About the Portland Alliance

The Portland Alliance is the city's oldest alternative progressive newspaper. The Alliance reports on the issues ignored or distorted by the corporate-dominated mainstream press, asking the hard questions you won't hear on the evening news or read in your daily newspaper.

The Alliance was founded in 1981 as part of an effort to bring Oregon's progressives together in one coalition to oppose the growing power of conservative forces in this state. While that coalition did not take root, the newspaper created to give that coalition voice did. Shifting to a more local focus, The Portland Alliance has been providing a voice eversince for environmentalists, trade unionists, social justice activists, and others who are usually shut out by the mainstream press.

Over the years the Alliance has broken stories missed by the mainstream press. In the 1990s we produced an award-winning series about health care and the homeless. In 2000, our coverage of Portland Police Chief Mark Kroeker's ties with homophobic Christian groups made national news and placed the controversial police chief under greater public scrutiny. That same year, we ran an exclusive report on the health risks facing the poor, Native Americans and other people of color who rely on fish from the polluted Willamette River - a story reported several months later in the pages of The Oregonian.

The Alliance, however, is about more than reporting the news. During the past two decades the paper has served as a place where Portland's progressive community can air ideas and thrash out differences through open and honest discourse. Should progressives build a new third party or try to revitalize the Democratic Party? Are multi-issue coalitions or identity politics the key to creating social change? Can the destruction of property advance the progressive cause? These and other important questions have been and will continue to be debated within the pages of the Alliance.

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