Minority & Small Business Week
October 6, 2021
Page 3
INSIDE L O C A L N E W S
O PINION
page 8
M ETRO
page 13
Black excellence is celebrated as part of a new billboard campaign to target community violence
that is sponsored by Youth Organized and United to Help, a Black-led organization founded by Imani
Muhammad, a long time youth mentor and educator.
Billboards are Call to Action
Arts &
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Youth group’s anti-gun
violence campaign
In an era of gun violence, a COVID pandemic and
financial uncertainty, Youth Organized and United
to Help (Y.O.U.th) has decided to give its attention
to what should be celebrated: Black Excellence.
In a counter-response to the school-to-prison
pipeline epidemic that is evident in Oregon and
across the nation, 16 billboards are being featured
across the Portland area to help shape a more eq-
uitable picture of the Black experience by focusing
attention on Black ingenuity, creativity and the in-
spirational potential of Black youth.
“We want our Black youth to know, believe and
achieve Black excellence,” noted Y.O.U.th’s vision-
ary founder Imani Muhammad.
The billboard campaign is part of the initial
launch of the Public Safety Village, an initiative
overseen by the Portland Opportunities and Indus-
trialization Center and Rosemary Anderson High
School, in partnership with 11 grassroots, Black-led
organizations.
Muhammad, a former educator and administrator
for Portland area Boys and Girls Clubs, including
the Blazers Boys and Girls Club, founded Y.O.U.th
in 2007 in response to the shooting death of one of
her 14-year-old students in northeast Portland.
The billboards, which went up this month, consist
of three images: Two promote the group’s brand and
logo; the third is a backdrop picture of five Black
youth with the words “Black Excellence.”
Y.O.U.th’s mission is to motivate, inspire and
empower youth, family and educators to dismantle
the school to prison pipeline by challenging existing
systems and structures. For more information, visit
youthpdx.org
Increasing Access to the Trades
Portland Community College
president Mark Mitsui recently
announced that PCC was adopting
the Construction Careers Path-
ways Framework, a program that
aims to head off a forecast short-
age of skilled labor by increasing
access to the trades for women
and people of color.
Spearheaded by Metro regional
government, the framework fo-
cuses on recruitment and retention
of women and people of color into
skilled labor jobs that have histor-
ically been dominated by white Mark Mitsui
men. As the region continues to
grow and workers reach retire- the years to come.
The barriers the construction
ment age, trade unions say they
expect to be short of workers in program aims to address include
direct barriers, like racism, sexism
and harassment in the workplace,
to indirect barriers, like access to
child care and other supports for
workers.
“This program builds stabil-
ity and careers for our region’s
workers, and helps keep construc-
tion costs low by having a trained
workforce ready to deploy on any
project,” said Metro Council Pres-
ident Lynn Peterson. “By using
public projects to establish the
program, we can make it easier
for construction projects every-
where to use these principles and
a diverse workforce.”
Continued on Page 15