Congratulations to recipients of the Gloria Brown Scholarship

Thank you to all who applied, as well as the innumerable parents, siblings, mentors, teachers, counselors, administrators, community members and more who help our students survive and even thrive in a predominantly-white community like LO. 

Congratulations to the following graduates of Lakeridge and Lake Oswego High Schools and recipients of the Gloria Brown Scholarship. We’re proud to be part of their legacy, just as much as we celebrate them alongside one of our founders and elders Gloria Brown, herself. 

The following are the student recipients and their plans for furthering their academics: Braelynn Jenkins will be attending University of Hawaii at Manoa to study Pre-Nursing, Cara Chen will be attending Columbia University and studying Linguistics & East Asian History/Languages/Cultures, Jasmine Quast plans to attend University of San Francisco studying Business Administration, and Nidhi Nair will attend George Washington University and study Political Science/Pre-Law.

Community Spotlight: Tones of Change 

This project by Lakeridge rising senior Siena Riquelme-Cheung highlights Women of Color and the contributions of cultural communities in shaping our Culture. In addition to interviews, Tones of Change includes an expansive breadth of research on racialized stereotypes, as well as historical analysis of fashion trends and culturally-rooted hairstyles. 

This is especially awesome to see student work in and beyond our community, and we’re excited to uplift more writing, research, and journalism from our local youth! For more information and ways to support Tones of Change, check out Siena’s website here.

Additionally, RtR is introducing a new Community Spotlight section where we’ll be regularly highlighting creative projects by current and former LO students of color. We hope providing this spotlight will advance efforts for educating and empowering our community to dismantle racism and make Lake Oswego a better place to live for all. If you have tips for projects that you think should be featured in future posts, please submit them to respondtoracisminlo@gmail.com with the subject line Re: Community Spotlight! And it goes without saying that not all projects need to be writing or research-centered, as there’s never a small part in revolutionary work.

Become an RtR Board Member

We’re looking for new members! We’re seeking proactive, justice-minded individuals to educate and empower LO residents with the tools to dismantle racism and make our community a safe, welcome place for all. If you’re unsure of if you’re the right person for the job, just remember we are all experts of our own experience, and we’re stronger with a diversity of tactics, alongside thoughts, abilities, beliefs, and identities. For more information on becoming an RtR Board Member, visit this application!

If being a board member doesn’t sound like something to best utilize your unique skill-set, expertise, and insight, don’t worry! We’ll be adding other ways to get involved with RtR soon on our new Opportunities page below: https://respondtoracism.org/opportunities/. We’re excited to walk this journey with you, as we need many roles from educators to artists, writers to facilitators. 

If you don’t yet know your role(s) in organizing social change, I would recommend referencing this ecosystem map created by Deepa Iyer and the Building Movement Project!

June 29: Unite Oregon Action Summit

We encourage community members to attend this upcoming summit on Strengthening Oregon's Intercultural Movement for Justice. 

RtR will be hosting a workshop at the Action Summit on June 29th (next Saturday!), so we hope to see you there! 

More from the event listing:

Unite Oregon’s work is inspired, informed, shaped, and led by Immigrant, Refugee, Black, Indigenous, and People of Color communities across Oregon. Every year, each of our chapters convenes our leadership councils and community leaders from across the state as part of our commitment to grassroots policy change. Each chapter will have a different location and we will all join together virtually throughout the summit. There will also be an option to participate online if you are unable to attend in person. Meals, childcare, and interpretation (per request), provided!

At this year's summit you can expect to:

• Learn more about Unite 6 Pillar areas
• Hear about how last year's summit voting created our 2024 Action Agenda, turning into local and legislative campaigns
• Meet and organize with other community leaders from your Chapter
• Participate in workshops to build skills in Community Organizing, providing testimony, and more
• Inform our future agenda!

For more information about this event visit the Unite Oregon website.

In solidarity, 

Cameron