OUR CITY OUR VOICE: Housing & Health in East Portland · Health is a Human Right: Achieving Health Equity

Madison High School students stand by their 12-foot high outdoor banner on June 17, 2017.

Affrordable Housing Is Not a Want: It's a Need banner
Madison High School students, 2017
Courtesy of Sabina Haque

In 2017, APANO artist-in-residence Sabina Haque worked with students at Madison High School (now McDaniel High School) to explore the archival record of how the annexation of East Portland by the City of Portland in 1891 affected this diverse community, including the Jade District. Working with history teacher Jason Miller, they researched decades-long city policies that neglected the area, as well as the displacement of African Americans and Asian Americans to East Portland from Portland. They also learned how immigrants and refugees moved to the area, impacting their communities.

From this research, Haque and the students created OUR CITY OUR VOICE, a public art project with a focus on public health, housing, food insecurity, and education. Youth became the actors, image-makers, and writers of their own histories. They created zines, silk-screened posters, murals, and a street performance using a 100-foot banner that gave voice to their experience of displacement.

APANO credits this project in helping to create “narrative shifts” that are guiding their continuing work to address racism, shortages of affordable housing, green space deficiencies, and other social determinants contributing to community health disparities. OUR CITY OUR VOICE also highlighted the links between affordable housing and transit in the Jade District and East Portland.

OUR CITY OUR VOICE video, 2017
Courtesy of Sabina Haque

This video documents the process of creating the silkscreens and zines, culminating in the outdoor installation and exhibition at the Jade Furniture Store, now the site of the Orchards at 82^nd housing development.

OUR CITY OUR VOICE project Zine

Displacement

Jobs Needed

Selection of OUR CITY OUR VOICE silkscreens and OUR CITY OUR VOICE project zine, 2017
Created by Madison High School students
Courtesy of Sabina Haque

Working with Sabina Haque, the students created silkscreens addressing issues such as affordable housing, displacement due to gentrification, and the need for jobs.