City Club Friday Forums

Presented by City Club of Portland, with support from AARP Oregon and Fight Against Sex Trafficking.City Club is a member-led and member-supported 501(c)(3) nonprofit. Join or donate to City Club and support the spaces where community and leadership meet.Mayor Keith Wilson delivered his first State of the City address on May 2 to an audience of several hundred Portlanders at Franklin High School. He struck an optimistic tone while outlining his administration's approach to major challenges, including a $93 million budget shortfall, the city's housing and homelessness crises, and federal policies at odds with local values. Wilson previewed decisions on public safety, climate investment, and city staffing, and emphasized collaboration across government and community. After his remarks, he joined JT Flowers of Albina Vision Trust for a one-on-one conversation. Program speakers included:Dr. Kimberlee Armstrong, Portland Public Schools Superintendent Ted Kaye, City Club of Portland Treasurer Mayor Keith Wilson JT Flowers, Albina Vision Trust JJ Kunsevi, PPS Student Board Representative

Presented by City Club of Portland, with support from AARP Oregon, Fight Against Sex Trafficking, Neil Kelly, and City Cast Portland.City Club is a member-led and member-supported 501(c)(3) nonprofit. Join or donate to City Club and support the spaces where community and leadership meet.On May 2, 2025, City Club of Portland's Built Environment Issue Committee hosted Rx for Central City Livability: Applying Past Successes at the University Place Hotel and Conference Center. The program explored how Portland's history of visionary public infrastructure—from the Transit Mall to the Pearl District—can inform the city's next chapter of growth and revitalization.The conversation brought together leaders who have helped shape some of Portland's most transformative projects. Together, they reflected on the role of catalytic investments, cross-sector collaboration, and community vision in creating a more livable Central City.Program speakers included: Earl Blumenauer, former U.S. Congressman and Presidential Fellow at the Institute for Portland Metropolitan Studies at Portland State University Michael Alexander, Board Chair for Albina Vision Trust Tiffany Sweitzer, President of Hoyt Street Properties Art Pearce, Deputy Director of Planning, Projects and Program for Portland Bureau of Transportation

The gubernatorial debate between Republican candidates Bridget Barton, Christine Drazan, Jessica Gomez, Bud Pierce, and Stan Pulliam.

State of the City featuring Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler.

A Multnomah County Chair debate between Sharia Mayfield, Sharon Meieran, Lori Stegmann, and Jessica Vega-Pederson. Moderated by Chabre Vickers.

The gubernatorial debate between Democratic candidates Tina Kotek and Tobias Read.

State of the County featuring Multnomah County Chair Deborah Kafoury and Barbara Roberts, 34th Governor of Oregon.

The Portland City Council, Position 3 debate between Jo Ann Hardesty, Rene Gonzalez, and Vadim Mozyrsky, moderated by Chabre Vickers.

The Portland City Council Position 2 debate between Dan Ryan and Alanna (AJ) McCreary, moderated by Elisa Dozono.

Multnomah County Sheriff debate between Nicole Morrisey O'Donnell and Derrick Peterson

Playlist The Local by Jefferson Smith and Emily Gilliland on - (-) News With Friends by Andy Lindberg and Julia Oppenheimer on - (-) B Frayn Masters by Andy Lindberg and Julia Oppenheimer on - (-) joanne zuhl street roots by Andy Lindberg on - (-)

Playlist Senator Jeff Merkley Interview by - on - (-) News With My Dad by - on - (-) Andrea Durbin Interview by - on - (-)

Playlist quick 6 by Emily Gilliland and Jefferson Smith on - (-) James Ofsink prerecord by Jefferson Smith on - (-) News with Friends by DJ Ambush and Morgan Jones on - (-) Emily Green Prerecord by Andy Lindberg on - (-)

Playlist Quick 6 by Jefferson Smith and Emily Gilliland on - (-) Incarcerated Firegighters by Evan Quarles and Rory Elliot on - (-) News With My Dad by Joe Smith and Jefferson Smith on - (-) State of Free Press by Andy Lee Roth on - (-) International News by Tim Marcroft on - (-)

COVID-19 compels us to reimagine how public education works in Oregon. The coronavirus pandemic has disrupted public education as we know it. We simply don’t know what learning will look like this fall and through the coming school year. Without thoughtful intervention, the pandemic’s disproportionate impact on families of color will likely compound longstanding inequities in Oregon’s public education system. We ask: How can educators, community leaders, and state leaders help schools adapt to better support every child to learn, especially our most vulnerable? And how does this crisis compel us to reimagine how public education works in Oregon?Rep. Teresa Alonso Leon is the Chair of the House Interim Committee on Eduction.Andrea Valderrama is the Advocacy Director for the Coalition of Communities of ColorErin Helgren is the Early Works liaison for the Children’s Institute

A debate between Portland's 2020 mayoral candidates—Ozzie Gonzalez, Sarah Iannarone, Teressa Raiford, and incumbent Ted Wheeler.

