The Oregon Food Bank’s Food, Education, Agriculture, Solutions Together (FEAST) program, a “community organizing process that brings people together to build more just and resilient local food systems through community conversations and project implementation,” is coming to Corvallis this Saturday, Feb. 11.
FEAST events are opportunities for communities to mobilize to share input and ideas for improving local food systems, create and implement action plans, and continue to hone and sustain these efforts. In late 2022, the Old Mill Center, a Corvallis-based facility that provides programs and services to support the various health needs of local children and families, received a $9,000 grant to fiscally sponsor a FEAST event with Growing Ancestral Roots (GAR), a local BIPOC-led community gardening organization that provides resources, CSA boxes and home-cooked cultural meals, and shared gardening space for multigenerational Black, Indigenous, and Communities of Color in Corvallis – including international students and families, refugees, and immigrants – to practice, reclaim, and/or revive their ancestral food growing and land stewardship traditions.
Families and community members are all welcome to attend – BIPOC being especially encouraged – to engage in important conversations about how to strengthen and enrich food systems in Corvallis. There will be a variety of cultural dishes, grocery store gift cards, raffle prizes from local cultural stores, and childcare providers (one of whom speaks Spanish).
“BIPOC and multicultural families,” wrote GAR in a Facebook post, “Please join us for this opportunity to get together and share stories about what food truly means to us and to collectively create what does not exist in the community and make it accessible, that is supportive of our culture and nutrition.”
The event will take place from 12 – 4 p.m. at the Corvallis Community Center, located on 2601 NW Tyler Ave. Food and seats are available on a first-come, first-serve basis. To register, you can email GAR at growingancestralroots@gmail.com or call or text 541-257-8224.
Caring About Community Tap Talk: The 500 Women Scientists Corvallis Pod, a local branch of a grassroots organization and support network dedicated to making science more open, inclusive and accessible, and to transforming society by “fighting racism, patriarchy, and oppressive societal norms,” is hosting a new “Tap Talk” presentation this Sunday, Feb. 12, at Common Fields. Free and open to the public, this month’s presentation is “Caring About Community”, which will include discussions with two members of the Corvallis Daytime Drop-In Center (CDDC), the only local daytime community resource and navigation center for people experiencing homelessness and poverty: Maddie Bean and Allison Hobgood.
Bean is the Street Outreach and Response Team (SORT) Coordinator for the CDDC, where she has learned “a great deal” about “trauma-informed care and social justice issues, and strives constantly to apply these skills in her outreach approach.” Hobgood serves as the Executive Director of the CDDC; with a background in teaching disability studies in higher education, she is currently committed to grassroots organizing for disability and housing justice, and is also a proud member of the Disability Equity Center (DEC), a Corvallis-based organization spreading disability culture, justice, and pride in the Willamette Valley. Both will talk about resources that are available for people living in poverty in Benton County, and various ways that anyone can be a part of meeting each other’s needs and taking care of their communities.
“Maddie and Allison are eager to share about the work and coalition building that takes place at the Center, and how CDDC and its guests create opportunities where people can experience greater health, safety, equity, and humanity,” reads a description for the event. “We are a community that believes in dignity and compassion, harm reduction, healing-centered engagement, and social justice transformation. Come learn about and support CDDC!”
The presentation will take place from 5:30 – 6:30 p.m. Proceeds from food purchased at Common Fields from 11 a.m. – 8 p.m. that day will go towards the CDDC.
Black Queer History Week Events: The SOL LGBTQ+ Multicultural Support Network, a student-led organization that focuses on providing support to Queer, Trans, and Intersex Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (QTIBIPOC), is hosting educational, care-centric, and activist events next week in celebration of Black queer histories and futures.
