Think Out Loud

Attorney Julia Olson founded the nonprofit public interest law firm Our Children’s Trust in 2010 in Eugene. Five years later, she filed a lawsuit on behalf of Kelsey Juliana and 20 other youth activists in Oregon and elsewhere. Their contention was simple on its face: youth have a right to a stable climate, just as they have a right to clean water and clean air. It used the public trust doctrine in a novel way at the time. Since the suit was filed in 2015, Juliana v. U.S. has been in and out of district and appeals courts and was cleared to go to trial in 2023. But last year, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals granted the federal government's motion to dismiss the case. The U.S. Supreme Court recently declined to intervene, but dismissed the case “without prejudice,” enabling the case to potentially be filed at a later time. Olson joins us to talk about what the last decade has shown her and the "Juliana 21" about the most effective ways to challenge climate change policy in the U.S. today.

For more than 30 years, Eugene's CAHOOTS program has been in place for situations that don’t need an armed police response, like mental health crises, overdoses and homelessness. The program has gotten a lot of national attention, and the model has been an inspiration for cities across the country, including Portland. But last week, White Bird Clinic, which runs CAHOOTS, announced that the hours of service in Eugene city limits will be reduced to just one shift per week — down from 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Amée Markwardt, interim executive director of the White Bird Clinic, joins us to discuss their funding challenges.

The biggest determining factor in whether someone will become homeless is if they have ever been homeless. Keeping children out of homelessness, so they won’t become homeless as adults is one of the big reasons the Portland-based nonprofit Path Home exists. And as Oregon has the highest rate of children experiencing unsheltered homelessness, the need for the kinds of services the nonprofit provides is greater than ever. Executive director Brandi Tuck says the nonprofit is committed to the “housing first” approach to solving family homelessness, which includes providing trauma-informed temporary housing to families and connecting them with services and individual support they need to stay successfully housed. She says with the housing shortage and high cost of housing, it’s also important to note — especially during budget shortfalls — that housing whole families can be far less expensive than many kinds of shelters, which can run thousands of dollars a month, per person. We talk with Tuck about Path Home’s mission — and its evidence-based approach.

There are 19 local programs across Oregon that recruit, train, supervise and support volunteers who serve as Court Appointed Special Advocates for foster children and youth. The programs operate independently with their own budgets and are funded through a mix of state dollars, private donations, philanthropic grants and community fundraising.  This fiscal year, they were also expecting to get a one-time allocation of $1.7 million from the federal government, which was earmarked for community project funding in Oregon. But last month, the Continuing Resolution that Congress passed stripped this funding, which would have been disbursed through the Oregon CASA Network to each of the local programs, based on the number of foster children and youth in the counties they serve.  Jennifer Mylenek, the executive director of CASA of Jackson and Josephine Counties, and Mary Collard, the executive director of CASA of Eastern Oregon, join us to talk about how they’re coping with the impact of the loss of these funds within their rural communities. 

For about 10 years, researchers at the University of Washington’s Personal Robotics Lab have been developing a robotic arm that can help people with motor impairments, such as quadriplegics, feed themselves. That’s a task they may rely on human caregivers to do. The Assistive Dexterous Arm can be mounted onto a surface such as a power wheelchair or hospital table. With vision and touch sensors, ADA can determine how to best grasp and maneuver a bite of chicken or watermelon, for example, toward a user’s mouth.  The lived experiences of people with disabilities are often ignored in the development of new technologies that could benefit them, according to Amal Nanavati, a recent PhD graduate from the UW’s Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering. But that isn’t the case with the ADA project. Dozens of people with motor impairments have provided feedback and guidance on it over the years, and some have even taken on the role of “community researchers” working alongside the UW robotics team.  Jonathan Ko is a Seattle-based patent attorney and ADA community researcher who brought the device home to feed himself meals for a week. He and Nanavati are authors on a recently published paper describing this real-world testing of the technology. They join us to talk about what they learned and share their thoughts on the future of robot-assisted caregiving.  

According to a recently published study, more than 40 percent of adults over the age of 55 in the U.S. have a lifetime risk of developing dementia. New cases of dementia are also projected to nearly double to 1 million a year by 2060.  The cognitive decline and memory impairments associated with Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia can make it difficult to follow the branching storylines of a novel or the flow of facts in a newspaper or magazine article.  But as traditional avenues for literary enjoyment close, new ones can and should open for this growing population. That’s the guiding mission behind Mirador, a quarterly magazine Nikki Jardin co-founded in Portland nearly four years ago to be accessible to people with dementia. From the font style and size, to the way paragraphs are structured or photos are displayed to accommodate changes to vision and recognition, the whole magazine is designed with dementia in mind.   Jardin joins us to talk about the inspiration for starting Mirador and the magazine’s recent international expansion and collaboration with other dementia-friendly publications. 

Minoru Yasui was the first Japanese American to graduate from the University of Oregon’s law school. He was working as a lawyer in Portland when President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed an executive order in 1942 that allowed the military to impose a curfew on Japanese Americans and relocate them to internment camps. On March 28, 1942, Masui challenged the curfew by walking in downtown Portland after 8pm to get himself intentionally arrested. His case went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, where he lost.   In honor of Minoru Yasui Day in Oregon on March 28, we listen back to a conversation we recorded on Nov. 24, 2015, with Joan Emerson Yasui, a niece of Minoru Yasui, the same day her uncle was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama. Joan Emerson Yasui died in 2016.  

Minoru Yasui was the first Japanese American to graduate from the University of Oregon’s law school. He was working as a lawyer in Portland when President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed an executive order in 1942 that allowed the military to impose a curfew on Japanese Americans and relocate them to internment camps. On March 28, 1942, Masui challenged the curfew by walking in downtown Portland after 8pm to get himself intentionally arrested. His case went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, where he lost.   In honor of Minoru Yasui Day in Oregon on March 28, we listen back to a conversation we recorded on Nov. 24, 2015, with Joan Emerson Yasui, a niece of Minoru Yasui, the same day her uncle was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama. Joan Emerson Yasui died in 2016.  

In Wallowa County, the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife has led collaborative research on golden eagles. The pilot project aims to study the survival, movement and reproductive success of the birds. ODFW worked with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Nature Conservancy to capture data.  The golden eagle uses a variety of habitats and seeks rocky cliffs or large trees. It can dive at a speed of 120 miles per hour and preys on animals including squirrels and foxes. Humans are largely responsible for their decline. The birds collide with wind turbines, face habitat loss and are killed illegally.  Holly Tuers Lance is the acting district wildlife biologist for the ODFW field office based in Enterprise. She joins us with more about the raptors and the work being done locally. 

The new exhibit at Chachalu Museum and Cultural Center in Grand Ronde features the work of queer indigenous artists reflecting on the role of queerness in indigenous cultures. The exhibit was curated by Grand Ronde artists Anthony Hudson and Felix Furby who created another exhibit two years ago based on the life of Shumkin, a 19th-century Two-Spirit Atfalati Kalapuya healer. That exhibit set out to explore the ways that queerness has always been a part of the Indigenous history, but assimilation had tried to sever the community’s connection to it. This newer exhibit discusses the present and future of queer indigeneity as well. Hudson and Furby join us to talk about the exhibit, along with Steph Littlebird, one of the featured artists.