Senator avel gordly mental health

Description

The Avel Gordly Center for Healing is named in recognition of Honorable Senator Avel Gordly for her work championing the issues for people living with mental illness.

A national civil rights group headquartered in Chicago, Portland’s dynamic BUF was founded in 1979 by a core group of activists, including Ronald Herndon and the Reverend John Jackson.

Avel Louise Gordly was elected to the Oregon State Senate in 1996, after she had served three terms in the House of Representatives, running on both Democratic and Republican ballots in each election.

After graduation, she worked for the Oregon Corrections Division as a women’s work-release counselor and later as an adult parole and probation officer.

A key affiliation for Gordly was the Black United Front (BUF).

She championed social justice, civil rights, education reform and mental health reform. That year, she enrolled at Portland State University, where she earned a degree in the administration of justice. Gordly was born in Portland on February 13, 1947. Throughout her career, she always insisted that the legislative process belongs to the People,  that it be open and transparent to constituents from every place in Oregon.

A native of Portland, daughter of a Union Pacific Pullman porter and a working mother active in women's organizations, Avel Louise Gordly is the first African-American woman elected to the Oregon Senate in the history of the state.

She holds a Bachelor of Science degree in the Administration of Justice from Portland State University and completed the Program for Senior Executives at the John F.

Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University.

She is a Senior Fellow of the American Leadership Forum and has a long professional career including service as an Adult Parole and Probation Officer for the State of Oregon Corrections Division; as Director of Youth Services for the Urban League of Portland; as Community Liaison for the Multnomah County Health Department, where she worked on the County's emergency preparedness and health disparity issues.

Avel's career as a community leader and public servantincludes Program Director of the House of Umoja, providing services to gang-impacted youth and families, and as Executive Director of the American Friends Service Committee, Portland office.

Avel is currently an Associate Professor in the Black Studies Department, Portland State University, where she has developed and teaches a course on Black leadership, public policy and community development.

Her memoir, “Remembering the Power of Words: The Life of an Oregon Activist, Legislator and Public Servant” was just published by the Oregon State University Press.

Throughout her career in public service, Avel has worked for environmental, economic and social justice; for family wage jobs in environmentally sound workplaces, for communities free of hate and full of diversity.

Senator Gordly is a recognized champion of support for mental health.

Her father, Fay Gordly, was a railroad worker active with the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and Maids; her mother, Beatrice Bernice Coleman Gordly, was a long-time member of Mt. Olivet Baptist church and a Grand Worthy Matron of the Eastern Star.

Gordly graduated from Girls Polytechnic High School in 1965 and worked at Pacific Northwest Bell until 1970.

In 1983, AFSC hired her to lead their Southern Africa Program, which was focused on anti-apartheid and refugee relief, and Gordly made national headlines when she was promoted to regional director of AFSC. Her tireless efforts to address the stigma of mental illnesses, and as an advocate for mental health treatment played a key role in the passage of Senate Bill 1 (2005), mental health parity.

She continues to advocate for appropriate mental health treatment, the removal of the stigma associated with mental illness which acts as a barrier to effective treatment, and for the replacement of the Oregon State Hospital and the establishment of a statewide community-based treatment infrastructure as a top priority.

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In 1996, Avel Louise Gordly became the first African American woman to be elected to the Oregon State Senate.

Part of the center’s mission is providing education and awareness for the African American and African communities on issues of mental health and addictions. Gordly was resident coordinator of a safe-haven program for youth at the House of Umoja in northeast Portland when she was tapped to fill a vacancy created by a retirement in the legislature in 1991.

In addition to handling media work for the group, Gordly coordinated the Front’s Saturday School, whose African American history program was tied to curriculum reform in the public education system.