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About the Portland Alliance
The Portland Alliance is the city's oldest alternative progressive
newspaper. The Alliance reports on the issues ignored or distorted
by the corporate-dominated mainstream press, asking the hard questions
you won't hear on the evening news or read in your daily newspaper.
The Alliance was founded in 1981 as part of an effort to bring
Oregon's progressives together in one coalition to oppose the growing
power of conservative forces in this state. While that coalition
did not take root, the newspaper created to give that coalition
voice did. Shifting to a more local focus, The Portland Alliance
has been providing a voice eversince for environmentalists, trade
unionists, social justice activists, and others who are usually
shut out by the mainstream press.
Over the years the Alliance has broken stories missed by the mainstream
press. In the 1990s we produced an award-winning series about health
care and the homeless. In 2000, our coverage of Portland Police
Chief Mark Kroeker's ties with homophobic Christian groups made
national news and placed the controversial police chief under greater
public scrutiny. That same year, we ran an exclusive report on the
health risks facing the poor, Native Americans and other people
of color who rely on fish from the polluted Willamette River - a
story reported several months later in the pages of The Oregonian.
The Alliance, however, is about more than reporting the news. During
the past two decades the paper has served as a place where Portland's
progressive community can air ideas and thrash out differences through
open and honest discourse. Should progressives build a new third
party or try to revitalize the Democratic Party? Are multi-issue
coalitions or identity politics the key to creating social change?
Can the destruction of property advance the progressive cause? These
and other important questions have been and will continue to be
debated within the pages of the Alliance.
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