Oregon Connections: Community Organizing
OHS presents “Oregon Connections: A Conversation Series on the Right to be Free,” an all-virtual program series featuring conversations among experts and with audience members. Although many of the decisions that affect people’s access to rights such as freedom of speech, citizenship, and due process are made at the federal level, it is often on the local level that those freedoms are both exercised and oppressed — amid debates, actions, and inspirations on a global scale.
During the months leading up to the semiquincentennial of the Declaration of Independence, the Oregon Connections series invites audiences to listen, learn, ask questions, and consider some of the ways Oregonians have struggled for justice and freedom.
Oregonians have influenced local, national, and international policies through their organizing work. Their successful woman-suffrage campaign of 1912 was achieved through grassroots organizing throughout the state, across class and race, and by using modern media tactics. Later in the century, Black Oregonians drew on long experience and strong local organizations to develop a multi-tactic strategy to lead a successful, local South African Anti-Apartheid movement. Around the same time, diverse groups of activists in communities throughout the state organized a widely supported campaign for peace and justice in Central America. Join historical experts for a discussion of the history of community organizing for freedom from oppression.