About US

OUR MISSION

Imagine Black helps our Black community imagine the alternatives we deserve and build our political participation and leadership to achieve those alternatives.

OUR VISION

Imagine Black envisions a world where people of African descent enjoy the rights, resources, and recognition to be a thriving, resilient, and connected community.

OUR LENS

BQF offers a holistic understanding of our conditions and connectedness as Black people. As a result, we understand that liberation for all Black people can only be realized by lifting up the voices, experiences and prioritizing the issues of historically silenced and vulnerable groups within Black communities – specifically, queer, trans and GNC, femme, poor, disabled, working, and undocumented people (adapted from BYP100).

As organizers, we take Fannie Lou Hamer’s words seriously: “Nobody's free until everybody's free.”

OUR Theory of Change

If these assumptions, values, and context are true…

Assumptions:

• Self-Determination: Black people and families are experts in their lives and the solutions needed to build a better future for themselves and each other. 

• Leadership: Black voices and Black leadership belong in meaningful decision-making roles, including as voters and as appointed and elected leaders.

• Community: Black people desire a connected, thriving, resilient Black community that builds on the legacies of our elders, embraces the opportunities of today and invests in our shared future. 

Context:

• Black Oregonians are not progressing. Whether in education, housing, health, environmental justice, economic development, civic engagement, or administration of justice, we are moving backward. This is a result of structural racism in institutions and policies at local, state, and federal levels. Changing them requires political power, won through organizing, leadership, and action during and outside of elections.

• While people of color are a growing share of Portlanders, our Black population isn’t growing as fast. This means Black voters can’t single-handedly drive electoral outcomes in general elections, but we can make meaningful differences, especially in other elections.

• Despite their viability, few Black people have been elected to office when faced with a competitive White opponent. Beyond the elected office, there are too few of us in critical decision-making roles. We need more of us in both elected and non-elected leadership roles, and we need to be lockstep.  

• Oregon can be experienced and approached differently by Black folks based on one’s culture, gender, sexual identity, and socioeconomic status or even how long one has lived here. We understand that these differences matter. There are as many ways of being Black as there are Black people, but the experience of being Black unites us.

And we undertake these strategies…

Self-Determination:

• Develop transformative Black leaders through organizing and leadership projects that result in campaign victories and provide real and immediate improvements in our lives. 

Leadership:

• Connect Black leaders to leadership opportunities in decision-making spaces like appointed boards/commissions and policy-making employment.

Community:

• Engage Black people and Black organizations to define their core issues and create campaigns that advance those issues through executive, legislative, or other policy action at the local or state level.

• Use proven and experimental techniques to increase Black voter power.
  

Then we can have this impact...

Short-Term (3-5 years)

Self-Determination:

• Imagine Black leadership alumni and members are active in the organization, and political and community organizations.

Leadership:

• More Black people are appointed to important local and state boards/commissions and employed in policy-making roles.

Community:

• Black voters are quantified, educated, organized, and engaged, turning out in larger numbers especially in non-general elections than in previous years. 

• Black people have won at least one issue campaign that they created and led.

Long-Term (5-10 years)

Self-Determination:

• The Imagine Black network of alumni and members see themselves as kin—a collective, critical mass fighting behind, for, and with one another.

Leadership:

• Black people, who are aligned with our values and actions, are represented equitably throughout government and political organization decision-making roles.

Community:

• The Black community has the tools and support to participate fully in the democratic process at the local, state, and national levels. 

• Black people can regularly win on issue campaigns that they create and lead.

OUR SIBLING ORGANIZATION

Imagine Black and Imagine Black Futures are two separate corporate entities that are affiliated to promote a broad range of work. Although overlap exists, certain activities must be done by one organization and not the other.

Imagine Black (formerly known as PAALF Action Fund), is organized as a 501(c)4 tax-exempt organization that may engage in legislative lobbying and certain political activity. Membership dues and other gifts given to support Imagine Black are not tax-deductible.

Imagine Black Futures (formerly known as Portland African American Leadership Forum), is organized as a 501(c)3 tax exempt organization. Contributions to Imagine Black Futures are tax-deductible.