We are offering symbolic digital tickets to help support revenue loss during this time of uncertainty regarding hosting in-person public events. Digital tickets are sliding scale. Thanks to our sponsors: Candidates for District Attorney:Ethan Knight As a lifelong public servant, Ethan works hard to defend everyday Multnomah County values on the front lines of our justice system, working to keep our communities safe for over two decades. From the United States Attorney’s office to the Multnomah County District Attorney’s office, Ethan has led the prosecution of some of the biggest cases in Oregon’s history ― protecting our national security, our environment, and our neighborhoods. He has been personally recognized with some of the Justice Department's highest awards for his work handling national security cases during the Obama Administration, including by former Attorney General Loretta Lynch.Now, he’s running for District Attorney to bring a collaborative, community-focused approach to creating a safer and more accessible Multnomah County for all. Mike Schmidt Mike Schmidt currently serves as the executive director of the Oregon Criminal Justice Commission. In this role, Mike oversees a $90 million budget and spearheads community-based efforts to reform our state’s approach to criminal justice. Mike is also a former high school teacher and frontline prosecutor.Mike Schmidt has been a resident of Southeast Portland since 2005, when he moved to the city where he met his wife, Clare, a Portland native. They own a small home where they are raising their son, a dog, a cat, and three chickens. Mike enjoys playing darts, board games, watching the Blazers and the Saints, and spending time with his family exploring Oregon. This debate will be moderated by CJ Robbins & Andrew Kalloch Moderated by CJ Robbins & Andrew Kalloch

2020 marks the 100th anniversary of the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment, which finally placed women's right to vote in the United States Constitution. Oregon was one of several western states that saw early victories in this area. How has the women's vote impacted Oregon over the last 100 years? What barriers remain? What kind of affect might the vote of women play in the 2020 election?In a celebration and reflection of this historic anniversary, we have a wonderful panel of scholars, historians and change-makers. Featuring Guest Speakers:Eliza Canty-JonesEliza E. Canty-Jones is Editor of the Oregon Historical Quarterly and Director of Community Engagement at the Oregon Historical Society. She produces scholarship, public programs, and organizational partnerships that advance complex and multilingual perspectives on Oregon’s past. She holds an M.A. in Pacific Northwest and public history from Portland State University and a B.A. in English from St. Mary’s College of Maryland, where she was founding co-editor of SlackWater: Oral Folk History of Southern Maryland. Eliza was co-founder and served as President of the Oregon Women’s History Consortium, which created the statewide centennial project, Century of Action: Oregon Women Vote, 1912–2012 Shadiin GarciaShadiin's work centers on organizational change; culturally relevant and sustaining curriculum; diversity, equity, and belonging; educational and systemic equity; culturally appropriate research; and community driven systemic change. She served as the Deputy Director of Policy and Research at Oregon’s Chief Education Office where she helped develop a research agenda driven by culturally appropriate practices and Indigenous methodologies for improving key educational outcomes. She served as the Director of TeachOregon at the Chalkboard Project leading initiatives to diversify the educator workforce and improve teacher educator systems. With funding from Meyer Memorial Trust, she facilitates Oregon's statewide American Indian/Alaska Native Educational Professional Learning Community. Dr. Garcia serves on three boards: College Possible of Oregon, Women’s Foundation ofOregon, and Carry it Forward.Dr. Shirley JacksonDr. Jackson is a professor in the Department of Black Studies at Portland State University. She received her Master’s and Ph.D. in sociology from the University of California, Santa Barbara. Dr. Jackson's research specializations include race/ethnicity, gender, and social movements. She is the 2016 recipient of the Society for the Study of Social Problems' Doris Wilkinson Faculty Leadership Award and has received the State of Connecticut’s African American Affairs Commission’s Woman of the Year award. Dr. Jackson has served on the State of Oregon’s Ethnic Studies Advisory Committee that developed ethnic studies standards for Oregon’s K-12 schools. She is the editor of The Handbook of Race, Class, and Gender (Routledge/Taylor & Francis 2014) and co-editor of Caged Women: Incarceration, Representation, and Media (2018, Routledge/Taylor & Francis). She is currently working on several projects including a study on the intersection of gender, race, and space; a socio-historical exploration of U.S. and global themes of race/ethnicity and gender in political cartoons during WWII and the Civil Rights Movement; and a comparative analysis of the 1961 Cuban Literacy Campaign and the 1964 Freedom Summer Project in Mississippi. As a scholar-activist, Dr. Jackson gives presentations and interviews in the community, on radio, TV, and in the print media. She has also served as an expert witness for state and federal defense attorneys and prosecutors.Moderated By: Emily Evans, Women's Foundation of OregonEvans, who was born and raised in Ashland, Ore., spent the last five years as the Lead Development Officer for the Forum for Youth Investment, a nonprofit think tank in Washington DC. During her tenure, Evans directed a multi-million dollar annual fund development effort and partnered with national and local foundations all over the country. Prior to her work at the Forum, Evans helped launch the Women’s Leadership Institute in Washington DC as the Interim Director of Partnerships and Advancement. While there, she secured the largest six-figure board member gift in the organization’s history and helped staff special events for a number of notable women leaders, including former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, NPR’s Linda Wertheimer, and U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar. Evans also served as president of the Maxwell Women’s Caucus while completing her Masters in Public Administration at the Maxwell School of Syracuse University, and earned her bachelor’s degree from Bryn Mawr College.

