Portland is a different place beyond Interstate 205. East of the highway, the city’s welcoming spirit fades. The farther east you go, the fewer “Everyone is welcome” signs you’ll see, as well as fewer public art projects, cinemas, and sidewalks. You will find a wider variety of spoken languages, more affordable-housing projects, longer waits for public transit, and tastier food. All of this unfolds against a backdrop of warehouses and industries that keep commodities coming to our doors and money flowing to big corporations.
When I moved to Portland from Colombia in 2019, I started my job search by applying for positions at art spaces and cultural centers, hoping to use my experience working with arts organizations in my home country. After months of searching without success, I shifted gears and tried a new career, like many immigrants do, landing a job in social services with a nonprofit serving Latin American immigrant families. I was assigned as a family liaison to three schools in the Reynolds School District, which extends across East Portland, Fairview, and Troutdale. Happy for the opportunity, I embraced my new role with enthusiasm, became acquainted with the district’s system and staff, and began connecting with dozens of families who needed varying levels of support to navigate the challenges of public education in the US.
While working at Reynolds, I met Elisea Benítez, Soledad González, Diana Medina, Soledad Molina, Reyna Reyes, and Alicia Trejo, all Mexican immigrant mothers whose children participated in the after-school program I worked for. We endured the COVID-19 distress together and managed the shifting paths of education during the lockdown. We connected beyond the usual client-social worker relationship, and when I was assigned to other schools in a different district, our bond strengthened, leading us to collaborate in new endeavors independently. At potlucks in our living rooms, in borrowed kitchens, and in conference rooms, we shared reflections on our experiences as immigrants and our cultural legacies. Along the way, we created a couple of projects and founded a collective called El Conocimiento Migrante (Migrant Knowledge).
Our first project, in 2021, was about the Day of the Dead celebration. Reyna’s younger son was finally interested in learning about Mexican traditions after watching the Disney movie Coco, which made Reyna rethink her relationship with her cultural heritage as an immigrant. Originally from Oaxaca, a region rich in cultural traditions and Indigenous legacies, Reyna has been an Oregon resident since 1998, and her children grew up disconnected from their Mexican roots. As she said, “Living in this country, we lose much of our original culture because we don’t practice it. And if I don’t do it myself, the kids will be even less likely to do it.” I suggested we create a book together to pass on this knowledge, and she agreed. We invited other moms to participate, as many of them had also expressed interest in finding ways to share their cultural heritage with their families. They wanted to explain how these fiestas were celebrated in their hometowns.
The book took shape through casual workshops, delicious feasts, and long conversations. When we had to pick a title, Soledad González, also from Oaxaca and a Portland resident since 2003, suggested A donde voy, el hogar viene conmigo (Wherever I go, home comes with me). She noted that, for her, the project was a way of affirming how the cultural heritage we carry is vital to cultivating a sense of home away from home. We presented the book at the Rockwood Library to our friends, family, and other community members who joined us. The event was a celebration of our families and a way of sharing knowledge in public.
Our next project, in 2023, was an experimental exploration of the history of the Reynolds School District, and an attempt to reflect on our relationship with the district by understanding its context. We learned the school district was named after a Reynolds Metals Company aluminum plant that operated near the confluence of the Sandy and Columbia Rivers from 1941 to 2000. This plant was the largest employer in Fairview, Gresham, and Troutdale during the postwar years. Reynolds Metals was instrumental in the planning and development of the city of Wood Village, and Reynolds High School was created on land donated by the company to serve the workers’ children. In 1994, the Reynolds facility was declared a Superfund site because of soil and groundwater contamination with fluoride, cyanide, and PCBs. Today, the former Reynolds site is the Troutdale Reynolds Industrial Park, home to Amazon and FedEx warehouses.
We studied this history while wrapping household objects in Reynolds aluminum foil and discussing our relationship with the school district and how it affects our lives. Our research evolved into an art installation that was presented at Portland State University’s Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art in 2023. The project helped us make sense of our feelings about our schools. Diana Medina, originally from Michoacán and an Oregon resident since 2006, commented, “Reynolds is what is left of an industry that is no longer here, and you don’t know who is accountable for it. That’s why it is so difficult to connect with them. It’s not the same as having a district like Portland Public Schools that belongs to the city and everybody cares about.”
Today, Reynolds School District serves around ten thousand students across five cities—Fairview, Wood Village, Troutdale, and parts of Gresham and Portland—with one high school and three middle schools. Its student body is one of the most diverse in Oregon: The population is 44 percent Latine, 27 percent White, 10 percent African American, 7 percent Asian, 7 percent multiracial, and 5 percent Native American/Hawaiian/Pacific Islander. The students represent more than 125 birth countries and speak 70 different languages. According to the Oregon Department of Education, 80 percent of the teaching staff is White, with Latine teachers making up the next highest percentage at 6 percent, and over 95 percent of the students qualify for free or reduced-cost lunches. Reynolds is one of four relatively small school districts operating between I-205 and Gresham, along with Parkrose, David Douglas, and Centennial.
