January 14, 2015
M ARTIN L UTHER K ING J R .
2015 special edition
Page 13
New Leaders Emerge in Struggle for Police Reforms
continued
from page 7
thrown—with at least three or
four thrown around his own feet.
Another Portlander who was
also protesting came up to Waco
after the flash grenades went
off and told him “It looked like
they threw them in your direc-
tion; they landed all around you.”
Waco won’t go as far as say-
ing Portland Police threw the
grenades at him, but it looked
like they did before they “let out
a war cry” and charged the
stunned crowd.
Waco said he was inspired to
join the struggle for police re-
forms and other advancements
in civil rights from Teresa
Raifford, another black Portland
leader on the front lines in the
justice movement.
“I went down there and I saw
Teresa, and she had a mega-
phone in her hand and she was
just like ‘yo, we need young
voices—we need you to lead.
Here’s the megaphone.’ I just
started leading the chant, you
know?,” Waco said.
Before becoming one of the
faces of the Don’t Shoot PDX
movement Waco, a native of
north Portland’s St. Johns neigh-
borhood and a Roosevelt High
School alum, was already a
prominent local hip-hop artist.
Civil rights activist Glenn Waco is a Portland rap and hip hop artist, and a member of the musical
collective known as ‘The Resistance.’
As a solo artist and one third
of the Portland based musical
collective, along with Mic
Capes and Rasheed Jamal,
known as “The Resistance”,
Waco has lit up stages all
around Portland.
He tweeted after a Dec. 27 gig
at Mississippi Pizza Pub, that the
north Portland venue was the most
packed it has ever been.
Keenly aware of his popular-
ity around town, Waco does not
want to be viewed as a shame-
Angela Davis Keynote Speaker
Author, educator, and black
rights activist Angela Davis will
be the keynote speaker at “Liv-
ing the Legacy: The Meaning of
Freedom,” an evening com-
memorating Dr. Martin Luther
King Jr. at Portland State Uni-
versity.
The lecture will take place
Wednesday, Jan. 21 at 6 p.m. in
the PSU Peter Scott Center.
Tickets are $15 and free to PSU
students. To reserve a ticket,
call 503-725-3307.
Davis has become one of the
most important black academics
and leaders in the struggle for
economic, racial, and gender jus-
tice.
In recent work, she argues
that the prison system more
closely resembles a new form of
slavery than a criminal justice
system.
MLK Day at WSU Vancouver
Washington State University
Vancouver welcomes students
and community members to cam-
pus for the Martin Luther King
Jr. Holiday.
Activities will take place in
the Firstenburg Student Com-
mons building on Monday, Jan.
19 from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. The
theme will be “Educational Jus-
tice: Creating Awareness and
Challenging Inequities Within
Our School System.”
Guests will enjoy music,
children’s activities, interactive
workshops and a lecture by key-
note speaker Charlene Williams,
senior director for school per-
formance at Portland Public
Schools.
The opening ceremony will
include a musical performance
of the Black National Anthem,
“Lift Every Voice” by Trenelle
Doyle, a university student. The
university faculty and staff will
offer four interactive workshops
focused on educational justice.
less self-promoter. While Waco
is oftentimes vocal—he likes to
embody the strong but silent type
too.
“If you’ve seen me at these
protests I’m usually…holding the
bullhorn for other people to
speak… because I don’t want to
make it seem like I’m just out
there promoting myself [or] out
there for the wrong reasons. It’s
like I wanna give people a voice
to express themselves, and use
my influence to inspire more
people to come out.”
Waco mixed both rolls at a
meeting last month of a citizen’s
committee reviewing Portland
Police policies regarding the use
of deadly force.
He let other members of Don’t
Shoot PDX do the talking. That
is until it seemed as if the com-
mittee was dancing around the
fact that it has no real authority
to make change, and that the
Portland Police Bureau essen-
tially reviews itself.
Waco, frustrated with Port-
land citizen’s lack of power as it
pertains to police oversight, and
the Independent Police Review
and the Citizens Review
Committee’s inability to create
change, finally spoke up. But
once Waco had his say he re-
mained stoic and let the others
do the rest of the talking.
Waco feels like “power needs
to be given to the citizens of
Portland who pay for police to
serve as public servants.
Firmly entrenched as a com-
munity leader, Waco isn’t going
anywhere anytime soon and will
be a staple of future marches,
meetings and entertainment in
the city of Portland for the fore-
seeable future.
On Twitter?Follow Mike for
interesting tweets regarding
local sports, international af-
fairs and other random timely
topics @IlluminatorMike