Two hundred plus Portlanders gathered on June 21, 2025at the Leaven Community Center in SE Portland for the second annual Activate Portland Community Summit. The main hall was abuzz with networking conversations at tables peopled by over 20 organizations including Black Oregon Land Trust, City Repair, 350PDX, Native American Youth Association, Portland Fruit Tree Project, Black Futures Farm, BARK, Rosewood Initiative, Rogue Farm Corps, p:ear, and many, many more.
Dan Sloan, with the Portland Food Forest Initiative, organized the first Summit a year ago – at least partly inspired by XRPDX’s screening of the film Outgrow the System – and facilitated this year’s Summit. Besides networking, participants lead and attended workshops, and developed ideas and strategies critical to creating a more sustainable and equitable future for Portland and beyond.
Workshops focused on regenerative agriculture, placemaking, community building, climate resilience, and land tending – all part of local initiatives that are currently engaging local activists, leaders and residents in the wellbeing economy!
In an XRPDX led workshop, we brainstormed with other activists about how to move Portland towards a robust wellbeing economy vis a vis the Portland City Council. We began by recognizing the opportunity to build upon the big win of electing new progressive leaders to our city council, thanks to rank-choice voting and vibrant grassroots campaigning. Workshop participants riffed on the kind of demands we might take to the city council: free public transit, social housing and housing land trusts models, use of underutilized private and public lands for regenerative agriculture and farm incubators, creation of and protection of green spaces (e.g. pollinator gardens, wetlands, naturescapes for kids), a green job corps, a citizen’s assembly and more.
Next move: XRPDX plans to engage many of our workshop participants as well as other allies in refining a set of demands. We will then engage with city councilors around the wellbeing economy framing, the need to continue to support and expand existing and emerging wellbeing programs (e.g. PCEF), and the case for new initiatives that go well beyond incremental change.
Stay tuned.
