Fresh faces liven Northeast House race
By Lee van der Voo
Portland Tribune, Nov 23, 2007
Cyreena Boston says the bus stops in Oregon House District 45 - which includes Northeast and east Portland neighborhoods - tell her everything she needs to know.
Whether the kids are in school. Whether they're fighting. Whether the men and women are struggling, selling their bodies, selling drugs.
She says she has an eye for this: spotting other people's troubles. During a recent bus-stop visit at Northeast 82nd Avenue and Sandy Boulevard, Boston said she saw two prostitutes, two drug deals, two fistfights.
"I was like, wow, this is my district. Does anyone else see what's going on?" she said.
She calls it that already: "My district."
But whether it becomes Boston's district, in a legislative sense, District 45 will be a question for voters in the May Democratic primary.
Yet in this campaign that's barely begun, the 27-year-old newcomer and her focus on improving social policy already is earning endorsements from well-placed politicians such as Oregon Sens. Avel Gordly and Margaret Carter, state Rep. Chip Shields, Multnomah County Commissioner Ted Wheeler and city Commissioner Erik Sten.
Though the primary is six months away - four months from the filing deadline for the race, in fact - Boston's take-to-the-streets gusto garnered endorsements as early as this past summer.
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Boston, a former Portland Public Schools social worker, first canvassed neighborhoods door-to-door at the age of 10, learning about how gang violence was affecting families for St. Andrew Catholic Church.
Her parents, suburban socialites who moved the family from New York when Boston was young, made late-in-life career shifts toward community organizing, taking Boston along.
Her father, Lou Boston, eventually became chairman of the Urban League. Boston's mother, Clariner, returned to college at age 50 and now runs Better People, a nonprofit that helps prevent recidivism.
Boston says her lifelong links to the community are fostered by her parents' civic-mindedness and her own organizing through church groups and as a camp counselor in a program for North Portland kids.
"I have known Sen. Carter and Sen. Gordly since I was 8," she said. "I was one of those ‘It takes a village to raise a child' products. My parents had me late in life and were smart enough to know they couldn't do it on their own. So they pushed me out into the community."
That community - Boston attended high school in the Parkrose neighborhood - is a place she's seen change. As a legislator, she would press issues related to gentrification by asking a question she says is critical:
"How do we continue to invest in our own public infrastructure and continue to be responsible or responsive to people who have been here all along and not push them further out or pretend they're not there?"
Boston's political ideas focus on improving quality of life in House District 45, where she says much of the population has been affected by gentrification. She says the neighborhood is "trapped up in all kinds of social ills," and she would spotlight drug prevention and health care strategies that tackle mental health and addiction through the Oregon Health Plan.
Portland Tribune, Nov 23, 2007
Cyreena Boston says the bus stops in Oregon House District 45 - which includes Northeast and east Portland neighborhoods - tell her everything she needs to know.
Whether the kids are in school. Whether they're fighting. Whether the men and women are struggling, selling their bodies, selling drugs.
She says she has an eye for this: spotting other people's troubles. During a recent bus-stop visit at Northeast 82nd Avenue and Sandy Boulevard, Boston said she saw two prostitutes, two drug deals, two fistfights.
"I was like, wow, this is my district. Does anyone else see what's going on?" she said.
She calls it that already: "My district."
But whether it becomes Boston's district, in a legislative sense, District 45 will be a question for voters in the May Democratic primary.
Yet in this campaign that's barely begun, the 27-year-old newcomer and her focus on improving social policy already is earning endorsements from well-placed politicians such as Oregon Sens. Avel Gordly and Margaret Carter, state Rep. Chip Shields, Multnomah County Commissioner Ted Wheeler and city Commissioner Erik Sten.
Though the primary is six months away - four months from the filing deadline for the race, in fact - Boston's take-to-the-streets gusto garnered endorsements as early as this past summer.
-----
Boston, a former Portland Public Schools social worker, first canvassed neighborhoods door-to-door at the age of 10, learning about how gang violence was affecting families for St. Andrew Catholic Church.
Her parents, suburban socialites who moved the family from New York when Boston was young, made late-in-life career shifts toward community organizing, taking Boston along.
Her father, Lou Boston, eventually became chairman of the Urban League. Boston's mother, Clariner, returned to college at age 50 and now runs Better People, a nonprofit that helps prevent recidivism.
Boston says her lifelong links to the community are fostered by her parents' civic-mindedness and her own organizing through church groups and as a camp counselor in a program for North Portland kids.
"I have known Sen. Carter and Sen. Gordly since I was 8," she said. "I was one of those ‘It takes a village to raise a child' products. My parents had me late in life and were smart enough to know they couldn't do it on their own. So they pushed me out into the community."
That community - Boston attended high school in the Parkrose neighborhood - is a place she's seen change. As a legislator, she would press issues related to gentrification by asking a question she says is critical:
"How do we continue to invest in our own public infrastructure and continue to be responsible or responsive to people who have been here all along and not push them further out or pretend they're not there?"
Boston's political ideas focus on improving quality of life in House District 45, where she says much of the population has been affected by gentrification. She says the neighborhood is "trapped up in all kinds of social ills," and she would spotlight drug prevention and health care strategies that tackle mental health and addiction through the Oregon Health Plan.