Street Roots (Portland, OR) 
January 23, 2007 

UNITED WE STAND
Portland's immigrants and refugees organize to help make the city more accessible to its changing demographic

By Joanne Zuhl

Like so many Portland transplants, Entisar Azouz fell in love with the city’s beautiful scenery, the quality of life, and the progressive political and social culture. But the core of Azouz’s wooded utopia shook on 9/11. “With 9/11 came the discrimination,” said Azouz, who is from Libya and a Muslim. “I had friends who lost their jobs because their name is Muhammad. I had a friend shopping in a store and a person spit on her face. I had another friend standing in line to buy candy at a famous store, and the person behind the counter refused to serve them. Another woman was run off the road by a guy in a truck cussing at them.”

At the same time, the Portland she fell in love with years ago also shined through, people were generous with their homes and comfort, and she experienced many gestures of compassion and understanding. But the worm that turned on 9/11 has never left her. Even today, travelling is a trial on her heritage. Random searches, she says, get a little weird when she and her family are selected every time.

“It was a disappointment,” she says of the reaction in her own community. “Because I left a situation where I was not able to be completely free or speak, and it was déjà vu.”
More than two decades ago, Azouz left Libya for opportunities in America, ultimately settling in Portland. Here she is an organizer in the Arab community, and has worked to help refugees from Kosovo, Iraq and the Sudan integrate into their new culture, secure jobs and buy homes.

Not all cultures felt the jarring ramifications of 9/11 as sharply as the Arab and Middle-Eastern community. For many, the barriers have always been there; racism, language, oversight and ignorance. The obstacles are institutionalized in schools, libraries, law enforcement and civic policies. Nationally, it has taken a more sinister form, in the proliferation of anti-immigration organizations. The Center for New Community, a national organization aimed at building democratic and social justice, says the number of anti-immigration groups has grown 600 percent in the past year and a half.

As Portland’s immigrant and refugee population continues to grow – today, one out of every eight residents in the greater Portland area is foreign-born – the need to keep civic policy and public accessibility in tune with the city’s changing demography is a priority for Azouz and her partners at the Center for Intercultural Organizing, where she serves as a board member.

“At different times in Portland’s history, the city had different ways of dealing with immigrants,” said Stephanie Stephens, development and communications director with the Western States Center and board member for the Center for Intercultural Organizing. “There used to be a refugee position in city hall, but that was eliminated. What you’re seeing now is a critical mass of immigrants and refugees, and this work has been coming from immigrants and refugees themselves, that’s different from the gatekeepers. They themselves are getting more organized.”

In October, Mayor Tom Potter and city commissioners addressed the city’s lack of a comprehensive plan to involve immigrants in public life with a resolution creating an immigrant and refugee task force. The task force, currently being assembled, is charged with resolving the barriers to the participation most of us take for granted. In the year leading up to that resolution, the immigrant and refugee population had been organizing around this issue, with groups from multiple cultures meeting to discuss their role in civil and public life. Their work is published in a new report titled “Uniting Cultures in Portland: Bridging the Gaps in City Policy.” The report was compiled by the Center for Cultural Organizing, in collaboration with a network of immigrant and refugee organizations and Portland State University, and is intended as a tool for the new task force.

“People are optimistic but cautious, Stephens said. “They don’t want just another task force with recommendations that don’t go anywhere,” she said. “I think they’re really excited about the political leadership. That’s what’s really exciting to them -- opening City Hall.

Other cities have established positive road maps with initiatives to break down the cultural and linguistic isolation immigrants are facing, according to Stephens. Most notable is Minneapolis, Minn., she says, where the city provides funds allowing community-based cultural organizations to foster culture-specific participation in civic affairs, particularly among the Somali and the Hmong communities. This past election cycle, the city elected the first Muslim congressman, Keith Ellison, to office.

Between 1990 and 2000, Portland saw a 108 percent increase in the foreign-born population, according to the U.S. Census, and foreign-born residents now account for 13 percent of Portland’s population, or 68,880 people. Most are from Latin America, but the immigration pool in Portland is diverse, coming from Europe, Africa and Asia.

“You’re talking about the entire world here,” Stephens said. “Some are afraid of government because of what they have experienced in their own countries. There are very significant issues with language issues. But that doesn’t mean that they’re not willing to participate.” The majority of these immigrants and refugees, 61 percent, have an income below $25,000, according to the report. These income levels make the immigrant and refugee population more vulnerable to budget cuts to human services at the federal and state levels.

Among the low-income population are the day laborers seen along inner east Burnside. Many of the day laborers live in poverty conditions, some stay in shelters and some are homeless, according to Romeo Sosa, the director of VOZ, which works to protect the workers’ rights. Sosa says all of them want permanent jobs, but the language barrier and the slow job market have made them almost impossible to find. Sosa said the passing of the city’s immigrant resolution is a good step, but only a step.

