Archiving for Our Futures: Don’t Shoot Portland on Preserving Cultural Memory in Service of Social Justice
Community programming at the social justice nonprofit, Don’t Shoot Portland, always centers educational access. Whether it’s through legal referral resources, advocacy, feed-in’s, workshops and more, Don’t Shoot Portland operates on the need to inform and engage communities. When we began our Liberated Archives programming with the City of Portland, I was unaware of the profound experience I would receive. Teaching hands-on workshops, we encouraged the community to bring in old photographs, newspaper articles, oral histories and more to take a closer look at the past. The professional archivists we worked with lent their expertise and educational tools, such as how-to’s on preservation, cataloging and conducting research.
Through Don’t Shoot Portland, visiting our city archives means discovering forgotten parts of Portland’s past. Being able to ‘liberate’ these archives and display them in an artistic form for people to see is an invaluable opportunity for many. Sharing our heritage allows our ancestors to live forever — their triumphs, accomplishments and advancements are kept alive through educating our youth through history.
Working with the elders in our community for liberated archives is especially powerful. Civil Rights activist and painter Isaka Shamsud-Din, who is renowned for his expressions of Black life is one such elder we have collaborated with through the liberated archives programming. From portraits of famous jazz musicians to scenes in pool halls from his memory, Isaka’s paintings depict the daily lives of many Black Americans living through the Civil Rights era. Don’t Shoot Portland’s partnership with Isaka and recently deceased art philanthropist Arlene Schnitzer allowed for some of Isaka’s best pieces to be published as a Juneteenth calendar.
Last May, I attended a Documenting The Now workshop hosted by Don’t Shoot Portland, where I saw the efficiency of digital archiving in action. Knowing my moms’ penchant for history, I took her word for it when she suggested I should take a trip from Denver to attend the workshop. Hosting workshops in several states, Documenting The Now highlights the urgent need for activist organizations to engage in digital archiving, especially in the age of social media. This initiative is not only necessary for means of preservation, but to inspire our youth to document the present more than ever. In a world where things happen in the blink of an eye, social media archives can help saving lives and ignite movements. With our Documenting The Now workshop open to the public, archivist Mary Hansen was among the attendees impacted by the session:
“As an archivist for the City of Portland, I was grateful to be asked to attend the Document The Now digital archives workshop. I think the most important part of the whole day was recognizing the archivists’ and other presenters’ passion for the work of preservation and education and how it was equal to the drive and desire of the Don’t Shoot community to learn how to preserve their activist history in a world that would like to just forget.” — Mary Hansen
The work Don’t Shoot Portland does is rooted in racial injustice; we combat these issues with direct community outreach. Learning through the archives has brought another perspective to this work. I’ve since learned about identifying white supremacy within archives and a bit about the work being done to dismantle them — another gained perspective I can attribute to the relationship forged between Don’t Shoot and the City of Portland Archives. White supremacist policies are embedded obstacles in most marginalized communities, coming through in the form of housing, jobs, education and more, and it is important we document and shed light on these issues through the archives.
Having seen a reproduction of W.E.B. Du Bois’s “The American Negro Exhibit”, which displays the color line through infographics and charts at the Portland Art Museum, half a year ago, I immediately became inspired to spend more time at the archives. It helped place a perspective on how many histories have been wiped out or made unavailable to those who have wanted them, those who have needed to culturally self-identify and have no means of doing so.
Being in the Portland City Archives itself is an incredible learning experience. Passing through ceiling high stacks, this is the final resting place for many important documents — among them, bureaus that no longer exist, photographs of a time when Eleanor Roosevelt visited Portland and even dioramas representing the Occupy protest movement. After spending the past six months on our liberated archives programming, I’ve become inspired to dig into Black artists and writers like James Baldwin and Bell Hooks — legends I’d previously admired but am now devoted to their works from a new perspective.
As our programming grows, we hope to include more speakers, educators and others working at the intersection of archives and social justice such as Archives for Black Lives. With the recent acquisition of the former Albina Arts Center this past January, we are reclaiming space in a historically Black neighborhood that was nearly swept away by gentrification. Hosting these workshops and our own programs has created a source for unity, courage and inspiration in our community.
While we wait out the status of the COVID-19 pandemic, we are moving these sessions online and are excited to expand our access in this way. Please stay updated on upcoming sessions by signing up for our newsletter! The first of our online liberated archives conversations featured discussions with community members, archivists, filmmakers and more. We plan to continue hosting these Zoom meetings through Facebook and YouTube as well. The video below was played during today’s workshop — please watch in full.
We encourage you to find out more about Don’t Shoot Portland and our direct action programming within social justice and art. Find out more here.
