Oregon Physicians for Social Responsibility

We are excited to welcome Mickey Alford (he/they) to the Oregon PSR team! Mickey is OPSR’s new Quaker Voluntary Service Fellow, and we are thrilled to have him on our team for the next 11 months. 

As the ongoing war in Ukraine reminds us, the existence of nuclear weapons remains a threat to all life on our planet. While 90% of the world’s nuclear weapons remain controlled by the US and Russia, momentum is growing for a nuclear-free future as the majority of countries in the world have come together to create the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, making nuclear weapons illegal under international law. The first meeting of State Parties of the Treaty concluded this summer, with even some NATO-member countries surprising the world by attending.

We here in the US must do our part to work for a nuclear-free future. That is why for the past 30 years, Oregon PSR has taken the lead in organizing the Portland community commemoration of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, together with our partners, to honor the lives lost to nuclear weapons and renewing our pledge to work for nuclear justice and create a nuclear-free future. 

Please join me in welcoming our two new staff members, Jess Gasper as the new Membership Manager and Anna Kahler as the new Communications Coordinator. 

As some of you may know these hirings are a long time coming. Our organization has grown and diversified over the years and so have the needs of the organization. In order to meet the current and future needs of Oregon PSR we decided to create two new roles. The first being the Membership Manager to help support membership growth and engagement, and fundraising. The second is a Communications Manager to enhance our ability to share our stories through social media and news media.  We are very excited for you all to meet our newest staff! 

Great news! The City of Eugene voted this week to move forward with several measures advancing the transition away from gas in homes and buildings. The motions include one directing staff to draft ordinance language to mandate that all new homes be constructed 100% electric by June 1st, 2023; a second advancing conversations to transition new commercial and industrial construction to require all electric; and a third seeks to formalize Eugene’s goal of electrifying all existing residential and commercial buildings by 2035. 

I want to extend my deep gratitude and best wishes on behalf of all of us at Oregon PSR to Sean Tenney, our Associate Director, who will be leaving our organization in mid-August as he moves on to new adventures living in Spain later this summer. Sean has contributed so much to building an effective organization during his twelve-year tenure, from improving our website and communications infrastructure to organizing annual Hiroshima and Nagasaki memorials to providing behind-the-scenes support for all of our programmatic work and more. Sean's sense of humor and passion for justice will be missed! 

Our deepest thanks and well-wishes to Jackie Lamars, who has been Oregon PSR’s Program Assistant through the Quaker Voluntary Service fellowship program for the past year. Jackie did a tremendous job of designing and overseeing our 2022 Greenfield Peace Scholarship, took the lead on improving our social media outreach, and supported all of our work in ways too numerous to count.

Dr. Richard Bruno is a double-boarded Family & Preventive medicine physician, serving as the Senior Medical Director for Primary Care at a federally-qualified health center that focuses on healthcare for the homeless in Portland, Oregon. He has led workshops, conferences, rallies, and actions for health justice and climate justice. His main clinical focuses are on HIV, gender affirming care, obesity, and opioids, with involvement in community public health interventions and policies, including cooking classes for kids and legislation expanding access to medication for opioid use disorder.

On Friday, June 24th, the US Supreme Court ruled that each state may now create any laws it wishes to regulate or completely ban abortion services, overturning nearly 50 years of precedent created with the 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade. This ruling is an injustice that affects so many and stands to disproportionately impact the health and safety of people of color, LGBTQ communities, low-income communities, and people who experience systemic barriers to comprehensive reproductive healthcare. Abortion access is a human right and a matter of health equity, reproductive, and environmental justice. As an organization guided by the values and expertise of healthcare and public health, Oregon PSR will continue to find ways to confront this injustice within our work to promote a healthy, just, and peaceful world.

Currently, Oregon is one of the few states where abortion is fully protected. However, we must stay vigilant in the face of such injustice.

Sign up to testify for the Portland Fossil Fuel Terminal Zoning Amendment (FFTZA) hearing this Thursday, June 30th at 2:00 PM. This landmark law will ban new or expanded bulk fossil fuel infrastructure and we need your support!

As we move towards a more solar- and wind-dependent energy grid in the United States, the need for energy storage is expected to increase dramatically. Since solar and wind power systems are dependent upon the sun shining or the wind blowing, their reliability hinges upon storing energy when generation is higher than demand and releasing it when demand is higher than generation. Currently, the two leading technologies for this wide-scale level of energy storage include pumped hydro energy storage and battery systems. A recent academic review of both systems highlights their individual strengths: