AfroVillage Movement
The AfroVillage is more than a physical space, it is a movement rooted in the vision of Portland community member and activist Laquida Landford. The movement focuses on addressing the needs of our most vulnerable population — unhoused individuals — with a focus on racial disparities and inequalities. Through a variety of initiatives and events, including Old Town Fresh and Sneaker Week in Downtown Portland, AfroVillage provides a variety of critical services to community members and has started important conversations around fundamental basic needs such as hygiene and sanitation, food scarcity, and mental and physical health.
Centering Black Liberation and Indigenous Sovereignty.
We understand Black Liberation as the achievement of freedom for the Black community, against the historical foundation of inequality and racism that the United States has been and continues to be built upon. To achieve Black Liberation, we must address anti-Blackness, which is the depreciation of Black humanity, the limitation of Black agency, and the denial of Black pain. We understand Indigenous Sovereignty as the right of Indigenous people to self-determine in accordance with their own needs, against the historic racism and the colonization and dispossession of their lands, territories and resources. We believe our values are strongly aligned with these movements, and our work is supportive of these efforts.
Specifically, we see our work around collective power, cooperative models, collaborative ownership and healing, as central to these movements. Through street outreach, engagement and empowerment, we build Black and Brown collective power to dismantle the mechanisms that reproduce white supremacy. In addition to being led by Black women, our organization also partners with a variety of Black-owned/led organizations, such as Black Food Sovereignty, Beyond Black, Mudbone Grown, Equitable Giving Circle and the Black Educational Achievement Movement to ignite BlPOC communities to participate as owners and movement leaders within food systems, placemaking and economic development. Our work focuses on home and land ownership to advance alternative models for self-determination, independence and power, and to eradicate the systemic racism that has oppressed Black and indigenous people for centuries.
We stand against capitalism, as we see it as a system used to justify the oppression, marginalization and exploitation of Black people. As an alternative, we use and propose cooperative forms of economics and housing, built upon shared resources and shared services. We use a care-centered approach, focused on listening, to heal the historical and current traumas suffered by our Black and Brown communities.