Black Lives Matter activists interrupt Bernie Sanders at a rally in Seattle. Credit: Demotix/Alex Garland.
I lived for nearly 25 years in Portland, Oregon. There I staffed an organization dedicated to fighting vigilante white supremacists. In order to fight the white right, we built a base that was made up almost entirely of white progressives. I also served as the Executive Director of the McKenzie River Gathering Foundation, a financial resource for progressive causes in Oregon. The foundation is supported almost entirely by wealthy white progressives. During my years in Portland, I also worked to end the prison build-up through a group made up of incarcerated people and their loved ones. The prison population in Oregon is disproportionately Black, but majority white.
Portland is not far from Seattle, a city I lived and worked in while I served as a program officer, and eventually the director, of Social Justice Fund Northwest, a five-state regional public foundation dedicated to progressive causes, especially the cause of racial justice. That group also had a base of donors that was primarily white and progressive.
