*Community notes from a Fall 2026 community resilience workshop*

From the desk of the Director of Organizing

Dear Leaven Community,

Since September, I’ve had the privilege to support our Land Story Core Team as we wrestled with a question for our Community Resilience Hub: ‘Community resilience for whom?’

I’m happy to share that we’ve officially completed the 2026 written draft of our Leaven Land Story. Land stories are always living and shifting, lenses more than documents. We did our best to tell a story that could be documented, and we know our version is limited by who we are and how we came together, our learnings and also unlearnings.

To be completely candid, our meetings were messy. As an organizer, I love planning but the thing I like most about organizing is the stories we couldn’t predict. This process forced us to bring our inadequate, complicated selves to the table. We didn’t just read historical timelines; we sat in circles and shared our own migration stories, our heartbreaks, and what home has meant to each of us.

As we dug into the hidden history of this land’s past - the corner of 20th and Killingsworth, but also the greater place of what is now known as North & NE Portland - we cycled through sadness and grief reminding ourselves of the traumas & resilience of people around us impacted by the 1948 Vanport flood. We felt collective rage tracing how the wealth allowing us to be here now was rooted in unceded Indigenous land, and also how the 1952 Redeemer Lutheran church cornerstone rose right as legal redlining was locking Black and brown neighbors out of this neighborhood.

We even had to look in the mirror and hold the complexity of our own modern history. We grappled with the vanished dream of the 2007 Redeemer Lutheran affordable housing project that fell through, and how our subsequent land sales to market-rate developers—while funding the birth of the Leaven Project—ultimately fed the very gentrification that pushed Black families out of Vernon.

There was joy at what led to who we are now, and hope that the values of Leaven’s forebears have threaded through until even this very day, showing us pathways forward.

As we wrapped up our final evaluation, we found some new clarity. One of our team members said something that has stayed with me: 'We can't unsee. It's uncovered. It's there.' We realized that while we can’t change what was done to and upon this land, we now wield the power of awareness.

We can refuse to repeat the misaligned intents of the past.

We can stand on core values and accountability to ourselves and our neighbors.

This brings me to my invitation to you.

This land story belongs to all of us, and it’s a beginning. We only managed a handful of one-to-one conversations, and we refuse to let it become a static, performative piece of paper. We need your stories, your inputs, and your history to keep building this ongoing story.

Story is - after all - the fabric of Leaven.

We are currently hoping to design a set of dynamic Community Land Story Gatherings. Think of them as living exhibits winding through our community—from the threshold of Time Immemorial to a more Resilient Future Horizon of who we are becoming. We want you to walk through the land and its story with us, to see what we saw, and to help us continue to build on the answers to how our future as Leaven can truly practice our values. To learn from our history. To live with accountability at our core.

Keep an eye out as we prepare to invite the broader Leaven, our Building Vision team, and our neighborhood. We cannot wait to share this space, these hard truths, and this beautiful horizon of repair with you.

With fierce gratitude,

Jules and the 2025/2026 Leaven Core Team ( Jennifer Elting, Schuyler Halsey, Marin Hart, Tom Martin, Bob Robison, and Dan Slowey)