Following a series of conversations about how best to communicate our organizational values of equity, diversity, inclusion, and justice, Oregon PSR's Board of Directors recently approved the following statement:

Oregon PSR recognizes that diversity, equity, inclusion, and social justice are crucial to healthy individuals, vibrant communities, and thriving organizations. We understand that our society has deeply embedded in it centuries of white supremacy and dominance, from the massacre and dispossession of native peoples, economies built on enslavement and disproportionate imprisonment of people of color and poor people to the concentration of wealth in the hands of a small, mostly white, elite power structure.

Have you celebrated the recent permit denial for Millennium’s coal export terminal yet? If not, here’s your invitation to a party (and public hearing) you don’t want to miss.

Call Senators Wyden and Merkley today to support protecting the Iran Nuclear Deal from Trump's reckless plans.

The Iran Deal is living proof: diplomacy works, and is a peaceful path towards a world free of the threat of nuclear war. Iran is complying with the 2015 multinational agreement to denuclearize and The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has certified Iran to be in compliance eight times in a row. Iran has removed over two-thirds of its centrifuges, shipped out 98% of its uranium stockpile, and pulled the core from its plutonium reactor.

With the threat of climate chaos and nuclear war feeling all the more tangible as fires, floods, and hurricanes wreak havoc and tensions rise with North Korea, I am more grateful than ever to be part of an organization making progress on tackling these existential threats.

"...we believe that all people, wherever they were born, deserve a healthy environment with clean air, clean water, and a stable climate."

Oregon PSR opposes Measure 105 (formerly Initiative Petition 22 or IP 22), an attempt by the anti-immigrant hate group Oregonians for Immigration Reform (OFIR) to repeal our state’s 30-year-old inclusivity law (ORS 181A.820) prohibiting the use of state and local resources to enforce federal immigration law. OFIR is recognized by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a nativist extremist group with ties to white nationalism. If successful, Measure 105 would put repealing our 1987 inclusivity law, which is strongly supported by state and local law enforcement, onto Oregon's November 2018 ballot.

On August 20^th of this year a valve in the Columbia Generating Station (CGS) nuclear power plant’s condenser froze shut, stopping its ability to cool the reactor core and forcing plant operators to rapidly shut down the nuclear plant. It remained at zero power for nearly two weeks. This loss of power generation gives us an insight into how the years have taken their toll on this aging GE Boiling Water Reactor – the last remaining commercial nuclear power facility in the Pacific Northwest.

As I began writing this article in September in Shady Cove, I smelled smoke. The Chetco Bar fire was burning in the Illinois River Valley, Chetco River corridor, and Kalmiopsis Wilderness. The Milli fire was burning in and near the Three Sisters Wilderness. At home, the Eagle Creek fire in the Columbia Gorge was growing. Friends recently evacuated from the west side of the Gorge were returning home, while those to the east prepared to leave.

At the beginning of this year, Oregon PSR joined a new campaign to shut down Portland General Electric’s plans to build new gas power plants at the Carty Generating Station near Boardman, Oregon. The plants would have increased imports of fracked "natural" gas from Canada into the state, replacing the soon-to-be decommissioned Boardman Coal Plant with another climate-busting fossil fuel.

Ten years after being founded by Physicians for Social Responsibility's international federation (International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War), the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for their successful efforts to establish the United Nations Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. 

Join us Sunday, October 15th at 3pm for "What Unites Us," a Portland Gay Men's Chorus concert uplifting the work of social justice organizations including Oregon PSR, the NAACP of Portland, and more.