Thank you for your interest in racial justice and SURJ PDX!
SURJ PDX (Showing Up for Racial Justice - Portland, Oregon Chapter) is an all-volunteer group focused on educating, organizing, and mobilizing white people in the Portland Metropolitan Area to work for racial justice.
SURJ PDX builds relationships and promotes activism within a larger movement that centers people of color. We also support and collaborate with national and regional racial justice organizing efforts and are part of the National SURJ Movement.
Check out our 2024 Portland Mayor and City Council Candidate Comparison Guide, put together by our Police Accountability and Abolition Action Group. This guide focuses specifically on issues of police accountability, funding, training, and roles, to help voters make decisions about who to support.
SURJ Values
- Calling people in, not calling people out
- Take risks, make mistakes, learn, and keep going
- Organize out of mutual interest
- Accountability through collective action
- There is enough for everyone
- Growing is good
- Center class
Our Background
SURJ PDX, which was founded in 2013, is focused on educating, organizing and mobilizing white people to work for racial justice. We provide a space to build relationships, skills, and political analysis to work effectively within a multiracial movement for justice. We work to connect people in the Portland area while also supporting and collaborating with national racial justice organizing efforts.
SURJ National was founded in 2009 based on the call nationally (and then locally in Portland) by National POC-led orgs for white organizers to organize white communities in fight against white supremacy.
We've had many iterations as a group over the years (as cohorts, action groups, coalition work, active membership, and more), and we continue to evolve to see what best fits our community and active membership, especially over the past few years during the Covid-19 pandemic.
We are grateful for our relationships with SURJ National and Coalition of Anti-Racist Whites (CARW) in Seattle, WA for their mentorship and resources, which inform much of our work and documents.
Check out our Facebook Page for more updates.