregonians, equal
pay for women, paid sick leave
and higher minimum wages. Lo-
cally, she has lobbied for money
to install flashing crosswalks on
some of the busiest and darkest
four-lane roads that carry east
Portland commuters to downtown
jobs. Health and sustainable com-
munities top her agenda going into
her four-year term.
“In east Portland we’re tired of
being the exception to services,
being told, ‘oh we’ll get to it next
year,’” she said. Pedestrian fa-
talities in her neighborhood are
the highest in the county. Rising
Multnomah County Commissioner Lori Stegmann, the first Asian American elected to the county’s five
member governing board, is sworn into office on Jan. 3 by the honorable Multnomah County Circuit
Court Judge Adrienne Nelson.
housing costs are pushing people
of color, immigrants and refugees
and low-income families further
east.
Commissioner Loretta Smith,
elected to represent north Port-
land, takes pride in her roots in the
African American community and
her role of representing diverse
and disadvantaged residents.
Serving as an “ambassador” lands
on her shoulders.
“You have to serve two com-
munities,” she said. “When people
see someone who looks like them,
they want to engage. They think
you’re more apt to listen. There’s
an expectation that we’ll be more
receptive to their needs, that it will
define how we administer public
policy, and how we spend our re-
sources.”
Smith has heard concerns about
a lack of access to social services
for families in east Portland, and
she pushed to implement the
Promise Neighborhoods Initia-
tive, providing culturally specif-
ic, community-based services for
kids of color.
Shortly after being elected
in 2010, Smith held a town hall
meeting for African American
men and more than 300 attendees
expressed their frustration over
the lack of summer jobs for teens.
So she created the Summerworks
internship program. What started
with 25 kids has grown to provide
jobs to more than 500 young peo-
ple a year.
For the first time, last summer,
Smith saw the seeds of that advo-
cacy. An intern told her, “I want to
be you.”