On Monday, Feb. 13, from 3 – 5 p.m., the OSU Pride Center, temporarily located in Room 112 of the Student Experience Center (SEC), people are invited to come learn about how Black queer and trans folks of the New York Ballroom scene changed and shaped the world we live in today. There will be a short documentary, presentation, and panel discussion with Lyta Blunt, a fat, Black, disabled Drag Queen and founder/mother of the Eugene-based Haus of Blunt, which often hosts BIPOC drag, performance art, and variety shows.
OSU’s Black Student Union (BSU) has taken to highlighting an influential Black historical figure on their social media during each week of Black History Month. In their first Instagram post of this series, the BSU provided a short historical account of William Dorsey Swann (b. 1858 – d. 1925), a formerly enslaved Black man credited with being the earliest known Drag Queen and activist for queer liberation in the U.S., as well as an originator of ballroom culture and the modern drag scene.
“Swann would host secret ‘Balls’ where formerly enslaved men would dress in satin and silk dresses which ultimately coined ‘Ballroom’ culture,” reads the post. “‘Voguing’ was a popular dance style performed during what was known as the ‘cakewalk’ or now known as the ‘prize walk’ portion of the ball. The dance originated from the mocking of plantation owners’ movements and expressions.”
Swann was arrested multiple times for allegations spanning from “female impersonation” to the false charge of “keeping a disorderly house” (aka a brothel) though this didn’t stop them from organizing and holding drag balls for Black queer people – in what became known as the “House of Swann” – against ongoing criminalization and censorship. During one of these balls, Swann led a resistance group of 12 other Black men against a police raid, which became known as one of the first instances of LGBTQ+ resistance against state and police surveillance, violence, and oppression – nearly a century before the Stonewall uprising.
“The House of Swan was where, people once treated as property, and subjected to the harsh existence of serving every whim of the white supremacist colonial structures of capitalism, became Queens in their own worlds,” wrote playwright, director and producer Marjorie Morgan in an article for National Museums Liverpool. “They moved from the fields, and positions of service, to the finery of satin gowns, extravagant hats, shoes, gloves and wigs.”
On Tuesday, Feb. 14, a Black Queer Care Circle will be held at the Lonnie B. Harris Black Cultural Center, located on 100 SW Memorial Pl., from 5:30 – 7 p.m. There will be discussions, videos, card making, opportunities for community building, as well as pizza and Valentine’s Day treats.
And finally, on Thursday, Feb. 16, from 6 – 7 p.m., the Pride Center will host a presentation on the history of activism in Oregon and Corvallis, where people can learn about the “rich and resistant nature of Oregon’s past and the BIPOC who fought and continue to fight in Corvallis and beyond.” This is open to all folks who are interested in or looking to get involved in local, sustainable activist work.
For accommodation requests related to disability, you can send an email to Pride Center Director Cindy Konrad at konrad@oregonstate.edu or by calling or texting 541-737-9969.
Resist Transphobia in Oregon: The OSU Queer Studies program, an interdisciplinary curriculum that helps students critically examine the relationships of homophobia and transphobia with racism, colonialism, ableism, classism, and other systems of oppression, is hosting a series of events to help both OSU and Corvallis community members learn how to rise up against transphobia in Oregon.
Starting this Saturday from 2 – 3 p.m. at the on-campus Centro Cultural César Chávez, the program will lead a workshop on how to contact your legislators. Next Thursday, Feb. 16,
a speakout will be hosted on the SEC plaza from 12 – 1 p.m. to discuss the ongoing transphobia that is happening across Oregon. Soon after, the program will host a teach-in at the Pride Center to “further contextualize and deepen our understanding of transphobia in Oregon and the United States.”
The exact date and time for the Pride Center teach-in has yet to be determined; for updates, you can follow the Queer Studies program on their Instagram account. These events are co-sponsored by the Hattie Redmond Women and Gender Center, Centro Cultural César Chávez, Kaku-Ixt Mana Ina Haws, SOL LGBTQ+ Multicultural Support Network, and the Pride Center.
By Emilie Ratcliff
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