Listeners’ producer Dakota Runyon-Trapp and Daniel Bloomfield spoke with Floyd Aragon of Southern Oregon Public Broadcast  Service in order to figure out what the station is in terms of potential budget cuts. Along with potential roadmaps for the future of the station, what’s going in with the station, and what does PBS mean to the public at large and how they can go about supporting it.

Show notes & links:

• Public Broadcast Service – PBS for short, a non-profit TV broadcast for the general public is free to watch.
• Oregon Public Broadcasting – OPB for short, Portland, Oregon’s equivalent to a PBS station.
• Southern Oregon PBS – SOPBS for short, Southern Oregon’s Publice Broadcast Services, located within downtown Medford, Oregon.
• Jefferson Public Radio – Radio Station located on the grounds of Southern Oregon University, located within Ashland, Oregon, could potentially merge with Southern Oregon PBS.
• National Public Radio – A publically funded radio station and news outlet, also potentially at risk of losing funding.
• Impact on Southern Oregon PBS – Details on Trump’s executive order to end public funding for PBS from a news station located down the street from Southern Oregon PBS.
• PBS & NPR’s response to the cuts made to public access funding – an article from deadline cited within the episode, that mentions how both PBS and NPR are responding to the executive order.

Community Podcasting Microcredential – This 12-credit, graduate-level certification helps you build professional skills in podcasting, interviewing, and audio production to tell meaningful community stories.

Thanks to Leif Olsen for composing the music for the series of Oregon Speaks: Voices from this moment.

In this episode, host Devon Young talks with first-year educator MJ Poss, who shares an honest reflection on what it’s really like to be a teacher in today’s public schools. From chronic underfunding to emotional burnout, MJ doesn’t hold back about the toll the system takes on its educators—and why, despite it all, they’re still committed to showing up. Through their perspective as a queer, nonbinary special education teacher, MJ also speaks to the importance of community, mutual aid, and visibility in and outside the classroom. It’s a raw, grounded conversation about resistance, survival, and care in a profession too often overlooked.

Show notes & links:

• Portland Public Schools
• Portland Association of Teachers Union
• RFK’s statements on autism

Community Podcasting Microcredential – This 12-credit, graduate-level certification helps you build professional skills in podcasting, interviewing, and audio production to tell meaningful community stories.

Thanks to Leif Olsen for composing the music for the series of Oregon Speaks: Voices from this moment.

Listeners producer Kristen Mico speaks with Fiona Conneely and Shelley Sculer about how food hubbing models offer solutions to small farms, markets and food assistance programs.  At a time when programs that support access to fresh food and livelihoods of small farmers have been dramatically cut, and food assistance benefits like SNAP are also being cut, social service organizations are scrambling to figure out how to keep families fed. Fiona Conneely is with a Portland organization, Lift Up,  trying to do just that. She and Shelley Schular have a lot to talk about, as Shelley operates Lane County Bounty, a Eugene-based food hub that aggregates produce and goods from local farms, offering affordable, fresh food to a range of markets through a convenient online delivery service that provides choice and cultural goods. 

Show notes & links:

• Lift Up – Lift Urban Portland is a nonprofit organization dedicated to reducing hunger and improving the lives of low-income residents in Northwest and Downtown Portland by providing nutritious food assistance such as pantry shopping, delivered food boxes, and farmer’s-market style distributions.
• Lane County Bounty– Lane County Bounty, founded by Shelley Schuler in 2020 as an offshoot of Moondog’s Farm, operates an online marketplace and delivery service designed to connect consumers with fresh, locally grown food from small farms across Lane County

Community Podcasting Microcredential – This 12-credit, graduate-level certification helps you build professional skills in podcasting, interviewing, and audio production to tell meaningful community stories.

Thanks to Leif Olsen for composing the music for the series of Oregon Speaks: Voices from this moment.

For this episode, we invite listeners into the realities of rural Oregon, where questions of identity, belonging, and resilience are part of everyday life. In this episode, Kristina Path and Leif Olsen travel to Monmouth to meet Amanda Laister, a longtime high school Spanish teacher, whose classroom reflects the challenges and hopes of a changing community. Through Amanda’s story, we explore the complexities facing students and educators—from shifting demographics to the need for cultural affirmation and safety. Tune in for an honest conversation about the power of listening, community, and the work still ahead.

Show notes & links:

Community Podcasting Microcredential – This 12-credit, graduate-level certification helps you build professional skills in podcasting, interviewing, and audio production to tell meaningful community stories.

Thanks to Leif Olsen for composing the music for the series of Oregon Speaks: Voices from this moment.

Listeners producer Daniel Bloomfield speaks with the Executive Director of the Oregon Humanities about the Trump administration’s recent cuts to the National Endowment for the Humanities, and how they’ve impacted the work of the Oregon Humanities. At a time when having respectful and diplomatic conversations is crucial, the cuts have forced Oregon Humanities to cancel many of its programs, including training for conversation facilitators. Adam speaks about the many challenges Oregon Humanities faces, as well as the ways in which he remains hopeful and the unexpected outpouring of community support.

Show notes & links:

• Oregon Humanities – Oregon Humanities is a non-profit organization that fosters understanding and collaboration through public programs, conversations, and storytelling across Oregon. 
• D.O.G.E. – The Department of Government Efficiency is a federal initiative of the Trump administration, which made the decision to cut the funding to the National Endowment for the Humanities by nearly half.
• National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) – NEH is an independent federal agency that supports the humanities in every state and U.S. jurisdiction.
• Mellon Foundation Gift to the NEH – The Mellon Foundation’s decision to give $65 million to the NEH in light of the cuts made by the Trump administration.

