Portland observer., February 19, 2020, Image 1

Black
History
Month
Established in 1970
PO QR code
Volume XLVIV • Number 8
‘City
of
Roses’
www.portlandobserver.com
Wednesday • February 19, 2020
Committed to Cultural Diversity
Power in Governing
Activist city
leader fights
for equity,
fairness
b everly C orbell
t he p ortland o bserver
When City Commissioner Jo Ann Hard-
esty, herself a historic leader at Portland
City Hall, thinks about Black History
Month, she thinks about Charles Jordan,
the first African American Portland city
commissioner, who served from 1974 to
1984.
“I had the privilege of meeting him and
getting to know him,” she said. “And what
I learned from his legacy is that there is al-
ways strong leadership from people of col-
or communities, but the problem is wheth-
er they are recognized by everybody else.”
Hardesty, who first was elected to pubic
office in the Oregon House of Represen-
tatives from 1995 to 2001, is widely rec-
ognized today because of her historic City
Council race last year in which she became
the first African American female on the
council. It followed two decades of outspo-
ken activism for progressive causes.
She served in the trenches as a com-
munity organizer as executive director of
Oregon Action, building a movement for
justice in Oregon led by people of color,
immigrants and refugees, rural communi-
ties, and people experiencing poverty, and
later as president of the Portland NAACP.
She also hosts a progressive radio show,
“Voices from the Edge,” on KBOO Radio.
In an interview with the Portland Ob-
server for Black History Month, Hardesty
talked about her work and what it takes to
overcome obstacles.
Because of her activism, Hardesty said
there was a public misperception that she
couldn’t build coalitions, that she “was just
a bullhorn and would just yell at people,”
but that’s not true, she said.
“What I wanted was equity and fairness,
and what I wanted was for my people to
by
photo by b everly C orbell /t he p ortland o bserver
Jo Ann Hardesty, the first African American woman to serve on the Portland City
Council.
be treated the same way as the people who
live downtown.”
Calling herself “a community organiz-
er who happens to have a seat on the City
Council,” Hardesty said she brings those
grassroots skills to the table of city govern-
ment.
“My style is radically different from my
colleagues because I have always come to
this work from a position of, ‘Who’s most
impacted, how do we hear their voices, and
how do we make sure they’re part of help-
ing us develop what the solution is?’ ” she
said.
The full council heard those impacted
voices, when under Hardesty’s leadership,
commissioners developed a plan for Port-
land Street Response, a new pilot program
that will start this spring that will use men-
tal health professionals instead of police
in responding to some non-emergency
calls, many of which come from homeless
camps. But before coming up with a plan,
volunteers went out and interviewed hun-
dreds of homeless first, to see what they
needed.
“We very intentionally started out
talking to the houseless people before we
started talking to the neighborhoods and
the business associations,” Hardesty said.
“We wanted to make sure that we were
grounded in what houseless people said
they needed. It’s a different way to go and
I think people of color govern differently
and I think women govern differently.”
Women also lead differently in crisis
situations, and although she’s a frequent
critic of police brutality, Hardesty said one
reason that there was no major disturbance
to the peace last August when white su-
premacists and anti-supremacists clashed
in downtown Portland, was that women,
including former Police Chief Danielle
Outlaw, were in charge and kept confron-
tations to a minimum.
“They had a lot of pushback when they
opened to the Hawthorne Bridge to let the
white supremacists go, but I said that was
the smartest thing they could have done,”
she said, to separate the groups.
Because she oversees fire and rescue
and emergency management, Hardesty
C ontinued on p age 4