It’s time to vote for our very first JVP PDX Coordinating Committee!

Please read through our amazing candidate profiles below and then refer to your email or slack for the link to vote.

Maxine Fookson

  • Engagement with JVP Portland: More than 5 years.

    Role in Local JVP Organizing:
    Early on, I was involved in starting the JVP chapter. Over the past ~14 months, I have been active with the Political Action Working Group (Multnomah County Ceasefire resolution, Break the Bonds campaign, and Oregon for Human Rights statewide campaign). I’ve also been involved in the new merging WG of Political Strategy, Outreach, and Mobilization, as well as JVP'ish organizing with C.A.N. in fall-winter 2023-24 and Decenter JFed organizing.

  • Community Experience:
    I have many years of experience in community work focused on Palestinian justice, immigration, racial justice, and ending health disparities. Locally, I’ve been deeply involved in immigration justice organizing and volunteering to support and accompany refugee families in resettlement. As a retired nurse practitioner, I’m also active in Healthcare Workers for Palestine. My professional and social justice passions have always merged in my organizing efforts.

    Strengths for JVP Portland:
    I align closely with JVP National’s mission, messaging, and strategic thinking. I’m skilled at guiding people through visioning, critical issue analysis, and project implementation. I enjoy collaboration and thrive as both a team member and a leader when needed.

  • Born and raised in Washington, DC, I grew up in a culturally Jewish, non-religious, non-Zionist family. My parents were active in anti-war and racial justice movements, shaping my lifelong dedication to social justice. I worked as a pediatric nurse practitioner in public health settings and speak Spanish, which enriched my experiences in diverse communities. Since retiring, I focus on volunteering for refugee resettlement and Palestinian liberation. I have a wonderful partner and an amazing adult child.

she/her

Adam Segal

He/Him or They/Them

  • Engagement with JVP Portland: More than 1 year.

    Role in Local JVP Organizing:
    I've been active in Orientation and Basebuilding, I've facilitated dozens of meetings, I helped moved things forward early on with Israel Bonds and I remain active in the work of Decenter JFed.

  • Community Experience:
    I have an antipatriarchal men's group promoting expansive, healthy, and introspective masculinity called New Masculinities Group that I've run/facilitated for over 7 years now. I have also been fairly involved with SURJ PDX, facilitating a number of small 10-week White Accountability pods for white folks who want to be more practiced in their anti-racism.

    Strengths for JVP Portland:
    I am skilled at maintaining relationships and communicating effectively and non-violently. I am skilled at communicating difficult and complex ideas in accessible ways. I like to listen and ask questions, and defer to others for their expertise, but I'm also comfortable making decisions when others ask me to take on leadership roles.

  • Adam Jacob Segal was born in Milwaukee WI but has lived in Portland OR for over 11 years. He is a chef and white van driver, and loves to read, ride his bicycle, watch horror movies, and cook food for his friends and family. Adam wants to use this position to help empower others, and provide a thoughtful and compassionate kind of guidance to JVP PDX.

Arielle Ross

they/them

  • Engagement with JVP Portland: About a year.

    Role in Local JVP Organizing:
    Art committee spoke during the transition from CAN, IT Spoke, designating rep with Alder Commons.

  • Community Experience:
    Before 2012, I had a community service scholarship and did 10+ hours per week of direct service. I also ran a themed house on campus, was president of my college's Hillel and served in other leadership roles in college. from 2012-2016, I did community organizing around safer sex practices in the Queer community in Atlanta, and canvassed in counties around Atlanta, GA for Marriage Equality. I worked for nonprofits from 2014-2016, and 2018-2020 focusing on global health equity and refugee services. I am on Board Treasurer of a very small Jewish cultural org, the Alberta Shul, and am active in Portland's progressive Jewish community.

    Strengths for JVP Portland:
    I would like to work on communicating information and guidance from national, and work on helping everyone in our pod understand how that national guidance translates to a local context. I would like us to be more clear-eyed as a pod about what we can do, where we can expect to move in the next year or two, and what is going on within the pod that contributes towards that vision. Basically I want a 2 year plan, and for more of the working groups and subcommittees to be communicating with each other so that we know what's going on, and folks with good ideas can get their ideas made into action, while also understanding how all the activities we do are connected. I wear a lot of hats within Jewish community, and would like to get JVP more on the radar within Portland's progressive Jewish community as an option, including by strengthening our relationships with Jewish leadership at Havurah Shalom and the Eastside Jewish Commons.

  • I grew up outside the US in Kazakhstan, Kenya, Uganda, Thailand, China and India (My dad worked in global AIDS prevention for the CDC and the Carter Center). I am a therapist and I focus on ADHD, Trauma, queer people and immigrants. For fun I like to do various crafts, play board games and Magic the Gathering with my nerdy friends or read stories (with voices) with my favorite 6 year old. My favorite Jewish holidays are Purim because I love to dress up in costumes and am a cookie monster, and Simchat Torah, because I like to dance!

River Seidelman

They/Them

  • Engagement with JVP Portland: More than 1 year.

    Role in Local JVP Organizing:
    Since last October, I’ve taken leadership roles alongside others in Operations and Orientation Working Groups to: restructure the chapter, connect Portland to JVP National norms and cultural resources, get Break the Bonds campaign off the ground, build coalition with other orgs, design processes on how to facilitate a meeting and plan an event, and design our onboarding process. I’ve co-planned or co-lead multiple JVP events and held space during many JVP meetings and presentations!

  • Community Experience:
    I’ve been deeply involved in Jewish anti-Zionist and anti-oppression community and organizing for almost 20 years in Philly, the Bay, and now in Portland. I believe that prioritizing community and connection is essential to building power and enacting the world we want to see!For four years I was a Bay Area member-leader and facilitation-trainer with Resource Generation, an org of young people with wealth or class privilege committed to the equitable distribution of wealth, land and power.For six years I organized with POOR Magazine, a landless and indigenous people-led arts and advocacy organization in Oakland, where I filled various long-term roles in media, fundraising, bookkeeping, mutual aid, writing assistance, and development of political education resources.

    Strengths for JVP Portland:
    I’m bringing grounded, informed vision and determination about JVP’s strategic approach. I deeply believe in JVP’s Theory of Change: that organizing a mass movement of Jews can make a huge difference for Palestine and collective liberation broadly, especially if we root in shared political analysis, shared leadership, trust, community, and efficacy-based action. I’ve touched many different pieces of JVP Portland’s work, I’ve developed an exceptional amount of institutional knowledge, and I have some clear ideas about how we might build both the trust and skill needed to take more impactful actions/risks and grow our shared political commitments. As a high school Ethnic Studies teacher and social justice facilitator, I learned how to support groups toward long-term skill-based goals while being equally attentive to group relationships. I have a highly developed ability to envision large systems and processes, break them down into their component parts, and plan how to implement them.

  • I am descended from four generations of Leftist Jewish activist New Yorkers, and was raised in that tradition in the lower Hudson Valley. In high school I began my individual politicizing journey as a protestor of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, when I first heard the chant “Free, Free Palestine,” and it has been with me ever since. My first career was in the family business of humanities education, but since 2020 I have found beautiful satisfaction, quietude, and sense of self in native plants gardening and landscape design. I get excited about wildflowers, dancing, karaoke, snow, soup, dairy-based desserts, and queer comedians. I am a goofball with a sincere core.