From Lisa Loving of The Skanner Newspaper
Published July 9, 2014
Portland activists from the Urban League, Oregon Action and the AFL-CIO are building a ballot measure campaign to eliminate job and housing discrimination against people with arrest and conviction histories by “banning the box.”
Activists say more than 32,000 people in Oregon are currently incarcerated or on community supervision and face barriers to housing and jobs.
Statistically, almost 11 percent of that group is black despite the fact that the state’s overall black population is just 2 percent.
“Our criminal justice system convicts and incarcerates African Americans and other people of color in numbers that far exceed our percentage in the state,” says Urban League of Portland Executive Director Michael Alexander.