El Conocimiento Migrante started as an informal group, a way for us to explore our cultural heritage and local history, and it became an opportunity to meet, learn, and create. It also functioned as a support network to build empathy and family connection. Our central aspiration was to be a space for collaboration and experimentation that would help us relate meaningfully to the place where we live. Soledad Molina, from La Costa Chica, Guerrero, says, “Being part of these projects has been a beautiful experience because it has allowed us to express what we feel and who we are. Personally, seeing that my daughters were proud of me and that they were happy to spend time with me meant everything. Seeing the happy faces of our families makes us proud, makes us feel productive, and reminds us that, as women, we can do many things beyond being housewives. We can encourage our children to do great things.”
Our group came together again in 2024 after I received a Community Storytelling Fellowship from Oregon Humanities. We wanted to brainstorm what kind of story we would share with Oregon Humanities’ readers and our community through the fellowship. Our vision was to provide a physical space where we could invite others to participate in the discussion—
something we had dreamed of since we started collaborating as El Conocimiento Migrante. But finding such a space in our area proved challenging. Most spaces we looked at were privately owned or too expensive to rent. Oregon Humanities helped us rent a private community center in Rockwood, and we felt optimistic about finally having a temporary space where we could gather, create, cook, bring the children, exchange ideas, and celebrate our cultures. But at the end of the day, a bunch of families sharing food and speaking loudly can be too much for a small organization like the community center to handle, no matter how aligned our missions might be.
The experience left us questioning: Why is it so complicated to find public places in this area where community members can convene, learn something new, and have a joyful moment connecting with others? Trying to map out the spaces that served us well for community bonding and cultural sustenance, we came up with a short list: Blue Lake Regional Park, Fairview Food Plaza, La Tapatia Supermarket, Oregon Flea Market, Rockwood Library, some local churches, and occasional community resource fairs run by nonprofit organizations. But most of these are not really public, in terms of being open and accessible to anyone and publicly funded and operated; most are businesses or private efforts that provide services to clients or customers.
The lack of public community centers is a recurring concern not only for El Conocimiento Migrante members, but also for numerous families living in the neighborhoods east of I-205, regardless of whether they’re within what is officially considered the City of Portland, or Fairview, Gresham, Wood Village, or Troutdale. Working at schools in the Parkrose and David Douglas districts, I noticed a shared feeling of powerlessness among families who see a direct connection between gun violence, substance abuse, and reckless driving in their neighborhoods and the lack of nearby opportunities for community connection and creative learning experiences.
The map above shows the boundaries of cities and school districts in Portland and its eastern neighbors, as well as the locations of community spaces including Multnomah County Library branches, public community centers, and private spaces with public programming. The map was created using public datasets hosted by PortlandMaps, the US Census Bureau, the US Geologic Survey, and Data.gov. The data points in the category of “Private Community Centers” were selected by searching publicly available information such as business websites. While many private event spaces advertise themselves as community centers, this map only included those that provide public programming such as classes, community services, or public events in addition to their rental business. Churches and other faith centers were included under this category if their website indicated public programming beyond worship services. Click on the map to enlarge.
To understand why communities on the east side of the Portland metro area are unable to easily access cultural opportunities, it’s necessary to look at how these areas have developed. The area was primarily agricultural until World War II and the construction of the Bonneville Dam, which brought cheap electricity and wartime industries like the aluminum plant. These new industries spurred an influx of real estate speculation, and houses were built on what had been farmland. Population growth during the postwar years occurred without regulated planning, and many of the new neighborhoods in these unincorporated parts of Multnomah County lacked basic amenities like sidewalks, street lighting, and sewers.
In the book Multnomah: The Tumultuous Story of Oregon’s Most Populous County, published by Oregon State University Press in 2012, public historian Jewel Lansing, who served as both Multnomah County auditor and Portland city auditor, recounts how Earl Blumenauer, a Multnomah County commissioner at the time, and Mark Gardiner, director of Portland’s Office of Fiscal Administration, managed to force the annexation of Rockwood and other adjacent unincorporated Multnomah County neighborhoods into Gresham and Portland. This document, called Resolution A, was adopted by the county on March 15, 1983, and split up the provision of services to residents through interlocal agreements. The City of Portland would provide police, fire, transportation, parks, and water services, while the county would provide correctional facilities, social services, assessment and collection of taxes, elections administration, and libraries. County Commissioner Dennis Buchanan would later reflect, “[Resolution A] left the residents of the unincorporated area with the choice of annexing to Portland or Gresham or doing without the services, primarily police patrols, neighborhood parks, and permits.”
