PORTLAND BUSINESS JOURNAL: LGBTQIA+ owned businesses say Oregon could be sanctuary from national assault
This article was originally posted in Portland Business Journal on June 8, 2022. Here’s an excerpt, and you can read the full article here.
LGBTQIA+ owned businesses that responded to the Portland Business Journal's annual survey for The List, still overwhelmingly rated their local business community as "supportive" (79%) but a lot fewer of them rated it as "very supportive" (11%) than did prior to the pandemic in 2019.
Well over half of these businesses (58%) said they recently gave money or in-kind gifts to help secure and defend LGBTQIA+ rights. Large shares of them also supported boycotts of companies or states involved in the assault on rights (42%) or engaged with political representatives over these issues (32%).
Georgia Lee Hussey, CEO of Portland's Modernist Financial agreed that the workplace was a concern on many fronts:
"Supporting the mental well-being of our employees is more important than ever, as emotional and psychological pressures are compounded by the lived realities of income inequality, housing crises, attacks on reproductive justice, the lived experience of an ongoing pandemic and war in Ukraine."