EDUCATION & COMMUNITY
IT’S TIME TO MAKE MOVES WORDS BY | DONOVAN M. SMITH
P
ortland is on the move, Irene Marion’s goal? To make sure Black Portlanders are not just along for the ride, but actually helping to steer the vehicle. For the past year-and-a-half, Marion has been serving as the Portland Bureau of Transportation’s (PBOT) Equity & Inclusion Manager to help direct the Bureau towards better addressing the needs of communities who’ve traditionally been overlooked and silenced by local government. The Bureau oversees about $13 billion in infrastructure management alone, with millions more being funneled into maintaining, upgrading and adding infrastructure in response to the not-so-secret population boom happening in the Rose City. Marion, a northeast Portland native, says that as the City builds, it must account for historical wounds it has contributed to inflicting and forge more pathways towards truly equitable transportation. Last year, she was a key voice as the Bureau was forming their citywide pedestrian plan, PedPDX, and was instrumental in deepening its understanding of safety from Black perspectives. What emerged was Walking While Black, the Bureau’s report on four culturally-specific organizations leading focus groups on their constituents’ pedestrian experience. The report is now being used to guide other transportation projects PBOT is undertaking. Marion has also helped navigate hard conversations in Black communities. When a decades-old bikeway plan was proposed to 36
FLO S S IN
MAG A Z I NE
be built along one of the lifelines in historic Albina, she helped to mitigate concerns that ultimately resulted in project relocation more in alignment with the goals of those communities. We sat down with Marion to discuss her role at the Bureau, the future of transportation and its implications for Black Portlanders. F: What’s surprised you about the way transportation functions since working for your Bureau? Irene Marion: We’ve had a lot of policy priorities as a community and our historic standing Black organizations have to be focused in the right way, especially in the places where we feel the most crisis. When you look at a household budget, transportation is usually among the highest costs. Whether you own a vehicle, bike, use public transportation or traveling on foot, there’s an expense associated with the way we have to move ourselves and our families. F: What was the impact of the “Walking While Black” report, which informs the City’s master pedestrian plan? IM: It has definitely been a pivotal body of work for us. The Bureau was doing a lot of cool things to do outreach on the project to get community input on for the pedestrian master plan, but they had a moment where they just realized their data was showing them
