Oregon Voices Podcast - Elevating Oregonians' Lived Experiences
Oregon has a reputation as a progressive state. Democratic supermajorities control the legislature. We pass symbolic resolutions. We talk a good game about equity, climate action, and workers' rights.
But the actual policy outcomes tell a different story.
Progressive bills die in committee. Corporate tax breaks get protected. Housing remains unaffordable. Education funding lags. The gap between Oregon's reputation and reality keeps growing.
Why? Because Oregon's Democratic establishment is funded by the same corporate interests that fund Republicans everywhere else. The money controls the votes. The machine protects itself. And working families lose.
Episodes
17 episodes
Oregon Voices Podcast: Episode 17- John Lenssen: Identity, Whiteness, and What Was Lost
Before you can know where you stand, you have to know what was taken from you to get you here.John Lenssen has spent a lifetime studying how identity forms, deforms, and finds its way back to something true. In this second conversation, ...
Oregon Voices Podcast: Episode 16 - John Lenssen: Multiracial Solidarity & the Untold Rules
There is a reason you were never taught this history. That reason is the history.John Lenssen has spent decades working at the intersection of civil rights, education, and multiracial solidarity across the Pacific Northwest. He did not a...
Oregon Voices Podcast: Episode 15 - Dawn Rasmussen, Democratic Candidate, Oregon's 2nd Congressional District
Dawn Rasmussen has driven nearly 9,600 miles through Oregon's 2nd Congressional District, the largest district in the state and one of the largest in the entire country, covering nearly two thirds of Oregon's landmass. She lives in The Dalles, ...
Oregon Voices Podcast: Episode 14 - Evelyn Kocher, Beaverton City Council Candidate, Position 1
Evelyn Kocher grew up in Beaverton, Oregon, fled there with her family from political violence in Jakarta, Indonesia, and never stopped belonging to that city even when she spent years teaching English in China and living abroad. She came back ...
Oregon Voices Podcast: Episode 13 - Teresa Alonso Leon, Democratic Candidate, Oregon Senate District 11
Teresa Alonso Leon was four years old when she was separated from her family at the border, placed in an orphanage until her father found her, and lost her voice completely in the silence between those two moments. She has spent the rest of her...
Oregon Voices Podcast: Episode 12 - Geovanny Tolentino, Salem DSA Chapter Leader
Geovanny Tolentino grew up between Salem and LA, ditched a political science degree because his mentors told him the real organizing happens in the working class, and became a teacher in the Hillsboro School District. He leads the Salem chapter...
Oregon Voices Podcast: Episode 11- Tammy Carpenter Democratic Candidate Oregon House District 27
Tammy Carpenter has lived the American myth from the inside and came out the other side knowing exactly what it costs. She grew up poor, folding paper lunch bags to reuse them, moving every year and a half as a military kid, never knowing a sin...
Oregon Voices Podcast: Episode 10 (Special) Bob Parker Jr. Attorney & Civil Rights Advocate (Part 2)
In Part 1, Robert Roosevelt Parker Jr. laid the foundation. In Part 2, the bottom falls out completely.Bob walks us through Senate Bill 664, a bill championed by Oregon's mom-and-pop gas station operators against the stranglehold of Maj...
Oregon Voices Podcast: Episode 9 (Special) - Bob Parker Jr., Attorney & Civil Rights Advocate (Part 1)
Bob Parker Jr., an African American Muslim attorney, passed the Oregon State bar exam in 1990, but Oregon didn't let him practice until December 2021. Thirty-one years. The Department of Justice, Marion County, and the Oregon Government Ethics ...
Oregon Voices Podcast: Episode 8 - Lauren McCartney and Adam Oyster-Sands, BEA United Leadership
Lauren McCartney teaches at Meadow Park and Tumwater Middle Schools and chaired BEA's Racial and Social Justice Committee. Adam Oyster-Sands is a language arts teacher at Westview High School, a published poet, and the treasurer of the Beaverto...
Oregon Voices Podcast: Episode 7 - Claire Reneau BEA Executive Board Member & Co-Founder of BEAU
Claire Reneau is a French teacher at Westview High School in Beaverton. She's also one of the co-founders of BEAU (Beaverton Education Association United), a reform caucus that in its first year swept elections for union president, vice preside...
Oregon Voices Podcast: Episode 6 - Lesly Munoz - Oregon State Representative, House District 22
Lesly Munoz is the State Representative for House District 22, representing Woodburn, Gervais, Brooks, and North Salem in Marion County. She won her seat by 161 votes in November 2024, the single margin that gave Oregon Democrats the super majo...
Oregon Voices Podcast: Episode 5 - Blayne Soleymani-Pearson - Washington County Commissioner, District 2, Primary Candidate
Blayne Soleymani-Pearson is running for Washington County Commissioner in District 2. He's a domestic violence prosecutor and a father to kids who deserve to grow up in a county that fights for people who look like them.When he was thre...
Oregon Voices Podcast: Episode 4 - Myrna Munoz - Oregon Senate District 15 Primary Candidate
Myrna Munoz is running for State Senate District 15. She's an educator, a UC Berkeley graduate, and the daughter of farm workers and warriors.Her grandfathers came through the Bracero program to work the crops while American men fought i...
Oregon Voices Podcast: Episode 3 - Dr. Melissa Bird - Congressional Candidate, OR-4
Dr. Melissa Bird is a congressional candidate challenging the incumbent in Oregon's 4th Congressional District Democratic primary. She holds a PhD in social work and brings years of experience writing and killing legislation at both state and f...
Oregon Voices Podcast: Episode 2 - John Wasielewski - Oregon House District 38 Primary Candidate
John Wasilewski, affectionately known as Waz, is a middle school teacher and primary challenger in House District 38, running against incumbent Daniel Nguyen in one of Oregon's few competitive Democratic primary races. In this episode, Waz walk...
Oregon Voices Podcast: Episode 1 - Meet The Hosts & Why This Podcast
This inaugural episode of Oregon Voices confronts the state's celebrated "blue state" identity, revealing the complex realities beneath its progressive facade. Co-hosts Eric McGuire and Katherine Watkins, seasoned Oregon educators, share their ...
