Bryan Lewis (Board President)

Portland, Oregon

Bryan is a union organizer with Service Employees​ International​ Union, local 503 (SEIU 503), a member of: Communication Workers of America, local 7901 (CWA 7901), NAACP Portland, Oregon chapter, and​ National Popular Vote Oregon. He was a member of Portland’s Community Rights group for several years. Bryan is a Portland native who has been working to empower communities since he was thirteen years old. Bryan currently served on the Multnomah Youth Commission for nine years, and is currently a Commissioner serving on the executive Board of the Commission on Children, Families, and Community of Multnomah County, as well as serving on the Executive Committee of Take the Time. In his youth, he did a lot of student and campus organizing. Bryan is interested in how Permaculture, EcoFeminism, and new and emerging social movements ​can all be enriched and more quickly realized utilizing the dynamic and empowering Community Rights Movement.

Carla Cao

Miami, Florida

I enjoy…

Evelina Avotina

Portland, Oregon

Forest Jahnke (Board Secretary & temporary Treasurer)

Gays Mills, Wisconsin

Forest was hatched and fledged at Dancing Waters Permaculture Cooperative in the lush rolling hills and valleys at the heart of the ‘Driftless’ in SW Wisconsin. After obtaining a college degree and lifelong extensive travel through 26 countries, he has returned home to shore up his roots as a permanent member of this intentional community, where he serves as a permaculture forest field and garden grunt, pig walla, and waste composter/fermenter, as well as nerding out on consensus process and policy decisions. In the wider community, he works as Program Coordinator for Crawford Stewardship Project, and serves on his Clayton Township Planning Commission, the WI Farmers Union Frac Sand Steering Committee, as well as with the statewide Sustain Rural WI Network grassroots factory farm resistance coalition as co-Vice President. Forest’s roots and travels have both led him to deeply appreciate the blessings of clean water and beautifully functioning ecosystems and have driven him to a life dedicated to protecting these in ways that unite and create community.

Since encountering Community Rights in 2013, he has become inspired and involved at the local and regional level, attending, hosting, and facilitating Community Rights gatherings throughout the region to learn more and teach about this hopeful and empowering strategy. Forest is looking forward to seeing and shepherding forward the first rights-based ordinances passed in the Midwest soon, and is excited to bring his communication and group-work skills to help forward this movement at a national level!

Joan Pougiales

Menomonie, Wisconsin

Joan Pougiales is a retired educator, researcher, and rhetorician, who spent a good deal of her teaching career empowering adult refugee and immigrant communities in Minnesota and later, researching the intricate interweavings of national culture, language, and organizational culture on immigrant and refugee experiences in the American workplace. Her experience exploring the complex and often invisible dynamics underlying cultural contact, primed her for involvement in the Community Rights Movement, which exposes the complex and normally invisible dynamics underlying the loss of democratic representation in the United States, and which empowers citizens to reclaim their sovereign position over their government and corporations. These days she uses her background in education and rhetoric to raise awareness of the Community Rights Movement in her own local community and beyond.

Mark Dilley

Detroit, Michigan

Mark has a long history as a labor organizer within the American Federation of Teachers, local, state and national organizations. Additionally, having started out as a grocery store union member, United Food & Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 951 and being involved with many labor struggles, he understands Unions. His speciality is working one-on-one in developing leadership within the Union. As a creative problem solver, and great listener, he excels at building teams of people who are working towards common goals. As one of four co-founders of Portland, Oregon’s Community Rights group (Community Rights PDX), which launched in 2012, Mark sees Community Rights organizing as an umbrella to unite people and groups. He is honored to have been asked to serve on the Community Rights US Board of Directors. Mark now lives in Detroit, Michigan, where he is the Director of Organizing for AAUP-AFT Local 6075 AFL-CIO, Wayne State University Chapter. (And in his spare time, he facilitates a local progressive community calendar: Activate313.org.)

Paul Cienfuegos

Portland, Oregon

For as long as Paul can remember, he has been passionate about nonviolent social change.  Beginning in high school, he has worked tirelessly on many issues, as well as leading workshops on a whole variety of topics such as “Active Listening for Activists”, “Despair and Personal Power in the Nuclear Age”, and “Intro to Nonviolent Direct Action”. In 1994, he stumbled upon the writings of Richard Grossman, co-founder of Program on Corporations, Law and Democracy (POCLAD), and his world was turned upside down. The next year, Paul founded Democracy Unlimited in northern California in order to begin to test out the ideas he had learned from POCLAD’s leaders. In recent years, he co-founded the Community Rights group in Portland, OR and the Oregon Community Rights Network. Paul is a national leader in the Community Rights movement, having led workshops, given speeches, and done organizing across the country. David Barsamian’s internationally syndicated show ‘Alternative Radio’ has broadcast many of his speeches. Paul is on fire about Community Rights! This is his life work. He is thrilled to finally be working collaboratively with other dynamic leaders at Community Rights US! More…