Facilitators first question to Participants was what are their hopes and dreams for their community. The following are the strongest themes that came up in response to this question, as well as themes Participants continued to bring up throughout the Dialogues.
Better jobs and economic planning
Collaboration and dialogue to build trust and understanding
Trust and reconciliation for Communities of Color
Improved education and public services
Environmental sustainability
Participants in all Regional Dialogues discussed economic growth and good jobs in their response to their hopes and dreams for their community, but many Lincoln City Participants want jobs that provide both income growth and personal satisfaction, along with sustainability, resiliency, and safety. This sentiment came up in this first question and throughout their Dialogue. These responses reflect the challenges of the coastal tourism economy, which produce seasonal low-wage positions. Their economy also draws second-home owners, taking housing stock off the market and thus reducing housing supply and increasing housing prices. Similarly, the strong themes around resiliency and sustainability respond to the regularity of power surges on the coast, their coastal location, and the changing environment and climate. The responses indicate not just an interest in more economically balanced communities but also in their constant connection to the natural environment and feeling the direct impact of changes in the weather.
The vision for Lincoln City area is really more than a living wage – I’d like to see more jobs that have a life long growth attached to them. That would be a big change from being centered so much on tourism. (Lincoln City Dialogue)
My vision for our community is that we create vibrant economic growth that maintains the integrity of the lands, including livability. It includes affordable housing and good wages. (Lincoln City Dialogue)
I want ecologically sustainable economic development, which looks like mass timber as well as beer. I want housing and I want economic resilience… I want people to have jobs that give them hope and joy and satisfaction. And resilience also against catastrophic events, which isn't just earthquakes and tsunamis but also includes wildfires, floods, and other natural hazards. (Lincoln City Dialogue)
I'd like to see thriving resilient communities both from a business perspective, which I think everybody is in touch with, but also from a sense of belonging, security and creating opportunities for folks. (Lincoln City Dialogue)
Resilience and sustainability are important broad goals for our coastal county. (Lincoln City Dialogue)
Participants from the other Dialogues also prioritized more and better well-paying, secure jobs as a hope for their community. Participants were not struggling with securing their own job, but more a recognition of the struggle that their community has in creating diverse economy with the opportunity for good jobs at different levels on the pay scale. Participants also made the connection to a good local economy with a good quality of life and sustainability as well.
I would like to see this region support itself economically…I believe this is possible and I don't think that our leaders need to have a bigger vision than that. (Medford Dialogue)
My hopes and dreams to diversify our economy so our children will have jobs here when they grow up, so that they stay here. (Medford Dialogue)
The hopes and dreams for my community are around economic development and workforce development. We just struggle all the time. Everybody is their own small businesses and struggling a lot, though we still have a sense of family, of pulling together in that regard. (Medford Dialogue)
On the business side, being able to recruit businesses and organizations providing living wage jobs and be able to also kind of capitalize on how beautiful it is here. (Medford Dialogue)
There aren't enough living wage jobs for regular people. I mean if you work in the for service industry to support tourism that is not a living wage job. (Warm Springs Dialogue)
I want my community to be a thriving small town that is economically strong and that has a great ethnic diversity and incorporates that more into things and to really build. Success is not the population sign going up. Instead, I want quality growth and more long-term thinking. (Warm Springs Dialogue)
I want more small business in Warm Springs. Right now, there are thirteen businesses on our reservation. My organization is trying to promote small business so that things will look very different in 25 years. We do have a small business economy here. There's less retail leakage, there's more money that staying on the reservation and there's more potential for more jobs. (Warm Springs Dialogue)
I want to create a community that my kids want to come back to. I know they're going to go away and I want them to be able to come back and have meaningful employment and community and friendships. (Salem Dialogue)
To provide a great education and not just a sustainable workforce for the manufacturing in our community, but to also bring more environmentally sustainability to it too. (Baker City Dialogue)
I want to find a better way of supporting and sustaining rural economies than the largely extractive ones, extractive in human labor, land and our other assets. My hope is that we can be more creative in how we think about our economies and economic development and start breaking that relationship that has been pretty destructive for both the land and people. (In Portland Regional Dialogue from a rural Participant)
Participants also shared a hope for more listening, learning, and finding commonalities within
their own communities as well as across Oregon. They acknowledged the differences and similarities between urban and rural communities and desire for more collaboration for the benefit of all Oregon communities, whether economically, culturally, or sharing ideas on addressing issues in their community. This theme came up throughout the dialogues.
