Neighborly Start Up - the CJNA

We are neighbors who live in a twenty block area of the City designated by the National Park Service as the New Chinatown Japantown Historical District.  It is part of the Old Town Chinatown Neighborhood here in Portland (PDX), Oregon and is one of about fourteen such districts in Portland.

Certain events have spurred some of us to reach out to our neighbors to become active in making this a healthy connected neighborhood which is a strategy of the Portland Plan* and one which we intend to focus on for the reasons outlined in the plan:

• Address significant health issues
• Provide equitable access to healthy environments and opportunities
• Improve watershed health and reduce carbon emissions and air pollution
• Align (and promote creativity) for where and how we grow and invest to achieve common goals

Like many neighborhoods we cannot yet check all the boxes:

Our housing is decidedly urban in design and as such our neighborhood, unlike many other PDX neighborhoods, is made up primarily of renters.  

What's in a name?

We named our band of residents the Chinatown Japantown Neighbors Association (CJNA) because we believe the place where we live is special and important. We are worried about how we grow while remaining respectful of the past, our environment, AND provide for the next seven generations in the context of population growth, global warming, climate events, economic challenges especially the growing income gap, and a community where it seems business and real estate development drives decision making, not community development.

Number One Objective.

Most of the decisions made about our neighborhood are made by folks who do not have the experience of living here.   Our first objective then is to encourage our neighbors to start talking to those who make decisions and recommendations about our neighborhood, but do not live here.

The decision makers, recommender and influencers are volunteering and/or working in organizations such as the Portland Development Commission (PDC), the Old Town Chinatown Community Association (membership primarily made up of profit and non-profit organizations), the Historic Landmarks Commission, the Old Town Heritage Group, and a range of City bureaus to include Planning and Sustainability, Transportation, Neighborhood Involvement, Environmental Services, Police, and the County Health Department to name most of them and, of course, non-profit organizations such as Clean and Safe and Central City Concern.

Every Friday at 11AM at Rob's Cafe.

For now we want to get the ball rolling and keep expand the number of voices we hear from through our Facebook page (CJNAinPDX), this blogpost/website (write a blog article(s) for us by contacting mary@cjna.info), find us on nextdoor.com (our district/group)), and by visiting with our neighbors we meet on the street and in places where we can sit and talk starting with Rob's Cafe a.k.a. Monte Rossa at  333 NW 4th Avenue at Flanders every Friday, 11 AM to start. Look for the anchor scarf and the secret greeting is "hello neighbor."


Your neighbor, Ruth Ann Barrett

P.S. Big story coming up this Wednesday in the Willamette Week by Lisa Dunn.  Check it and us out.



*The Portland Plan is at bit.ly/PDXplan. It is updated every twenty-five years and is this year, 2015, our citizens, elected officials and employees of the City are working on an update.