This Earth Day, Saturday, April 22, join the Sustainable Southeast Community Coalition (S2C2) for a dedication ceremony installing two new, multi-lingual peace poles. The new poles, displaying 12 languages, will join three existing peace poles and a stone plaque comprising 17 languages on SE Hawthorne Blvd. at 50th Ave. Together, they will reflect 29 cultures in the community displaying the message “May peace prevail on earth.”
Musician and activist, Darka Dusty Stebivka, will play Ukrainian music at the 3-4 pm event. She said, “Since February 2022, the people of Ukraine and their current fight for existence has rallied all Ukrainian diaspora communities around the world, and Portland is no exception. In fact, the Ukrainian language is now one of the top five most spoken non-English languages in both Multnomah and Clackamas Counties. For Ukrainians and their beautiful language to be ‘seen’ in a literal sense (having their language represented among the Peace Poles), as well as in the symbolic sense, matters greatly to the ever-growing Ukrainian community in Portland.”
S2C2 is a new nonprofit organization working to foster sustainability and livability by collaborating across neighborhoods and districts in SE Portland. According to Roger Jones, S2C2 Event Coordinator, and founder of the Hawthorne Boulevard Business Association (HBBA), “In these difficult times, the SE community has come together around peace and education. The whole purpose of the new nonprofit and public charity is to elevate opportunities for communities to work more closely and find synergies that allow us to be more connected, sustainable, well-resourced and resilient.”
All community members are invited to attend this event, to celebrate the diversity in cultures and languages that exist in the community.