People Are Not Pests (By Dominica Navarro, Healthy People & Communities Program Coordinator) The city of Portland has exceeded its 90th night of protests after the brutal and unjust killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police in late May. On August 23rd, Jacob Blake was shot seven times by police in Kenosha, Wisconsin while his three children watched in the car nearby. In response to continued police violence, protestors have turned out in support of #BlackLivesMatter, calling for racial justice and to defund the police. Yet, as the demands for equity and accountability wage on, we continue to see the excessive use of chemical control agents on peaceful protesters in mass amounts.  Continue reading

If you have an orchard or apple trees on your property, you may have had the unpleasant experience of finding misshaped and disfigured apples instead of the beautiful red or yellow ones you’d dreamed of enjoying. You may have bitten into a lovely apple only to find its flesh laced with brownish grey tunnels. Now is the time to act to prevent the apple maggot (Rhagoletis pomonella) from similarly damaging next year’s crop so you can truly enjoy your apples (or other fruits). Continue reading

Exploring Cross-Sector Partnerships to Achieve True Inclusivity (By Dominica Navarro, Healthy People and Communities Program Coordinator) As a recent McKenzie River Gathering Foundation grantee, NCAP staff had the pleasure of joining the MRG Foundation’s Learning Day Panel last month. On the panel, we met with MRG Foundation staff, board members, grant reviewers, as well as fellow grant recipient organizations. Grantees included Beyond These Walls and HAKI Community Organization. The convening also allowed for us to share NCAP’s current programming and explore intersectional commonalities and ideas for creating “non-traditional” partnerships. To achieve true inclusivity, we must expand our minds and relationships to include all organizations working toward systems level change.  Continue reading

Photo: Clay Banks (By Ashley Chesser, Executive Director) Last summer, NCAP hosted a film showing of the movie Circle of Poison, inspired by David Weir and Mark Schapiro’s book of the same name. The term, coined by authors, refers to the practice of manufacturing and exporting domestically banned pesticides for use on crops elsewhere, some of which returns on imported foods. Legal loopholes have allowed for the manufacture of pesticides - deemed unsafe for the American people - for export to developing countries where they cause devastation in the form of illness, severe birth defects and cancer.1 Continue reading

Summertime during a pandemic means spending more time at home in our yards or social distancing at parks or recreation areas. And while we should all be doing our best to gather only in small groups, you’ve probably had at least a few uninvited guests to your outdoor gatherings in the form of mosquitoes. Over 50 species of mosquitoes live in the Pacific Northwest, active on warm summer days when we’re trying to enjoy the outdoors.1 While male mosquitoes feed solely on flower nectar, most adult female mosquitoes feed on protein-rich blood from a variety of animals – including humans.1 Continue reading