Activist Makes Legislative Run

By Raymond Rendleman/The Portland Observer
Cyreena Boston files to 'get things done'

Inner-city activist Cyreena Boston wants to redirect Salem lawmakers' focus on quality-of-life issues concerning the part of Portland best known for its proximity to the airport.

Boston, 27, has identified as a grassroots activist since she joined St. Andrews' Portland Organizing Project at the age of 10, but only recently has she considered a seat in the Capitol the best means of affecting change.

Monday she formally announced her run for Oregon House District 45, a position that could make her the youngest and only African-American member of the Oregon House of Representatives.

Acknowledging how easy it has been for lawmakers to ignore her district, squeezed between the airport and Interstate 84, she hopes to highlight how this semi-urban area is starting to experience the same problems that had been previously associated with the areas between north and northeast Portland.

"This neighborhood has been identified by so many geographic hallmarks: the airport, the Grotto, the Sandy/82nd intersection, but it's an interesting area to live in, because it really, truly is to me the heart of central northeast Portland," she says. "This district has its connection with traditional, central northeast Portland, but it's also the connecting factor as you head eastward towards Parkrose."

In redefining her district as a crucial link, Boston hopes to draw legislative attention and funds for the education, transportation, health and public-safety issues that she believes are critical to such a community in transition.

She and her neighborhood may "have the most to benefit from good government," but she believes in being a Democrat not out of a need for the system to do something for her. Rather, she claims to have learned how to use the system to get things done, a sentiment that has already attracted dozens of high-profile supporters.

Before quitting her job this month as a Democratic Party outreach director, she began the work of getting sponsors by making sure that her campaign would have the approval of many Portland leaders, including the incumbent State Rep. Jackie Dingfelder and African-American Sen. Avel Gordly, the legislators who opened the seat.

Dingfelder has announced plans to run for Gordly's senate seat. Gordly, a long-time Democrat who changed to Independent a year ago, is giving up politics to teach at Portland State University.

Like Gordly, Boston may not be one to simply tow the party line in garnering support, as she has shown in serving her Catholic Church council.

"Faith has been essential in developing my compassion," she says, "but my faith has evolved to a point that I don't fit in with everything the church stands for: primarily I'm very pro-choice."

Boston considers access to all kinds of health services and community policing top priorities for a district that is currently having some of the most blatant problems with prostitution in the city.

"The first step is to be very honest (about prostitution)," she says. "The next step is looking at the sources, because a lot of these people haven't had treatment for addictions."

She sees many more under-addressed problems stemming from demographic changes in the surrounding neighborhoods.

"We're dealing with persons who can't afford to live in northeast Portland that are being moved out to central northeast where they had never really lived before," she says. "Our schools were having a difficult time and now are much more challenged dealing with racial and class issues because they have to deal with the dispersement of persons due to gentrification."

Traffic issues are also a high priority for her as she considers how this district is bisected by Sandy Boulevard, 82nd Avenue and Interstate 205.

"I think the special thing about this district is that it is central, so all the issues that really resonate with what persons might call proper northeast Portland, all the issues that are really prevalent in that community, but then again also the issues that are prevalent in mid-county and East County such as Parkrose, also resonate right in the middle of this district."