Dear ROPnet,
We’re still overflowing with gratitude for how incredible this year’s Rural Caucus and Strategy Session was. If you missed our latest update with the full agenda and highlights from the Caucus, you can check it out here! We promised in that first update that we’d be sharing even more highlights, including this one. Read on for stories of this year’s Human Dignity Award and Marcy Westerling Award Winners and the powerful organizing they’ve been doing in their communities!
Warmly,
Stephanie and the ROP team
2025 Human Dignity Awardees
At every Rural Caucus and Strategy Session, ROP presents Human Dignity Awards to several groups to lift up and celebrate the powerful organizing they have done over the past year in their communities. For many years, we have also presented a Marcy Westerling Award (or two) to individuals who demonstrate courageous and innovative leadership. This year, continuing and building off of a new tradition, each Human Dignity Award had a specific title to acknowledge the group’s geography as well as a particular pathway of resistance that has been central to their organizing strategy.
Ocean Power! Defend Civic Institutions: South Coast Health Equity Coalition
South Coast Health Equity Coalition works across Coos and Curry Counties to stand up for the rights of Black, Indigenous, People of Color and Rural Communities. Last fall, antifascists exposed a Coos County businessman as recruiting White Lives Matter activists to move to Coos County and work for him. South Coast Health Equity Coalition flew into action. Organizers went to the port commission (where he collects hundreds of thousands of dollars in public contracts) with audio proof that he was encouraging his employees to use racist slurs and photo evidence of the “white lives matter” sticker on his work truck. They collected petition signatures, organized testimony at public meetings, and pressured elected officials to speak out against him. They ultimately succeeded in passing an anti-racist policy at the port commission and stopping them from contracting with this racist businessman to buy the shipworks in Coos Bay. South Coast Health Equity Coalition also just put on a huge diversity conference, twice as big as the one they hosted last year! This doesn’t even begin to capture all that this group has been up to recently, so check out their website to find out more!
Woodland Power! Protect People: Umpqua Valley Rainbow Collective
Umpqua Valley Rainbow Collective (UVRC) started in February 2022 when a group of queer folks came together with a shared goal of creating safer spaces and community for 2SLGBTQIA+ people in Douglas County. They started with game nights, dinners, social groups, and potlucks. Since then, Umpqua Valley Rainbow Collective has been keeping people safe in the face of the Salt Shakers (aggressive counter protesters), and they continue to be loud and proud, hosting Douglas County Pride the past few years. They’ve done get-out-the-vote work, a county-wide 2SLGBTQIA+ Community Assessment, hosted trans support groups of all ages, community building through movie nights, book clubs, and board games, and have been training tons and tons of people up in safety and security.
Sagebrush Power! Disrupt and Disobey: Central Oregon for a Free Palestine
Central Oregon for a Free Palestine is a Palestinian-led group of Central Oregonians who seek to educate, organize, and mobilize their community in service of Palestinian liberation. They have been building power across the region since the fall of 2023. They’ve hosted weekly rallies, film screenings, panel discussions, and are working in coalition with other groups, including Bend Jewish Voice for Peace and Central Oregon for Socialism. They have been hosting events primarily in Warm Springs and Bend, bringing new folks into peace-building efforts across their region. One thing that particularly impresses us about this group is how hard they work to show up for each other, often carpooling back and forth to boost their numbers and support in different parts of the state.
Blue Mountain Power! Build alternatives: Baker Radio: KBZR
Rural Oregonians have consistently named strong, publicly-funded community media as a priority and a key piece of the infrastructure we need for a thriving rural Oregon. There’s a very sweet story about the formation of this particular station, KBZR. Brian, one of the creators of this year’s Caucus location, the Churchill School, applied for a license in 2021 to start a community radio station. Unbeknownst to Brian, Katie had started a nonprofit, Broadcast Baker, and was working to bring online community radio to Baker City. For the first few seconds after Katie heard about KBZR’s license, she was MAD. Why had they both been working towards this common goal and not known of each other’s efforts? Anger quickly turned to excitement, and a formidable partnership formed shortly afterwards. They teamed up and have been recruiting more and more dedicated community members to launch 89.9 FM, KBZR. They are currently streaming wonderful programs digitally that you can tune in to anytime from home at KBZR.org, while they finish up radio tower installation and start broadcasting on the airwaves.
2025 Marcy Westerling Awardees:
Each year, ROP honors rural organizers who exemplify the skills and passion that our founder, Marcy, brought to organizing: innovation, experimentation, and a deep commitment to rural organizing for democracy and human dignity. 2025 marks 10 years since our founder, Marcy Westerling, passed away. In memory of her and in honor of her life’s work, Rural Organizing Project started an annual Marcy Westerling Award. In 1992, Marcy’s brilliance sparked a movement for human dignity in rural Oregon. Marcy believed that rural people have the power to change our communities and the world. Her organizing strategy prioritized leading with core values and bridging false political divides.
Marcy’s legacy lives on through the work of ROP staff, board, Human Dignity Groups, and rural leaders across the state of Oregon and beyond. This year, we presented the Marcy Westerling Award to Ramon Ramirez.
To read more about Marcy’s life and work, check out the oral history project, ruralorganizingvoices.org, created around 2012.
Mary Geddry
Many of you may recognize Mary’s name from last fall, when we shared her article about “Countering Election Fraud Lies in Coos County.” Still others might recognize her name from anti-war organizing in the early 2000s, people’s economy work, wind power organizing, and independent journalism. A former ROP board member, Mary has worked for decades to advance democracy and human dignity in her home of Coos County, and far, far beyond. Just this year, she played crucial roles in the work to counter election denier, Douglas Frank; expose and hold accountable white lives matter recruiter Whit Gantenbein; and stop insurrectionist county commissioner Rod Taylor from passing an anti-immigrant county resolution that would have blatantly violated Oregon’s Sanctuary Promise Act. Managing multiple local communications channels from an online blog to radio stations to Facebook groups, Mary is a thorn in the side of anti-democratic forces. Her tenacity never ceases to impress us.
Ramon Ramirez
Ramon has been an ally, co-conspirator, and dear friend of ROP since the 90s. During that time, Ramon opened up the PCUN union hall to queers and allies organizing against Measure 9, and shortly after, Marcy and ROP showed up for PCUN and the farmworker and immigrant movement. PCUN and ROP forged a level of partnership that was unprecedented at the time. They knew that it wouldn’t just be about the Far Right’s culture wars against Queer people, but that the Right would also use attacks on immigrants to build power. The commitment to intersectional work and solidarity across ROP and PCUN was groundbreaking at a time when people primarily organized based on single identities. The partnership they forged was a model not only in Oregon but nationally. Since then, Ramon and PCUN have been a part of so many ROP caucuses. While technically retired, Ramon continues to organize across the country including fundraising for Radio Poder, working with evangelical churches to support their immigrant justice work and push them on queer inclusion, and holding leadership roles at national organizations including United Farm Workers, Center for Popular Democracy, and Race Forward.