Whether we're in Portland or Baker, I want to be collaborating with other Oregonians. (Baker City Dialogue)
To come together to communicate our vision and goals. (Baker City Dialogue)
I hope that we can start to communicate more, share solutions that may be working in Portland and might be able to be replicated here. I hope we can start meeting more basic needs for families earning low incomes. (Medford DIalogue)
I'd like to see a lot more trust happening between neighboring communities. Getting people together to talk and realize that they have so many common issues. (Medford Dialogue)
I'd love for the rural parts of the state and the urban parts of the state to really leverage what each has to offer, to look out to each other and support each other. It feels like sometimes we live in two different states and that makes me sad because our state is amazing. (Medford Dialogue)
When I think about my hopes and dreams, it's really about continued increasing communication and garnering respect for each other across the whole state because that's the my perspective of evolution. And the query is: "Can I see that manifesting? I can." Just this experience today is a manifestation of that potential. (Medford Dialogue)
I have a dream for a healthier community, for all the communities and for us all to listen with empathy, looking at all of the traumas people have experienced and considering how do we address that. (Medford Dialogue)
I think it's about trust. People come to the table with extreme views, but its’ important for people to listen. I’ve seen it. People reflect on their thoughts and share what they know. There’s a sense of feeling heard. It’s a tough thing to feel like you've never been heard or misrepresented. (Lincoln City Dialogue)
You just have to show up. Because I think the more that we do this talking and getting more people in the conversation, the better we're going to be breaking down the old stereotypes that I see kind of coming into to the meeting. So that's my solution. (Lincoln City Dialogue)
For people to define their own quality of life, their own ambitions. Community dialogue and community visioning is essential. You cannot achieve a dream unless you're talking to each other and identifying your dream. (Warm Springs Dialogue)
I believe, without a vision, the people perish. That's in our scriptural texts. I believe deeply in beloved community. I think if we go to the roots of our religious traditions, whether you're in Ontario, or Portland or Medford, there is basic belief in human dignity of all people and in compassion and kindness and forgiveness as a way to transform our own hearts and our communities. And I believe absolutely a hundred and ten percent it is possible for us. (Portland Dialogue)
To get through the silos and come together to solve problems. (Portland DIalogue)
To talk about issues and look for common ground. What drives me nuts is that when people cannot make sense of other perspectives, they demonize each other over it. (Portland DIalogue)
To work together more, to listen to each other. When I look at the state as a whole, I'm really concerned about the lack of collaboration and finding common ground. In the legislature, you've got a divide between rural and urban Republicans. We aren't listening to each other well. (Salem Dialogue)
Participants of Color as well as White Participants responded to question by describing the discrimination and inequities that Communities of Color have endured, continue to endure, and the associated impacts of this discrimination and these inequities. They wished for acknowledgement, truth, reconciliation, and leveling out of resources for all in Oregon. They are looking to build trust and understanding amongst people as well as strong, resilient communities. The replies relay a belief in Oregon and in caring for the people of Oregon.
For all of the members of our diverse communities feel like they have a place here.
My hopes and dreams are that we can cut through the “us versus them.” That everyone can have pride in our community because we all help to create it.
I'd like to see a breaking of the racial divide in the community. We have a growing Latino population and that’s not often talked about. There's a great opportunity to bring the community together. I’d like to look at the more urban areas because they face similar situations of differences. (Medford Dialogue)
I would hope that all Oregonians have a better understanding of our history, and how it pertains to tribes, and the unique standing each tribe has with the federal government and within the state. And a better understanding of who the tribes are and what they bring to Oregon. That would be helpful. (Medford Dialogue)
My dream, my vision would be to understand each other, to not be so close-minded and not to assume. That we come here to take advantage of everything the United States has to offer and that we are apart of it. We can work together because we're more alike than different. (Medford Dialogue)
I've been hearing a lot that people are living in fear, not just on the immigration front, but people don't feel like they can speak up. They don't feel like they have that power. (Portland Dialogue)
My hopes and dreams are for some truth and reconciliation in Oregon specifically absorbing the historic injustices that have occurred. (Portland Dialogue)
I want to see communities working to address the historical systemic disadvantages that Communities and People of Color continue to experience. If we continue to operate in the same existing power structures that have always existed, we'll continue to see the same results. (Portland Dialogue)
We have social, economic status, racial, and language barriers. We should be our brother's keepers. That's what I'd like to see. (Portland Dialogue)
Historically there's always been a wedge driven between Native Americans and Latinos, and what I would love to see one day is the realization we're really not all that different, and I would love to bridge that gap. (Warm Springs Dialogue)
My hope is to continue the tribalness that we have, which includes off-reservation rights. The dreams are to educate our neighbors as to the whole extent of our being. Governmental is a part of it. We relinquished ten million acres to the United States. We have to figure that out. There's a lot in there. (Warm Springs Dialogue)
Representation of diverse voices in community planning and goals is one of my hopes. With this, we can flourish together rather than continuing a have-and-have-not society. (Warm Springs Dialogue)
Participants also wished to better provide more and better public services in the areas of education and support for those in need.
We have to take care of the whole population and we have to do it better. Education, safety, security, livability, all that stuff. We can come together, figure out a plan and actually do it. (Baker City Dialogue)
To provide opportunity and appropriate access for all kids and making sure that they have the resources. (Portland Dialogue)
My hope is that around the houselessness and mentally ill. I want to have an open dialogue. I want all of the stakeholders to come and find some solutions that are workable solutions for this community, which is a very difficult community to help. (Portland Dialogue)
We have a lot of seniors who can't get where they're going. We have a lot of employees who can't get to work. We have kids who are walking and trying to bike to schools that are not safe. We need to have better, safer opportunities for people to get around. (Warm Springs Dialogue)
Like true Oregonians compelled by the state’s landscape, Participants also responded about their desire to preserve our natural environment.
What came to my mind was the wellbeing of people and place, recognizing our dependence and connection to the natural world as well. (Portland DIalogue)
My hopes and dreams are for our communities are for us as a human species to continue to exist on the planet. We're jeopardizing our own existence. I get the daily challenge of getting on food on the table, but my hope is for actions that are translatable to the day to day and that can be carried that forward to heal and help the natural world. (Portland Dialogue)
My hopes are that are that we continue to preserve and support the land that is out there that will be there long past the time that we are. (Warm Springs Dialogue)
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