When planning a Black-owned food truck competition in Medford, Oregon, the conditions need to be near perfect. The city, in the heart of Southern Oregon, is in Jackson County, where the Black population is just 1 percent; the area has a long history of institutional racism with still-rippling effects on the people of color who live there today. Beyond the racial climate, any event in the summer risks being smoked out by now-annual wildfires in the region. It was, in short, a gamble; everything needed to go right. But as BASE (Black Alliance & Social Empowerment) Southern Oregon, a Black nonprofit community organization based in Ashland, got ready to
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