Back in mid-February, the 500 Women Scientists Corvallis Pod hosted a “Tap Talk” at Common Fields with Executive Director Allison Hobbs and Street Outreach and Response Team (SORT) Coordinator Maddie Bean of the Corvallis Daytime Drop-In Center (CDDC). The subject of the talk was on caring about community, and both Hobbs and Bean – along with a few other volunteers, guests, and supporters of the center who were in attendance – shared some of the work they do at the CDDC, the needs of folks experiencing poverty and housing instability in Benton County, and the transformative change they’re trying to create in the community. Below are some highlights from the talk.
“The Drop-In Center is a resource and navigation hub for people experiencing poverty,” said Hobbs. “We are a place where our foundational ethos is based in transformative justice work. So we try and center the most marginalized people in our community and ask them what they need, listen to them and then try and provide support for them as we can. We are also led by disability justice principles, especially the idea of ‘nothing about us without us’, which means that the guests that we serve are at the heart of the grassroots change that we are all trying to create together.”
Hobbs went on to discuss the impact of systemic oppression on the folks that they serve, and how that shows up at the center.
“We aim to do some mild data collection at the center, and have found that – and this might be unsurprising to many of you – homeless Indigenous and Black individuals are exceptionally overrepresented at the Drop-In Center,” she said. “A significant number of people that we serve identify as LGBTQIA+, and about 76% of Drop-In Center guests identify as having disabilities.”
Citing the Benton County 2020 Census Data, Hobbs said that 4.9% of the county’s population identifies as Indian or Alaskan Native, whereas 13% of the folks they serve at the center identify as Indian or Alaskan Native. Similarly, 1.2% of the county’s population identifies as Black or African-American, but makes up 8% of CDDC guests, and 7.8% of the county’s population identifies as Latinx or Hispanic, but also makes up about 8% of CDDC guests.
“I like to flag up these statistics because one, they’re not statistics, they’re humans, and it’s really important to remember that behind statistics are human beings,” she said. “And I think it’s really instructive of how real and tangible the impacts of white supremacy, patriarchy, ableism – how all of those things come together and multiply marginalized people. And we see that in real time at the center.”
Bean described some of the practices and roles of SORT, an extension of the CDDC; which includes groups of volunteers reaching out to and checking in on unhoused community members twice a week, building trust and relationships; informing people where they can access food, clothing, healthcare, and other community resources; and extending some of the services the CDDC provides directly to people where they are camping – some of whom don’t or are unable to regularly come to the center. A lot of these efforts, however, are often challenged by ongoing camp sweeps, which are carried out by the City of Corvallis Parks and Recreation Department or the Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT).
“People are being displaced, and there have been many people who we are not able to connect with for weeks, if not months, because we just don’t know where they are or there’s no contact information and we can’t get ahold of them,” said Bean. “And then it’s also really traumatizing for people who are being displaced over and over again.”
Bean added that another role of the SORT Team has been to be in solidarity with the folks who are being displaced as much as they can be, especially on the days when there’s a big sweep happening, which is usually carried out by both entities and involves a lot of heavy equipment being brought in.
“We do try to make a point of being there, [depending on] whoever’s able to make it those days, and actually either help people pack up their belongings – because sometimes all that’s needed is just an extra hand, or the same things that we always do,” she said. “Offering a hot meal, a cup of coffee. You know, moving sucks, and if you’re out in the rain and in [bad] weather, it can be really nice just to have a little bit of fuel and warmth and a friendly person to talk with. And then a really big part is bridging communication about what is going on; I have a contact at Parks and Rec and at ODOT, and I really value these relationships because they keep me in the loop about what is happening, and I get a heads up about when they’re going to be posting and when they’re going to be coming back. And so we’re able to disseminate that information to the folks that are being affected and give them as much of a heads up as possible, as well as reminders, as well as correcting misinformation because sometimes whoever the entity is says they’re gonna come back on one day and then they don’t. It gets really confusing, and so I’m able to pick up the phone and get some clarity and provide some accurate information to folks, which is really helpful, but it’s [also] a challenge.”
Hobbs, not wanting to end the talk on a negative note, added, “One of the things that I learned about in terms of street outreach that was staggering and horrifying to me is that when the Oregon Department of Transportation comes to do the camp evictions, they bring folks who are incarcerated to come do the work of moving unhoused people out of their encampments. And I want to mention this because this is the inspirational part: We have to do change on so many levels. I mean, that we’re using incarcerated people to move unhoused people from the places they are trying to live is unconscionable. Many of those people have likely been unhoused before, or have experienced unbelievably traumatic things under our carceral systems and are now having to act that out on our community, so we can do better. We’re all here trying to make incredible change. Thank you for the change agents that you are.”
To listen to the full talk, you can access the recording on 500 Women Scientists Corvallis’ Instagram page here.
Local Fundraiser for Black Food Sovereignty: The Coalition of Graduate Employees (CGE), a labor union of graduate research and teaching assistants at Oregon State University, is organizing a fundraiser for the Black Food Sovereignty Coalition (BFSC), a Black-centered, Portland-based food justice collaboration hub committed to reclaiming and strengthening local and regional food systems for Black, Indigenous, and Brown communities throughout the Pacific Northwest.
“As a first step towards building solidarity and supporting Black communities in Oregon through real material resources and mutual aid,” reads an Instagram post, “CGE will be fundraising the following month for the Black Food Sovereignty Coalition of the Pacific Northwest, an organization working to dismantle barriers to food equity through sustainable community programs and mutual aid.”
The CGE will match donations up to $500 and will be collecting donations until Wednesday, March 15. You can donate to their Venmo, @CGE-OSU, and write that the amount is for this fundraiser.
Book Talk with Shannon Clay: On Monday, March 13, the Book Bin will be hosting a free author talk with Shannon Clay on the launch of We Go Where They Go: The Story of Anti-Racist Action, which recounts the massive youth movement that paved the way for contemporary anti-fascist organizing and activism in North America.
“When skinheads and punks in the late 1980s found their communities invaded by white supremacists and neo-nazis, they fought back,” reads the book’s summary. “Influenced by anarchism, feminism, Black liberation, and Indigenous sovereignty, they created Anti-Racist Action. At ARA’s height in the 1990s, thousands of dedicated activists in hundreds of chapters joined the fights—political and sometimes physical—against Nazis, the Ku Klux Klan, anti-abortion fundamentalists, and racist police. Before media pundits, cynical politicians, and your uncle discovered ‘antifa,’ Anti-Racist Action was bringing it to the streets.”
Featuring interviews with dozens of ARA participants and reproductions of posters, zines, and photographs of the movement, We Go Where They Go presents itself as “essential work of radical history” that “illustrates how cultural scenes can become powerful forces for change” and offers “valuable lessons for today’s generation of activists and rabble-rousers.”
Corvallis DIY, a community of people who organize and attend all-ages DIY events in town, have also promoted the event on social media.
“For the unfamiliar, the ARA started out as skinheads and punks beating the shit out of nazi boneheads in Minneapolis and grew to become a grassroots network of chapters across the US practicing different forms of antiracist and antifascist direct action,” reads a Corvallis DIY Instagram post. “The Portland ARA chapter was responsible for stomping nazis out of the local punk scene in the late 80s-early 90s. This is a super cool opportunity to learn more about the history of modern antifascist organizing and is especially relevant for folks interested in the intersection of DIY punk and leftist politics.”
The author talk will start at 5:30 p.m. We Go Where They Go is published by Working Class History and PM Press.
By Emilie Ratcliff
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