About Us
Our Mission
To open spaces and provide support for people with targeted identities to engage in social uplift within their own communities, outside of privileged, hierarchical, white supremacist models.
Our Guiding Principles
Our Equity Statement
We honor our Indigenous siblings who made their stand on the hallowed ground at Wounded Knee. We honor our stolen African siblings, who found ways to keep their children fed while teaching them to look the world in the eye. We honor our Latinx siblings who marched in the Plaza de Mayo for the disappeared, willing the world to see. We honor our Asian siblings, who wield leaf blowers against the smoke in our eyes. We honor the brick-throwers, the crawlers up the capitol steps, and the reclaimers of the languages we knew before we grew thorns on our tongues. We honor your stories, your songs, and your survivance. We commit to working toward creating a world that is grounded in the wisdom you’ve imparted to us. We honor your joy, your strength, your resilience, and your vision, and move forward knowing that your gifts live within us all. Your resistance has provided us with a roadmap to liberation. We are still here. And we rise.
To open spaces and provide support for people with targeted identities to engage in social uplift within their own communities, outside of privileged, hierarchical, white supremacist models.
Our Guiding Principles
- We believe in communal decision making and that leadership should come from within the community.
- We believe folx from targeted communities are capable and typically take on the emotional and mental labor of their communities and deserve credit for the work they do.
- We believe intersectionality is a thing, because it is.
- We believe our coping/survival skills are the gifts we bring to our communities and that our vision can extend beyond just our ability to cope.
- We believe we can do better and we deserve better.
- We believe empowerment isn’t a thing, because it's not. Power comes from each person and within the community. When we realize our power, reclaiming it becomes essential.
- We believe this world is unable to survive without us. The US like so many other white supremacist spaces was built on stolen land with stolen labor and so we demand the status quo be recentered.
- We strive to decolonize our mentality, education, government, and ways of being in the world.
- We recognize that ideas, models, and ways of existing are not ours. They come from a long legacy of resistance lead by queer womxn of color who do the work without the credit.
Our Equity Statement
We honor our Indigenous siblings who made their stand on the hallowed ground at Wounded Knee. We honor our stolen African siblings, who found ways to keep their children fed while teaching them to look the world in the eye. We honor our Latinx siblings who marched in the Plaza de Mayo for the disappeared, willing the world to see. We honor our Asian siblings, who wield leaf blowers against the smoke in our eyes. We honor the brick-throwers, the crawlers up the capitol steps, and the reclaimers of the languages we knew before we grew thorns on our tongues. We honor your stories, your songs, and your survivance. We commit to working toward creating a world that is grounded in the wisdom you’ve imparted to us. We honor your joy, your strength, your resilience, and your vision, and move forward knowing that your gifts live within us all. Your resistance has provided us with a roadmap to liberation. We are still here. And we rise.
Our 3 Year Strategic Plan
Our members and Board have officially voted to adopt our Strategic Plan for Fiscal Years 2022-2024. You can view our Plan here:
| strategic_plan_fy2022-2024.pdf |
How we do what we do
● Training & Consultation: Working with organizations to support their growth helps UPRISE to fund its free community programming.
○ Organizational and educational equity training
○ Consultation on equity plans, statements, and lenses
○ Policy and curriculum review
○ Assessment and data analysis
● Community Programming: UPRISE hosts several event series throughout the year.
○ Nothing About Us Without Us: Civic Engagement Series
○ Community Conversations: Building Capacity Across Identities
○ The Selah Series: Creation Stories, Healing Stories, and Resistance Stories
● Disability Justice Collaborative: A collective of and for sick and disabled folks, centered in the Portland area but largely virtual.
○ Mutual Aid Network
○ As We Are: Biennial Disability Justice Conference
● Feed Our People: A way to support community members with targeted identities who embody resistance in change spaces.
○ Covid Care Kits: Supporting womxn and their families impacted by covid.
○ Meals for Organizers: Paying to feed the people doing social change work.
○ Organizational and educational equity training
○ Consultation on equity plans, statements, and lenses
○ Policy and curriculum review
○ Assessment and data analysis
● Community Programming: UPRISE hosts several event series throughout the year.
○ Nothing About Us Without Us: Civic Engagement Series
○ Community Conversations: Building Capacity Across Identities
○ The Selah Series: Creation Stories, Healing Stories, and Resistance Stories
● Disability Justice Collaborative: A collective of and for sick and disabled folks, centered in the Portland area but largely virtual.
○ Mutual Aid Network
○ As We Are: Biennial Disability Justice Conference
● Feed Our People: A way to support community members with targeted identities who embody resistance in change spaces.
○ Covid Care Kits: Supporting womxn and their families impacted by covid.
○ Meals for Organizers: Paying to feed the people doing social change work.