Celebrating Local Social Justice Heroes
/We know that community building happens in shared spaces. Here at Northwest Health Foundation, we are privileged to have large, well-equipped meeting rooms and excited to be able to offer these rooms on a daily basis to nonprofit organizations serving our region.
Recently, we realized we can do more to welcome and recognize the communities who use the Center for Philanthropy's spaces. With this in mind, we've renamed our meeting rooms after local social justice heroes. While the rooms' previous names (Bamboo, Jade, Orchid, Ming) nodded to the Center for Philanthropy's address in Portland's Old Town Chinatown district, the new names celebrate leaders who contributed to our communities' health in a big way.
These are the rooms' new namesakes:
Photo from The Oregon History Project
BEATRICE MORROW CANNADY (1890-1974)
Beatrice Morrow Cannady was a civil rights activist and founding member of Portland’s branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). She used her position as editor of the Advocate, Oregon’s largest African American newspaper, to defend the rights of African Americans in Oregon and southwest Washington.
Photo from OregonLive.com
ARTHUR HONEYMAN, MFA (1940-2008)
Arthur Honeyman was a prolific essayist, poet, publisher and disability rights activist who did things his own way. Among his life adventures: running for Oregon’s state legislature twice on a platform of “Spastic Power,” shuffling his wheelchair from Portland to Salem along the freeway to protest the lack of disabled access on buses and springing his mother out of a mental institution.
Photo from The Oregon Historical Society
IWAO OYAMA (1886-1952)
Iwao Oyama edited and published Oshu Nippo, the primary Japanese language newspaper in Oregon, from 1917-1951. On the afternoon of the attack on Pearl Harbor, Iwao Oyama was arrested and his printing press confiscated. Nevertheless, as soon as World War II ended, he returned to Portland and resumed publishing Oshu Nippo with a typewriter and mimeograph machine.
PHOTO FROM WWW.GOFUNDME.COM/ZYS6NNR8
MELISSA SARABIA (1988-2015)
Melissa Sarabia was studying to be an immigration lawyer at Lewis & Clark Law School. She acted as an advocate for educational justice for undocumented youth and would often testify on behalf of DREAMers. Melissa’s family believes she was motivated to protect others’ rights and help them overcome their life obstacles due to her own experience with cystic fibrosis.
Photo from day1.org
REVEREND RAMONA SOTO RANK (1944-2007)
Reverend Ramona Soto Rank was an enrolled member of the Klamath Tribes of Oregon and the first Native American woman to be ordained in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. As a leader in both American Indian/Alaska Native communities and the Lutheran Church, Ramona strongly supported Native American rights for sovereignty and self-determination.
We hope to see you at the Center for Philanthropy sometime soon!