Erin Hoover Barnett recently reported in The Oregonian on how stories of change are healing neighborhoods through the Restorative Listening Project.

Some snippets of the article that show how these stories of change can heal:

The city of Portland is using a deceptively simple technique — storytelling — to confront the complicated issue of gentrification. And it’s bringing surprisingly powerful results. The Restorative Listening Project, run by the Office of Neighborhood Involvement, invites blacks to tell whites how it has felt to see them move into and remake inner North and Northeast Portland — for decades, the heart of Oregon’s African American community. Some question how storytelling can make a difference after housing prices already have forced out so many. Yet similar projects that grappled with much weightier issues — the horrors of apartheid, the Holocaust and World War II — show how the fundamental acts of telling and listening can heal… The Portland project is rooted in the principle of restorative justice: that healing starts when the sufferer can describe the harm and the listener can acknowledge it.

Barnett also quotes documentary filmmaker Ken Burns on how “stories reveal our shared humanity. Seeing what you have in common opens the door to becoming allies.” Burns says that hearing about someone with whom the listener can identify is “what storytelling is.”

Other links about this project:
City of Portland’s Restorative Gentrification Listening Project
Radio story on the project