HAPPY
INDEPENDENCE
DAY
JUNE 28, 2017
Portland and Seattle Volume XXXIX No. 39
25
CENTS
News .............................. 3,8-10 A & E .....................................6-7
Opinion ...................................2 Travel Ban ........................9
Calendars ........................... 4-5 Bids/Classifieds ....................11
CHALLENGING PEOPLE TO SHAPE A BETTER FUTURE NOW
PHOTO: MELANIE SEVCENKO
MAYOR AT SIX MONTHS
Rev. Dr. LeRoy Haynes, Jr., of the Allen Temple and
the Albina Ministerial Alliance, and Ron Herndon,
CEO of Albina Head Start, welcome guests to a
public forum for Portland’s Black men.
By Melanie Sevcenko
Of The Skanner News
I
n the wake of recent community vi-
olence — the Gresham shooting of a
mother and child, a fatal hate crime
on public transportation, and a rac-
ist threat to the annual Good in the
Hood event — Black community orga-
nizers and members came together last
Wednesday morning in North Portland
to rally around positive change.
“We’ve gone way too far,” said Tony
Hopson, addressing the audience of
around 200 at the headquarters of Self
Enhancement, Inc., where he presides
PHOTO BY MATT SAYLES/INVISION/AP
See VIOLENCE on page 3
Host Leslie Jones speaks at the BET Awards at the
Microsoft Theater June 25 in Los Angeles.
BET Awards
Suprise winners and
heartfelt tributes
page 7
World News
Briefs
page 10
Mayor Ted Wheeler, who took office Jan. 3, spoke to The Skanner’s staff last week about police reform, race and what his administration has accomplished
so far.
Ted Wheeler talks to The Skanner about criminal
justice reform, homelessness and the CRC
By The Skanner News Staff
L
ast week, Mayor Ted
Wheeler visited The
Skanner’s office to talk
about criminal justice
reform, homelessness, na-
tional politics and what his
administration has accom-
plished since he took office
Jan. 3.
This interview has been
edited for space and clarity.
The Skanner News: Six
months is not a lot of time,
but in those six months,
what do you feel you’ve ac-
complished?
TW: I see myself very
much as a transitional
mayor. We’re going from
being a city that is a medi-
um-sized city to one that
is truly becoming a global
city. We cannot stop the
number of people that
are coming here. We can’t
change the fact that we are
very much on the radar
screen nationally and in-
ternationally.
As people are aware we
have significant challeng-
es around race, which I
have not shied away from
calling out quite intention-
ally — from my City Club
speech to the framing of
the search that I’m con-
ducting nationally for a po-
lice chief, to conversations
that I’ve had in the com-
munity. We’re becoming a
more diverse community,
but at the same time, the
number of African Amer-
icans in our community is
declining. We have not yet
found the right frame for
that conversation and that
success.
Getting more to what
we’ve actually done, we
balanced the budget with
little fanfare, created some
good opportunities – a
$600 million program to
invest in infrastructure,
predominantly transpor-
tation, civic and parks in-
frastructure. We created
the community service
officer program, which is
part of the reform pack-
age that I initially put on
the table, around police re-
form. These are non-sworn
officers who will not carry
weapons, who will work
with the community as
part of our intensification
around community polic-
ing.
Obviously, we’ve worked
very hard on the home-
less front. There are three
new shelters that we’ve
opened since I took office
through partnerships with
private-sector developers
and real estate people that
has made an impact on
See MAYOR on page 3
County’s Homeless Population Increases by 10 Percent
Number of unsheltered African Americans is
down, but still disproportionate
By Melanie Sevcenko
Of The Skanner News
L
ast week Multnomah County
released the results of its bi-an-
nual homeless count. A require-
ment of the U.S. Department of
Housing and Urban Development),
the count includes all people living
in shelters, transitional housing and
on the streets in a single night.
On Feb. 22, the number of homeless
people sleeping outdoors in Mult-
nomah County was 1,668, while 2,509
people were living in emergency
shelters and transitional housing,
including self-managed homeless
camps like Dignity Village, Right 2
Dream Too and Hazelnut Grove.
Altogether, some 4,177 people are
without permanent housing on any
given night.
Most disheartening is the fact
See HOMELESS on page 3
PHOTO BY BORN1945 VIA FLICKR
Public forum addressed
curbing violence and
improving opportunity
PHOTO BY JERRY FOSTER
Black
Men Unify
Against
Violence
A homeless man finds a place to rest in front of
an unoccupied business in SW Portland