Part 1: A Conversation on Gender Pronouns with Reid VanderburghPart 2: The Non-Binary Perspective

The Current 11-13-2019 Act I: Not Your Grandmother's Death with Dignity Movement With Speaker Peg SandeenAct II: The Life and Times of a Refugee in Portland. A Discussion on Displacement with IRCO's Djimet Dogo

Maxine Ftizpatrick is a local legend. She spent 25 years fighting housing displacement and gentrification in Portland. She joins us for Friday Forum on Nov 15 to reflect on her career and talk about the work left to be done. Join us! Register below. About Presenter Maxine Fitzpatrick:Maxine Fitzpatrick retired after 25 years as the Executive Director/CEO of Portland Community Reinvestment Initiatives, Inc. (PCRI), a community development corporation specializing the development and management of affordable housing. Maxine became the first executive director of PCRI in 1993, relocating to Portland from the Midwest where she also developed and managed affordable housing. A longtime affordable housing and community advocate, Maxine has earned an Equal Opportunity Award from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) for her efforts to further Fair Housing and is a past board member of the Federal Home Loan Bank of Seattle. She currently serves on the Development Review Advisory Committee for the Bureau of Development Services, Portland Public School District Wide Boundary Review Advisory Committee, and the Metro Policy Advisory Committee.

Earthquakes, floods, tsunamis, hurricanes, and volcanoes—they all stem from the very same forces that give our planet life. It is only when these forces exceed our ability to withstand them that they become disasters. Science and engineering can be used to understand extreme events and to design our cities to be resilient, but we must overcome the psychological drive to normalization that keeps humanity from believing that we could experience anything worse than what we have already survived. As climate change increases the intensity of extreme storms and and urban population growth increases the complexity of our life-sustaining systems, we must examine the history of natural disasters to understand how we can make our society more resilient.Friday Forum returns with a focus on how natural disasters, from Earthquakes to Climate Change affect human communities. We'll hear Dr. Lucy "Earthquake Lady" Jones as she looks through the lenses of science and history to understand the impacts of natural disasters on people. Her lecture will cover earthquakes, as well as her increasing concerns about the impacts of climate change that we are already feeling (smoke from wildfire, flooding, etc.). She will speak about natural disasters both broadly and specifically in addition to human psychology as it relates to possible future disasters. We will follow her speech with our normal Q&A.About Dr. Lucy JonesWorld-renowned seismologist Dr. Lucy Jones is the 2019-20 Wayne Morse Chair for Law and Politics and will be in residence at the University of Oregon in October, co-teaching a course and offering public lectures in Eugene and Portland. With a BA from Brown University and a Ph.D. in Geophysics from MIT, Dr. Jones is a Research Associate at the Seismological Laboratory of Caltech, a post she has held since 1984. She completed 33 years of federal service with the US Geological Survey where she served most recently as the USGS Science Advisor for Risk Reduction, leading the USGS’s long-term science planning for natural hazards research. Dr. Jones is credited with creating the Great ShakeOut Drill, an earthquake preparation experiment that by 2016 included 53 million participants around the world. She is the founder of the Dr. Lucy Jones Center for Science and Society, with a mission to foster the understanding and application of scientific information in the creation of more resilient communities. Working with both the public and private sectors, Dr. Jones seeks to increase communities’ ability to adapt and be resilient to the dynamic changes of the world around them. She has been a prominent public voice on the science of natural disasters, conducting thousands of media interviews and appearing on all major news broadcasts and cable news networks, as well as NPR. Her book, “The Big Ones: How Natural Disasters Have Shaped Us (and What We Can Do About Them),” was an Amazon Best Science Book of 2018.

Once a national leader in environmental law, Oregon now consistently trails other West Coast states in protecting its environment. Oregon has become an outlier for another reason. Per capita, it’s first in the nation for corporate donations to lawmakers, and is one of only five states with no limits on political contributions. Reporter Rob Davis wrote about this in the recent Oregonian series, “Polluted by Money: How corporate cash corrupted one of the greenest states in America.” Subsequently, Oregon legislators placed a measure on the November 2020 ballot that will ask voters to decide whether to amend the state’s constitution to allow limits on campaign contributions. What would this ballot measure accomplish? How did Oregon fall so far behind in protecting its environment? What else needs to happen, and what are the obstacles to change? Rob Davis is an investigative reporter covering the environment on the watchdog team at The Oregonian, where he’s worked since 2013. The Maryland native previously worked at the innovative nonprofit Voice of San Diego and has written for The New York Times and High Country News. In Oregon, he has reported extensively on the rise of oil trains, Portland’s toxic air problems and lead contamination in National Guard armories.