The AfroVillage is more than a physical space, it is a movement
rooted in the vision of the Portland community member and
activist Laquida Landford. The movement focuses on addressing the needs of our most vulnerable population — unhoused indviduals — with focus on racial disparities and inequalities. Through a variety of initiatives and events, including Old Town Fresh and Sneaker Week in Downtown Portland, AfroVillage provides a variety of critical services to community members and has started important conversations around fundamental basic needs such as hygiene and sanitation, food scarcity, and mental and physical health.
AfroVillage Movement
AfroVillage is not just a project—it is a refusal. A refusal to accept disposability, disconnection, and the slow violence of systems not built for us. In its place, we build something soft, something rooted. AfroVillage is an invitation into a different rhythm—one not defined by extraction, speed, or profit, but by relationship, restoration, and collective care. Sovereignty here means spaciousness. It means rest without guilt. It means food grown with intention, showers that don’t require proof of worthiness, and digital access without surveillance. It means reclaiming what was stolen—time, joy, memory—and weaving it into something new.
We are not here to replicate systems that harm us with friendlier branding. We are here to grow something else entirely. AfroVillage is a living ecosystem where Black and Brown communities can gather, dream, heal, and resist through the quiet, radical act of existing freely