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A little over 10 years ago I sat in various community meetings week after week sometimes being the only female in the room. We went from one meeting place to another and then another. The last meeting, I remember attending I sat around the table with some of Portland’s OG’s, community leaders, and Pastors. I was a tired, worried mother who was willing to put in the work and help come up with solutions because I too had a son out there and I was needing help before it was too late. We all threw out suggestions and many of the responses were, we tried that, that’s not going to work, they don’t care about that. Who’s going to be the ones to do that? And to this day I’m not too sure where we landed. I left discouraged feeling hopeless with the questions still unanswered like many others as all of our hearts knew that something needed to change. Needless to say, for the next several years there were many sleepless nights, a few visits to jail, and endless number of sad newspaper articles where our communities were and still are suffering, mothers crying, and funeral homes booked with our children dying to the streets. On December 21st 2021 I received the call that no mother wants to answer, the call where you hope that it’s just a bad dream, the call I tried to avoid while sitting at the round table trying to come up with strategies and solutions to what was going on in the streets of Portland.
Here I am attempting to do my part understanding that we can’t continue to talk about it but in order to change it we must start somewhere and at least put our best foot forward in action. We may have to try several avenues until we find something that works but a start somewhere is better than not starting at all. This very well may save a mother or family member from getting that painful call I answered on December 21st 2021.
Donya Frazier