To Lift Up Communities of Color, Fix Public Transit
A proposed payroll tax on the Portland ballot invests in Black and Brown communities. But corporations like Nike that say they support racial equity oppose it.
An expansion of the Portland metro area light rail system is just one component of a wide-ranging measure on the November ballot.
Photographer: Rebecca Smeyne/BloombergAmerica is experiencing a reckoning, again. Since our country’s “founding” in 1776, we have grappled with its original sin of racism, a moral disgrace whose penance has taken us through abolition, the Civil War, the 13th Amendment, the Voting Rights Act, and the current wave of protests in response to police brutality. Today’s struggle justifiably grabs headlines, but the fight for reform in policing doesn’t tell the full story.
Policies as mundane as infrastructure and accessibility represent the next frontier in our struggle. The fight for fairness and equity lives in our tax, social and urban policies, perhaps even more than in our words and rhetoric. While not glamorous, these policies offer communities of color the access to education and economic opportunity to lift themselves up, the benefits of which pave a path to higher economic status and build political power that is desperately lacking.