
Dear Portland Community,
After two and a half years of collective stewardship, Critical Resistance Portland (CR PDX) announces with bittersweetness that as of January 1, 2021, the Dismantle, Change, Build Center (DCBC) will no longer operate out of its recent home at the corner of Killingsworth and Williams. The DCBC has served as a homebase for community organizing in NE Portland since July 2018, when CR PDX brought together community organizations to keep the space (formerly In Other Words feminist bookstore) open with a new collective leadership and rent model, reflecting the collective world we are building toward. Along with Critical Resistance, Don’t Shoot Portland, Portland Books to Prisoners, PDX Alliance for Self-Care, Brown Girl Rise, and SURJ PDX – Black Lives Matter Group have continued to organize in the space to this day, along with several others who have shared the space at times throughout its existence. The name Dismantle, Change, Build Center drew from Critical Resistance’s abolitionist framework to dismantle the prison industrial complex (PIC), change the common sense practices around what safety and security truly mean for communities, and build the resources and alternatives to the PIC.
The choice to no longer organize in this space is a hard and necessary one, reflecting the current reality of our socially-distanced organizing and the movement of community events to outdoor and online spaces to support our collective safety. As we make the decision to pause on having a physical location at this time, we are also filled with deep appreciation for partnerships, all of the organizers, and the energy that everyone has contributed to the space over the last 2.5 years. Since 2018, we’ve had countless events in the space, been a home to numerous organizations, and provided an essential homebase for social justice organizing in NE Portland. We invite our community to stay tuned for the possibility of a closing celebration of all the powerful organizing and community building that the space has held, when we can all be safely together.