Community Podcasting Microcredential – This 12-credit, graduate-level certification helps you build professional skills in podcasting, interviewing, and audio production to tell meaningful community stories.

Thanks to Leif Olsen for composing the music for the series of Oregon Speaks: Voices from this moment.

Listeners producer Kaiya Laguardia-Yonamine speaks with Duncan Hwang about the importance of local organizing and turning inward to sustain our communities. In a time where federal cuts, mass political chaos, and daily threats are imposed on marginalized communities, it is more important now than ever to advocate for neighbors and what’s happening immediately around us. Duncan reflects on his experience as the Community Development Director at APANO, as well as his role as an elected official for the Metro Council.

Show notes & links:

• APANO – one of the largest nonprofit organizations serving Asian and Asian American communities in Oregon today. Duncan has worked at APANO since the organization’s origin in 2013.
• APANO Action Fund – a sister organization to APANO that focuses on political advocacy, legislative action, and electing BIPOC and progressive leaders into local office.
• Metro Council – the regional government collaborating between Multnomah, Clackamas, and Washington counties. Metro supervises the waste management systems, some housing developments, and major tourist attractions in the Portland Metro area.

Community Podcasting Microcredential – This 12-credit, graduate-level certification helps you build professional skills in podcasting, interviewing, and audio production to tell meaningful community stories.

Thanks to Leif Olsen for composing the music for the series of Oregon Speaks: Voices from this moment.

In this episode of Mutual Aid, Mutual Love, host Ranya Salvant sits down with partners Cat Parkay and Ryan Stimmel to explore how disaster preparedness and mutual aid shape their relationship to the community, especially in the last 100 Days of the Trump Administration. From the hurricanes to the looming Cascadia earthquake, they share stories of finding each other through chance, growing together in crisis, and building resilience through local networks and grassroots solidarity with threats of federal budget cuts to FEMA programs and trainings. It’s a conversation about the power of community, the importance of showing up for one another, and the ways love itself can be a form of mutual aid.

Show notes & links:

• City’s Federal Disaster Relief Funding Could Be At Risk, Emergency Director Tells City Council
• Dark Angel Medical (the in-person Direct Action Response Training is the one that I did earlier this year)
• Stop The Bleed (they have a free online course and it looks like OHSU hosts a monthly 1hr-long in-person class)
• NOLS Wilderness First Responder
• Portland’s NET and BEECN programs (and CERT info to identify similar training and volunteer opportunities in other communities)
• Cascadia Subduction Zone info for Oregonians, including a guide on how to prepare to “Be 2 Weeks Ready”
• Junior League of Portland (as of last week we celebrated our 115th anniversary AND passed the baton to our first Black president, Pleschette Fontenet)
• National Night Out
• The CyberPony Express – Meshtastic radio project

Local Mutual Aid Groups: 

• Portland Mutual Aid Network
• PDX Free Fridge
• Community Free Store
• The People’s Store(mobile)
• Asset to the Resistance (their site also has a list of other local mutual aid projects)

Community Podcasting Microcredential – This 12-credit, graduate-level certification helps you build professional skills in podcasting, interviewing, and audio production to tell meaningful community stories.

Thanks to Leif Olsen for composing the music for the series of Oregon Speaks: Voices from this moment.

Quarantine has meant that we’re having to listen to ourselves and each other as we navigate through new ways of being together for long stretches at a time. It’s near impossible to know how this global pandemic is affecting the quality of our relationships. The stories are endless and varied. Listeners producer Cecilia Brown takes us on a journey into one of these stories asking this question: how do we address changes in relationships when we’re in small clusters of family or friends for months on end?

Photo by Will O on Unsplash

Are you eager to diversify what you’re listening to these days? This episode is for you especially if you’ve been reflecting on and processing what we’re all going through these days. Listeners producer Cecilia Brown talks with her friend Andrea Baron about her process of not only making a playlist of sad songs for her dad but also went the extra length to analyze and categorize them. You too can contribute your favorite sad songs to Andrea’s on-going Sad Song Project.

Listeners producer Cecilia Brown talks with Cleo Davis and Kayin Talton-Davis about homeschooling during COVID-19 and reimagining education by challenging the Eurocentric ideals most educational institutions are built upon. The Portland-based artists and designers have long been using art to tell stories about the Black experience and their current project aims to “create a cultural space of memory, advancement, and artistry for Portland’s Black Community” at Building Cornerstones.

Show notes & links:

• Building Cornerstones – Please consider donating to Cleo and Kayin’s efforts to finish building out the Mayo House, and making it a place for the Black community.
• Root Shocked – a documentary short about generational loss, racial disparity, and the steps taken by one family to force a city to reckon with its history. This doc was also produced by Cecilia Brown.
• Rebuilding Cornerstones: Spatial Justice for Portland’s Black Diaspora – More about Cleo and Kayin’s class at the University of Oregon’s College of Design: Design for Spatial Justice.

New to the Listeners Podcast? Episode piqued your interest? Check out the following previous episodes that are peripherally related:

• #16: August Wilson Red Door Project – Hands Up, Cop Out – Look Within & Evolve
• #14: Bob McKinnon – Headwinds & Tailwinds

Thanks to Cleo & Kayin for sharing their story, experience, and gifts with our community.