Civic Action Group (CAG)

Sisters’ Civic Action Group is made up of people direct experience of homelessness, working within a Civic Action framework towards solving problems that people experiencing homelessness face every day!

CAG meets the 2nd and 4th Saturdays of each month. CAG has three smaller work groups that meet weekly. Check out Sisters’ Events calendar to see everything coming up!

The Community Engagement Committee (CEC): Meets every Friday from 3-5pm. The CEC will be working on creating and implementing activities related to engaging our community in the cafe. For now this will be movie nights twice a month. They will be working on brainstorming creative ideas for events and activities to hold in the cafe with the purpose of letting the community know what CAG is doing, getting folks involved, providing a fun and family friendly environment for people to get to know each other, and conducting outreach that will help us guide our work. Contact the CEC’s current chair, (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address), to find out more about this work group.

The Affordable Housing Workgroup (AHWG): Meets every Wednesday from 3-5pm. The AHWG will be working on advocating around affordable housing and completing the CAG Plan of Work items related to affordable housing.  By working with ally groups, conducting outreach in the community, and creating events and actions, this workgroup will support both CAG and WRAP and its goals around affordable housing. Contact the AHWG’s current chair, (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address), to find out more about this work group.

The Anti-Camping Workgroup (ACWG) meets every Thursday from 3-5pm. Check back for more information about this work group!

Overturning the Anti-Camping Campaign

For the past two months, CAG members and our Community Organizer Brendan have been attending meetings at the Portland Housing Bureau dubbed the “alternatives” meeting. These meetings have been convened by Sally Erickson (Portland’s Ending Homelessness Project Manager) and have included members of faith communities, County Commissioner Kafoury’s office, Commissioner Fritz and Fish’s offices, JOIN, Street Roots, Outside In, Human Solutions, Salvation Army, Rescue Mission, Julie West, Transitions, and a number of people experiencing homelessness. The purpose of the meetings was to come up with “out-of-the-box” ideas for addressing the immediate needs for shelter coming into the winter months (dubbed the “10 minute plan”).

Thirteen proposals from the meetings were introduced to the Coordinating Committee to End Homelessness (CCEH) and committee members were asked to rank the proposals in order of priority. The resulting rankings are outlined here. Now that these ideas have support from the CCEH the next step is to get support from our commissioners. Commissioner Kafoury is very interested.

Affordable Housing

CAG is also working on supporting efforts around affordable housing. We will be outreaching to our allies who are working on affordable housing to support their work/campaigns and to people experiencing homelessness to message around the January WRAP event in San Francisco with the goals of increasing opportunities for people experiencing homelessness and those who are trying to get/stay in affordable housing to participate in this event.

We are in the preliminary stages of planning our outreach activities, creating campaigns, and developing tactics and strategies around these two primary topics. Sisters Of The Road (i.e. you) now have the info. Ask questions, speak truth, and (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)!

• Click here to read the speech Sisters’ former community organizer, Patrick Nolen made at City Hall on June 11, 2008
• Click here to read a speech CAG and cLOT member Lyn Kirby gave at Sisters’  MLK rally, January 21, 2008.
• Click here to read an interview with Julio, CAG and cLOT member.
• Click here to read a speech Julio Vazquez gave at Sisters’ 2008 MLK rally.

Join our Action E-List

We are currently working on a list of housed allies for this group to help in bigger events.  If you wish to be involved, please contact Devin DiBernardo (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) at (503) 222-5694 extension 16, or click here to sign up for an Action Info list to keep updated on Sister’s community organizing and systemic change work.

CAG Film

To document their organizing work, CAG has done some filming. Here are two short videos of Sisters’ co-founder Genny Nelson (pictured at left) discussing the beginnings of Sisters Of The Road and Community Organizing.  Both videos were shot by CAG member Richard Walden.

• “12 minutes with Genny Nelson”
• “Genny on NonViolence, Gentle Personalism and Sisters’ Early Years”

Here is video of CAG members supporting long time CAG friend Tom Hastings of the Whitefeather Catholic Worker House at a ‘Defund the War’ protest at Senator Gordon Smith’s office. Two CAG members Neil and Bruce took part, with Richard again filming. 

• “Senator Smith, can you hear me now?”

Do you have experience with homelessness?

The Civic Action Group will be holding meetings every second and fourth Saturday of the month, at Sisters Of The Road at 12:00 noon.  If you have experience of homelessness, please join us!  If not, please (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) or call her at (503) 222-5694 extension 16 for the next meeting with open attendance.

Neil mugging it up at the Autumn Moon Festival

Richard, Julio and Patrick planting flags