The implementation of Resolution A required restructuring and reducing the size of the county’s entrenched bureaucracies, including the water departments and parks. The county parks, including Blue Lake, Oxbow, and Glendoveer Golf Course, as well as the Portland Expo Center, became the responsibility of the Metro regional government. Few new parks were developed in the formerly unincorporated areas, and to this day the only community center located east of I-205 is the East Portland Community Center, which lies just half a mile from the freeway. The one-room Fairview Community Center is the only public community center in Multnomah County outside of Portland, and it functions as a rental space. Libraries have been administered by the county and funded through levies since the 1990s, and they continue to provide clean and quiet places to meet.
Today, these neighborhoods are home to African American, Indigenous, and immigrant communities with diverse backgrounds, and Latine families have a strong presence. A comparison of US Census data collected between 2000 and 2020 shows notable growth in the numbers of Latine-identifying residents in Rockwood, Fairview, and Gresham, and a decline in areas around North Portland and the Vancouver corridor. This is the result of the history of racist planning in Portland—recently described as such by the city’s Bureau of Planning and Sustainability—which pushes lower-income families farther east, where complex political boundaries serve to limit their political representation, perpetuating marginalization and underinvestment in these communities.
Musician and longtime Portland resident Edna Vázquez commented, “I came to Portland in 1999 to Northeast Prescott and 12th and rented a one-bedroom apartment for $400. Then I moved to Northeast Alberta and 15th. But I had to move to Washougal when the gentrification began. In 2010, I moved back to Portland with a friend until I found an affordable studio apartment for myself [at] Rosa Parks and Denver, but then the gentrification came again. I saw how the North, the Interstate, and Lombard were transformed. When you see a new fancy organic store near you, that is cool, but then you know that everything will get expensive and your rent will increase soon. About four years ago, I finally moved to the borderline between Portland and Gresham.”
Soledad Molina has lived in East Portland since 2000 and has noticed the change too: “I came to Portland to live near 122nd and Halsey. At that time, there weren’t many Latinos in that area; we were one of the few. When we wanted to see our friends or relatives, we would visit them around the Columbia and Lombard areas. But that started to change around 2005, when, little by little, more and more Latinos began to move to this side.”
Reyna Reyes, who has lived in the area for over two decades, commented, “We initially arrived at Gateway. But in 2003, when we had the kids, we wanted more space and moved to Fairview. When we arrived, we were the only Hispanics, and there weren’t many kids either; all the neighbors were White and elderly. We felt a bit out of place. It was about six years until more Hispanics started coming, and now we are more than half of those who live there. Now, the pool fills up with kids every summer!”
In this landscape of overlapping political boundaries, scarce community spaces, and a growing immigrant population, the nonprofit sector has played a key role in filling the gaps left after the annexation of these unincorporated territories. Such organizations are often the route for hundreds of families to access resources and services such as health care, academic support, legal aid, food assistance, and utility assistance. Although nonprofits provide significant support, just a fraction of the population can access that support, no matter how committed and passionate their workers are or how large their budget looks in a grant proposal. Because these organizations often focus on specific ethnic groups and immediate needs, they’re not in a position to offer long-term solutions, such as culturally inclusive community spaces with consistent programming.
Alicia Trejo, from Querétaro, who has lived in Fairview since 2000, says, “I wish there were more places with community programs and activities for children to learn and have fun for free or at a low cost. It could be an opportunity for adults and kids to volunteer, learn new things, and stay away from the streets.” Elisea Benitez, from Colorines, agrees: “I appreciate the support our kids get through the after-school programs, but we also need programs for adults and elders where we can learn arts and crafts and other useful skills. We need places to host celebrations and express our cultures through gastronomy, music, dances, and folklore, because all of this keeps family unity.”
Edna Vázquez shared a similar thought: “As a musician, I feel I could offer a lot more to the community, like music shows, to bring the people together so they can see that we’re here. Or music workshops where children can see a different vibe, an alternative to joining gangs or spending their time on the phone because their parents have two or three jobs and don’t have the time to spend quality time with them. I don’t understand why there aren’t any resources or spaces on this side of the city for this kind of thing.”
We reached out to local representatives from Portland, Fairview, and Gresham, asking for their advice on advocating for community centers in the east that are public and accessible. Their responses bounced us back to the nonprofit sector. They mentioned a couple of promising mixed-use development projects led by local nonprofits that would be hubs for education, recreation, and business, and “should accommodate those needs.” They also suggested finding a culturally specific organization to create a proposal and engage their resources to advocate for it with the respective governmental jurisdictions.
East Portland might be the result of a convoluted development process, but having a public community center shouldn’t be out of reach because of one’s zip code. There is no way to cultivate a sense of belonging and healthy community without spaces where residents can celebrate their stories, knowledge, symbols, traditions, and cultural memories. Everyone should have the opportunity to participate in events that inspire imagination and connection across differences, and that affirm our shared humanness.
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