Rural Organizing Project

In The Real Oregon, a four-minute video about Umatilla-Morrow Alternatives, ROP board member Frank Roa describes why he founded this Eastern Oregon group that develops leaders and works to end discrimination based on race, sexual orientation, or HIV status.

The last week of January is the annual One Night Homelessness Count, when Community Action Agencies (CAA) count the number of homeless people in each county. I'm afraid of what we might find. But discovering the real dimensions of what we are facing provides us with the necessary documentation and the critical awareness to move to crucial and creative solutions. Solutions that dig down to the roots of our families' and communities' economic insecurity and plant a new, more principled (and perhaps more homegrown) way to use and distribute our communities' economic, social and environmental resources.

The count is a huge job that can require many volunteers. Members of at least three ROP member groups, Yamhill Valley Peacemakers, Human Dignity Advocates in Crook County, and the West County Council for Human Dignity in Washington County, are already planning to help out. Can you offer the services of your human dignity group (or maybe just yourself and a couple of friends) to assist in this counting process?

January 12th marks the start of the 2009 Legislative Session.  Throughout the session we will send ROPnets focused on legislative action that is part of the ROP platform endorsed by our member groups. 

The first legislative call for action in 2009 is to make sure that your county is on record in support of keeping the Oregon National Guard in Oregon.

ROP and many other peace groups are members of the Campaign to Keep the Oregon National Guard Home.  We have been collecting petition signatures for months now and are scheduled to deliver them to the Capitol on Wednesday, January 21st.  A resolution to keep the Guard in Oregon will be introduced early in the Legislative session.  But we need the Governor and our State Senators and Representatives to know that it is not just Portland and Eugene and Corvallis who want the Guard to stay home.  It is Wallowa and Pendleton and Burns and Klamath Falls. 

ROP board member, Mary Geddry, created this video representation of her "open letter" to an Iraqi child, explaining how the actions of her son in a firefight have connected them to each other. Her son and her family will be forever changed by his experiences in Iraq

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Endorse ROP's Legislative Platform

The ROP Legislative Platform represents the priorities of our member groups, the needs that our communities face, and the strategic opportunities for our human dignity movement. Since we shared our draft platform with you last month, many of you have written to share what you want to see on this platform. We have also had the chance to share this platform with more than a dozen of our allies around the state to find out if there are plans in the works that we would want to make sure to highlight on our platform. We now return to you and ask that you share the 2009 Legislative Platform with your group and endorse it as a group.

We are for justice. We are against the war. We are in favor of human rights. We are opposed to corruption and brutality.

Progressives often talk about our missions in very broad terms, not surprising considering our 30-second spot culture. However, in these first months of 2009 and especially in these first days of January we have the opportunity to describe specifically what it is we want and when it is we want it. (JUSTICE! … NOW! Just kidding.)

There are many things that ROP will demand of our new national and state leadership. One thing is Comprehensive Immigration Reform. The National Council of La Raza and the National Immigration Fourm are circulating a sign-on letter for organizations that reminds our elected officials that we want a speedy and just resolution to the immigration mess. Add your organization to this national sign-on letter to push for Comprehensive Immigration Reform.

Read ROP's 2008 Letter to Members and our 2008 Annual Report.

December 2008

Dear Friends and Supporters,

The year 2008 has been full of hope, excitement, and change. But as our new president said on November 4th, “This victory alone is not the change we seek - it is only the chance for us to make that change. And that cannot happen if we go back to the way things were. It cannot happen without you.”

“You” are the 62 human dignity groups and over 7400 households who make up the Rural Organizing Project. Throughout the past decade, even as our civil liberties have eroded you have stood your ground for democracy and human rights. 2008 was no exception. Now is the time of year where we ask you to match your brave work with your dollars by paying your individual dues to belong to our shared organization.

What a week it has been!  At the ROP office our highlights of the week include our pipes freezing and towing the ROP car from the ditch.  (Feel free to let that inspire you to get your much needed donation in the mail to us or at www.rop.org!)

Despite these challenges, we have been delighting at the winter wonderland outside of our windows.  But for many people in our communities, when you really have no place to go, it's more of a nightmare than wonderland out there.  In Forest Grove, several area churches and community groups, including volunteers from ROP member group West County Council for Human Dignity have created their own Miracle on College Way...

ST. HELENS, Ore. – A coalition of social justice groups and business owners is formally challenging Measure 5-190, an anti-immigrant law recently passed by voters in Columbia County. The ACLU of Oregon and Northwest Workers’ Justice Project, on behalf of the coalition, filed the complaint today in Columbia County Circuit Court...