⚡ Powered by YOU: Member spotlight on SuzannePlus, send in your suggestions! By Cassie Ruud Woohoo! It’s Friday! If you’re not caught up on the news of the week, like how Portlanders honored the passing of author Beverly Cleary, our Weird Wednesday interview with Carlos the Rollerblader, and the online petition to save the Children’s Museum, we have you covered with those links. Today, we want to say thank you to one of the fine Portlanders who helps support our publication — we are doing a member spotlight today! Our Bridgeliner Unabridged members power our newsletter with its small, scrappy team, and that allows us to bring you more original reporting, stories, and features. So without further ado, let’s meet a member. |
💕 Member spotlight with Suzanne Veaudry |
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Portland Community Reinvestment Initiatives team breaking ground on low income homes, Suzanne is wearing the blue jacket. (📸: Sika Stanton photography) Today we're chatting with Suzanne from Portland's Concordia neighborhood, and learning about some amazing businesses in Alberta, the joy of our I Spy Challenges (thank you Suzanne), and why you should check out the Park The Carts food pod. What follows is our interview, edited for length and clarity. |
Where in town might people run into you?I hang out on NE Alberta, I can be found walking around my neighborhood, chatting with friends, frequenting local businesses especially Angel's, TC O'Leary's, Binks, La Bonita, Thai Noon, and The Hilt. I also like to shop at Collage, the Filling Station, and Green Bean Books. |
What made you decide to become a member of Bridgeliner?I love the I Spy weekly challenges! Sometimes I collaborate with others to solve the challenge and we love it. My friends outside of Portland have also taken to helping out, I even got one hint from friends in Poland. |
What’s something you're working on — in big ways or small — that you could use help with?I work at PCRI (Portland Community Reinvestment Initiatives), an African American culturally-specific housing organization. The Black population in Portland has been hit particularly hard by the pandemic and we are working to get direct support to people most impacted. We have started to get people gift cards as a way to directly support them through the pandemic. If you would like to help support the community with gift cards, local or minority-owned business cards are particularly appreciated. You can make donations here. |
What local businesses do you think deserves a shoutout (and why)? Elevated Coffee shop located on NE Martin Luther King Boulevard, across the street from the Blazers Boys and Girls Club, between Alberta and Killingsworth, is dedicated to Black and local excellence. I really look forward to post-pandemic coffee shop afternoons, but in the meanwhile, to-go coffee will have to do. And one more shoutout, the Park The Carts food cart pod on NE MLK and Stafford Street has some amazing food choices run by BIPOC owners. When my family goes we like to split up and get food from different carts. My daughter loves the sushi burritos and I am in love with Union Burger — we all love Korean food. The place has covered outdoor seating and everyone is good about wearing masks and social distancing. |
What’s a local event in Portland that you really love?NE Alberta's holiday gnome hunt is just so much fun. I have even painted my own gnomes at Mimosa Studios which I proudly display during the holidays. |
What’s a story you’ve read about that you wish more people in Portland cared about?The story which ran in Willamette Week which clarified Antifa's role in protests was important to me because the Black Lives Matter movement has been denigrated so much by the national media with Portland being portrayed as hell. The BLM movement in Portland is working to dismantle systemic racism which is so prevalent and damaging to the BIPOC community and society. Antifa has been part of the BLM movement and has done a good job of bringing attention to white supremacy factions, which we should all understand. We should all strive to be anti-racist. |
What are you celebrating in your life? My organization successfully finished the King+Park low income apartment building which is beautiful and is already full. Thank you to Suzanne for being one of our members (and one of our regular I Spy winners!). If you’d like to learn more about PCRI’s work, go here. Thank you to our Bridgeliner Unabridged members; your support helps make Bridgeliner, and original features like this, possible. Do you want your moment in the spotlight? Become a member today. |
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Today🎺 Get jazzy with Noah Simpson (Online) |
Tomorrow🎨 Learn about art and gardening from the Yuan and Ming eras of China (Online) 🌸 A virtual gala honoring our community (Online) 📔 Let’s make a ‘zine! (Online) |
Sunday🌿 Here’s how to grow an edible landscape (Online) |
Thursday🐛 Learn how to detect invasive pests with Hoyt Arboretum (Online) 🌲 Wanna learn about Oregon’s forest policies? (Online) |
Saturday, April 10✋ Nominate a Leader in Your Community for NLC's 2022 Institute (Online) |
Sunday, April 11☕ Get your coffee — it’s time for Gilmore Girls brunch trivia (Online) |
🙋 One more thing …Thank you for reading all the way to the end. Today is World Autism Awareness Day, and April is Autism Awareness Month. To honor this month and neurodiverse Portlanders, we want you to send in suggestions for local advocacy groups, artists, educators, friends, and loved ones to shoutout and celebrate. Note: we are looking for groups that advocate for, involve, or are created by the autistic community here in Portland, and which directly benefit this community. If you need some examples to get you started, this article is a really great resource. So send along your suggestions, as well as a couple of reasons why they deserve a shoutout and we’ll put something together for an upcoming newsletter. Have a great weekend, here’s hoping the sunshine sticks around, and we’ll see you back here on Tuesday. -Cassie at Bridgeliner 🎉 Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. 📨 Tell a friend to subscribe. 📎 Advertise with us. |
