Bethel Weekly Highlights

Guest speaker Jo Ann Hardesty, President of the Portland NAACP, will speak at Bethel's Social Justice Forum THIS Sunday, February 26 at 11:30 AM. The forum will focus on the award-winning book “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness,” by Michelle Alexander, which describes how the War on Drugs and associated racial bias in laws, policing, courts, prison systems, media, and government programs continue to devastate black communities with many of the same problems seen in the Jim Crow era.

Hardesty served in the United States Navy and was elected to the Oregon House in 1994, holding office until 2001. She later served as executive director of Oregon Action and became president of the Portland chapter of the NAACP in January 2015. She provides consultation and training on a wide variety of social justice issues, including a 6-hour workshop on how to "Organize a Movement to End the New Jim Crow."

Click for the latest news on Oregon's "Unequal Justice" system featuring Jo Ann Hardesty.