“Like anywhere in the country, there is some part that says you’re not welcome,” Sosa said. “The resolution has already passed to welcome immigrants, and we’re still facing the (anti-immigration group) Minutemen here in Portland. They are harassing the day laborers and intimidating employers, telling them they are criminals. I think that it is not so easy to just say Portland is welcoming to everybody. It’s going to take steps to work toward that goal.”

Sosa would like to see Portland establish itself as a sanctuary for immigrants to protect them from anti-immigration policies and harassment. According to Sosa, there are between 120,000 and 150,000 undocumented immigrants living in Oregon. This population works and lives in the community and yet is invisible, Sosa said. Immigration laws, the costs involved and the exclusions attached, compel people to find alternative ways to enter the country.

“Obviously the rich are welcome into this country, but the poor are not,” Sosa said. “The poor have to make other options.”

The report identifies 10 overarching issues that cross cultural lines of concern, issues gathered over a year of discussion sessions with various immigrant and refugee groups. The top priority was education for their children with multilingual and multicultural curriculums respective of various faiths and cultures. Participants among all cultures were concerned about the dropout rates among their youths, which puts young people at risk of entering the criminal justice system. Others would like to see a greater investment in English as a Second Language classes to help students learn English and access higher education.

Racial profiling by police and the need to for an environment that protects civil liberties and human rights were also priorities among those surveyed for the report. (The Arab community collected more than 150 surveys for the report, representing 400 individuals, but they would not meet together publicly for fear of being targeted by the FBI.)

“It’s not new. It rises and falls over time,” says Stephens of the anti-immigration movement. “We have such an a-historical view of this topic. If you look back at the very beginning of the U.S., this sort of white nationalist and nativist tendency has ebbed and flowed. “We’re in that time again where this sentiment is being exploited for political gain.”

Like Azouz, Stephens was changed by 9/11 and the backlash and policies it brought with it. As a Muslim, it compelled her to pursue a better understanding of the immigrant and refugee experience in the United States.

“I’ve always had a deep value of social justice, but I never really had an opportunity to put it into action,” Stephens said. “I’m 34, and I wasn’t around when the civil rights struggle was happening. And you always wonder if I were there, what would I have done?” In the time since, Stephens notes, immigrants generated the biggest political demonstrations in the history of the United States, protesting reform proposals by the Bush administration. “You just can’t stand by and not do anything,” she says. “There’s so much injustice happening, you have to say this is my time, this is our time, we have to act. I’m talking about the policies that target Arabs and South Asians and Muslims, the erosion of civil liberties and civil rights, the exploitation of undocumented people, human trafficking of Asian women, the incredible injustice that’s happening that is large scale and you can’t ignore. I want to see a society where we really enact our founding values of equality and justice and we’re not doing that right now.”

Like other cultures resettling in Portland, the African community faces language and cultural differences that complicates access to education, employment and the public process. The African Refugee Immigrant Network is teaching African immigrants English and computer technology to help them be more competitive in the academic and work settings. Even skilled and educated immigrants have difficulty reaching their potential in the Portland marketplace because of language and education barriers, according to Tedla Gessesse, director of the African Refugee Immigrant Network.

“It’s hard for them to compete in the regular class,” Gessesse said. Graduates of the courses have gone on to continue their studies and then have returned to help new immigrants from Africa, he said. Gessesse, who is from Ethiopia, says African immigrants also bring with them many ethnic and religious conflicts from their home countries, which he wants people to abandon at the border.

“The city has to unite us,” Gessesse said. “We need to be recognized and participating. We have something to offer.”

Elisa Aguilera, a lead organizer with the Community Alliance of Tenants, works with low-income renters and sees the challenges foreign-born populations face in finding affordable housing and asserting their rights as tenants, particularly if they are undocumented. They also coordinate translators to help people provide testimony before city commissioners, and Aguilera says the city and the public could be more accessible to people for whom English is a second language.

“We’ve had many folks who are very active in their communities, who want to get further involved, but they just can’t communicate properly without a translator,” Aguilera said. “There’s no patience for the learning of folks. If they need to learn, there needs to be some space for them to learn.”

“In order for a truly multi-ethnic community to exist, we have to get over this idea of assimilation,” said Stephens. “It has to be integration, and true integration goes both ways. They adapt, and we adapt. That’s the struggle that the U.S. has gone through since its founding: allowing people to maintain their identity and at the same time allowing them to participate.

“Has damage been done? Of course,” Stephens said. “I also think that it’s such a unique combination of events that allow things like this to occur. It didn’t exist before. We have a mayor who is really interested in immigrant and refugee participation and really civic participation in general. “We have the political will right now, which I don’t think has existed before.”
To view the report, go to www.interculturalorganizing.org

By Joanne Zuhl, Managing Editor

Reprinted from Street Roots
© Street News Service: www.street-papers.org