Let’s build a food forest

at Hughes Community Church! 

May 9, 2025 — Historically, Northeast Portland is known as once being the heart of the city’s Black community, but today those families have been forcefully displaced through redlining, with many far removed from where they once called home. Don’t Shoot Portland seeks to uplift and sustain Hughes Community Church and the surrounding neighborhood through implementing this Food Forest as a symbol of common unity.

Racial justice is at the core of our coalition’s food forest program, especially as two of our organizations’ board members are descendents of the historic North Portland Black displacement. Implementing this food forest allows us to reclaim land in a historically Black neighborhood in the face of ongoing gentrification and disinvestment. Our coalition plans to not only address immediate needs like access to healthy, affordable food but also confronting the legacy of systemic racism that has contributed to food apartheid and land dispossession in Black communities. 

This community program is hosted in partnership by Don't Shoot Portland, PDX Food Forest and other coalition partners. Contact us to get involved by emailing hughesfoodforest@dontshootpdx.org!

Our ultimate goal is for the elderly congregation and their families, all of whom are lifelong Black Oregonians, to achieve economic empowerment and sustained support from this food Forest.

As a multi-year long endeavor, this will eventually grow to include programs that generate revenue through the sales of canned goods, preserves and herbal remedies at local farmers markets and co-ops. These proceeds will be directed to the church members and their families, helping to offset health care, housing and other life expenses - building economic resilience. We hope to provide workforce opportunities as well by offering jobs or stipends for harvesting, processing, teaching, and maintaining the space, especially for the elders and local youth.

Cultural preservation and resistance are central to what we envision for this food forest coalition.

The food forest will become a living archive—growing traditional crops, sharing ancestral knowledge, and hosting intergenerational gatherings to counter cultural erasure by making space for Black joy, memory, and belonging.

Together, these intersecting liberation struggles show up not just in the outcomes of the food forest, but in how it is built: collectively, intentionally, and with a vision of justice that honors the interconnectedness of people, land, and legacy.