Think Out Loud

In 2012, then Oregon governor John Kitzhaber announced a lofty goal: by 2025, the state would achieve a 100% high school graduation rate. That hasn’t happened — the state’s graduation rate is around 82% — but the goal sparked the creation of a 12-year reporting project at OPB called  “Class of 2025.”   OPB journalists began talking to 27 students who were then in kindergarten at Earl Boyles elementary school in Southeast Portland, and have followed most of them through to 2025. Back in 2014, “Think Out Loud" spent an hour with the first graders, their teachers and parents after an early pizza lunch at Earl Boyles. We listen back to that show.  

Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek recently signed a piece of legislation that makes notable changes to Oregon’s landmark Bottle Bill. The new rules allow grocery and convenience stores across the state to reduce the hours that customers can redeem cans and bottles for cash. They also allow retailers in downtown Portland to stop accepting containers altogether if they’re close enough to an “alternative redemption site” such as The People’s Depot, which processes returns from people whose primary income comes from redeeming beverage containers. Taylor Cass Talbott is the co-founder and co-executive director of Ground Score Association, which operates The People’s Depot. Kris Brown is the operational manager for The People’s Depot. They both join us to talk about the changes and about ongoing concerns around how the Bottle Bill is interacting with the state’s homelessness and drug crises.

If you’re having a bit of deja vu over a plastic bag ban, you’re not alone. When Oregon lawmakers passed the first ban in 2019, which prohibited using so-called single-use plastic bags, more than a dozen Oregon cities had already passed such bans. But the ban's environmental aim of reducing the use of plastic - and its impacts on the environment and human health - did not end up achieving that goal. Grocers replaced the thinner, single-use bags with a thicker, sturdier version that in theory could be reused but only rarely were. The new plastic bag ban lawmakers have now sent to the governor for signature would eliminate all plastic bags from grocers and restaurants in favor of paper bags. Celeste Meiffren-Swango is the state director of Environment Oregon. She joins us to share more about how this new bill is expected to actually reduce plastic waste and what she hopes people do between now and Jan. 2027, when the law goes into effect.

A man who attacked a dozen people with a knife at Salem's Union Gospel Union Mission shelter on Sunday night is now in police custody facing attempted murder and assault charges. Several of the 12 stabbing victims suffered serious injuries and were hospitalized. The Union Gospel Mission has operated in Salem for 73 years and Director of Community Engagement Mark Hunter says, while it’s hard to make sense of the attack, he and the other staff and volunteers remain committed to their work. UGM provides food, shelter and educational programs to those experiencing homelessness with the help of hundreds of staff and volunteers and support from the community. Hunter joins us along with Executive Director Craig Smith to talk about how the community has supported the Mission in the aftermath of the attack and how the organization is thinking about security and continuing to fulfill their mission moving forward.

In 2012, Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber announced a goal that by 2025, the state would achieve a 100% high school graduation rate. Although Oregon today graduates only about 4 out of 5 students, that aspiration sparked the creation of OPB’s “Class of 2025” project. Journalists at OPB began tracking 27 students starting in first grade at Earl Boyles Elementary School in Southeast Portland through their senior year. For the past 12 years, the production team has documented the students’ triumphs and setbacks, transitions to new schools and social dynamics, along with the family members, teachers and administrators who’ve been helping them reach this milestone. The first podcast episode featuring some of those students at David Douglas High navigating their senior year is now available and a TV documentary featuring other seniors will be released in November. Joining us to discuss “Class of 2025” are three students: Josh, Joel and Anais. OPB editor and “Class of 2025” executive producer Rob Manning and Elizabeth Miller, an OPB education reporter and the reporter, producer and host of the “Class of 2025” documentary, also join us to reflect on the project and what it reveals about Oregon’s education system.

Until last week, Kevin Heatley was the Crater Lake National Park superintendent. He’d worked in the private sector for much of his career, but for most of the last decade he’s been in leadership positions with the federal government, including with the Bureau of Land Management. He had only taken the Park Service job in January, a move he made in anticipation of possible BLM cuts. But last week, he chose to resign, saying he could no longer be party to President Trump’s dismantling of the federal government. He told OPB that while park services will be affected, it was the impact on the physical and mental health of employees that he felt he could longer be complicit in. Heatley joins us to tell us more about his time at the helm of Oregon’s only national park and his hopes for federal government employees in the Trump administration.

After the killing of George Floyd in 2020, millions of Americans participated in protests for racial justice. Much of corporate America promised to address racial equity. Now, many of those companies are retreating from diversity initiatives. “Qualified: How Competency Checking and Race Collide at Work” identifies how to create a more equitable workplace. Through research and anecdotes, Portland author Shari Dunn illustrates the institutional racism that exists in the workplace and how to stop it. We learn more from Dunn about race in the workplace, the backlash against diversity, equity, and inclusion policies and how she says businesses should rethink employment.

A study led by researchers at the University of Oregon explores water injustice across the U.S. The analysis focuses on vulnerable communities facing systemic barriers to clean water and also investigates water privatization in America. “We found that violations and risks of water injustice tend to cluster in specific areas or hot spots across the country,” said Alex Segrè Cohen, the paper’s lead author. “We designed our method to capture not just where the problems are, but who they impact most and how.” The study integrates data from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and the U.S. Census Bureau.  Segrè Cohen is an assistant professor of science and risk communication at UO. She joins us with more on water equity in the U.S.          

Long before the four dams along the Klamath River were removed, the habitat restoration process began. RES, a company that specializes in ecological restoration, has been involved in the process since 2019. It’s charged with working on habitat restoration and will continue to maintain the project for about 5 years. We check in on the effort with Dave Coffman, the director of Northern California and Southern Oregon for RES.    

Less than 24 hours after a lower court ruling on Wednesday found that President Trump had illegally used an emergency powers law to enact global tariffs, a federal appeals court paused that decision and allowed the tariffs to continue – for now, that is. The legal topsy-turvy added a fresh round of uncertainty for business owners like Leslie Jordan, who started a company in Portland nearly 40 years ago which manufactures athletic apparel and accessories made in factories in China and Pakistan.  In April, when President Trump enacted tariffs of 145% on goods made in China, Jordan had to pay nearly 200% in duties to get her products cleared through customs. She lost business as some orders got canceled and  scrambled to move production to factories in countries like Egypt and Vietnam, which face lower tariff rates than China. She also started getting emails from companies that offered their services to help her avoid high tariffs through illegal schemes, such as misclassifying the imported goods or shipping them through a different country.  Jordan recently shared her experiences with the New York Times in their investigation into the rise of trade fraud as a consequence of the tariffs. She joins us to share more details and how she thinks the federal government can more effectively crack down on tariff cheats.