Are you Ready for a Verdant Future?
Vote Chris Henry for City Council, District 4!
I am a full-time worker and former truck driver who will represent the needs and perspectives of ordinary Portlanders. Portland's brand-new adoption of matching funds, ranked choice voting, and three councilors per district makes this election a unique opportunity to elevate the revolutionary approaches we need to heal our environment, meet the needs of every resident, and revitalize our city.
⭆ Revitalize Downtown
1) PCEF surplus funding can employ Portlanders in greening our city, sequestering carbon and nurturing community gathering spaces through urban agroforestry.
2) Public health requires equitable access to quality healthcare, mental health resources, and addiction treatment - which the city can help subsidize.
3) Expand public transit, safer bicycle infrastructure, and robust pedestrian safety
⟴ Just Transition
The extraction economy has robbed our planet of its natural resources and the working people of their potential! The city of Portland can act as a springboard for regenerating not only the natural world, but ourselves in the process. Regenerative economies have the potential to create a vast array of new jobs that are meaningful & inspiring.
Imagine transforming Portland into a Hayao Miyazaki film!
For more details on the Just Transition movement, click here.
⇛ Housing First
1) The past successes of Housing First can be replicated here in Portland. The key principle is simple and unavoidable: homeless people need homes. With thousands of vacant homes in our city, we have the resources to start making this a reality.
2) Additionally, the City must establish publicly accessible facilities—such as toilets, showers, and hygiene stations—downtown to meet immediate needs and ensure dignity for all residents, including the unhoused.
3) To ensure long-term success, we must then follow up with comprehensive mental health and addiction services for those in need, along with robust job training programs.
⇝ Cascadia Ready
The Pacific Northwest is woefully underprepared for the next Cascadia Megaquake, with scientists reporting that Portland could see "more than $80 billion in building damage, tens of thousands of people wounded or killed and more than 250,000 people facing long-term displacement."
Even when it comes to basic emergency response, City Council has been extremely negligent. The only position in the Portland Bureau of Emergency Management dedicated exclusively to earthquake preparedness was cut in 2024. And the entire department (for *all* emergency preparedness, not just earthquakes) receives only $5 million a year from the city, compared to $100 million a year paid by the City annually to Wall Street just as interest on loans.
When it comes to proactive transformation to achieve resilience, new leadership and ideas are urgently needed. Click [here] to read our 7-step plan to provide green jobs and design natural disaster resilience into the foundations of our city.
Another risk posed by the Cascadia Megaquake is the liquefaction of ground under the Zenith Energy Oil terminal along the banks of the Willamette River. Despite the comprehensive study commissioned by Multnomah County documenting the severity of the risk (causing a massive oil spill in the river and polluting surrounding neighborhoods), city council has so far failed to take action. Decomissioning the Zenith Energy Oil terminal would be a top priority of mine if elected, day one.
⇶ Worker Co-Operatives
The problems of wealth inequality can be addressed by catalyzing worker cooperatives, which often have maximum wage ratios built into their by-laws and discourage the absentee ownership that dominates traditional for-profit firms, large and small. Click here to learn more about our vision for worker cooperatives.
➳ Economic Justice
Corporate profit-gouging is fueling declining worker’s wages, inflation, and climate destabilization for profit. To support economic justice:
1) I will propose a $25/hr minimum wage for all Portland Workers including a Cost-of-Living Adjustment and a 10:1 Maximum Wage Ratio.
2) To support work/life balance, lower pollution, and increase productivity and job satisfaction, I will propose a 4-Day workweek and a 3-Day Weekend as city standard.
3) Portland should be Union Town. I will propose that the Sunday prior to Labor Day be declared Union “Card Check” Day, whereby, the week before Labor Day / Card Check Day will be declared “Union Card Signing Week” in Portland and Oregon.
4) AND - We should most certainly TAX THE RICH to contribute their FAIR SHARE!
⇝ Public Electric Utility
To address arbitrary for-profit energy rate hikes, I will aggressively advocate for a PGE/PUD that is a Publicly-Owned-Utility by the Workers and Ratepayers it serves.
Neighborhood Associations should become their own electrical grid PUD’s at the most local level, reducing CO2 emissions in the most efficient way possible through the power of neighborhood organizing and reaching measurable emission reduction benchmarks.
To power our new public utility, I will advocate for solar panels on all public buildings AND compel all bureaus and businesses to submit annual carbon emissions plans with their current CO2 output and projected reduction benchmarks. In general, I will be a staunch advocate for policies promoting renewable energy, reducing carbon emissions, and preserving our forests, rivers, and parks for future generations.
Furthermore, district heating needs to be a priority if we are to keep energy costs down!
If trailers are retrofitted with solar panels on the roofs and all sides, that passively stored energy can also be be net metered back to the electric grid.
➠ Green Manufacturing Hub
Portland has the unique opportunity to become a hub for green manufacturing, revitalizing our economy and leading the climate transition for the entire state of Oregon and PNW.
By investing in Industrial Hemp infrastructure, we can quickly replace timber harvesting and preserve the carbon sink that is our precious PNW forests. Portland should be producing hemp-fiber based products of every variety, and worker-owned logging trucks should be hauling hemp bails to mills and processing communities — NOT clear cutting our forests!
Whether it's green, carbon-negative hemp-paper, hemp-wood, or hemp-crete, there is no time to waste when it comes to making the transition to the new green economy!
⇛ Publicly Owned Bank
To fund Public works projects, I will advocate for a publicly owned Portland Municipal Bank to supplant floating bonds on the stock market, cutting out the Wall Street middlemen and Vulture Capitalists who siphon off much needed public dollars to line their greedy pockets. To learn how a public bank in Oregon can tie in with many of the other agenda items you see on this page, click here.
The establishment of a cooperative economy has historically been made possible by the availability of surplus wealth to invest in such "unorthodox" ventures. Click here to read more about how a public bank can foster the new economy.
Vote Chris Henry for District 4
Social justice lies at the core of my platform. I am dedicated to dismantling systemic barriers to opportunity and championing policies that address racial disparities, economic inequality, and discrimination within our community.
My political experience ranges from past leadership as the Co-Chair of Willamette Neighborhood Association over two decades ago to working with the Honest Elections Action League just this year to enact robust campaign finance reform in the State of Oregon.
I humbly ask for your support to be a voice for progress and positive change in Portland! Together, let’s build a more just, equitable, and resilient community where everyone thrives.
