nrn 7TK7TT1new.s
ormer Portland Police Chief Tom Pot
ter was inaugurated as mayor Jan. 3,
and he seems poised to continue the
legacy of Vera Katz in making the
Rose City one of the country’s most
queer-friendly places.
The outspoken liberal—who has served as a
board member for the American Civil Liberties
Union of Oregon and
as director of the New
Avenues for Youth
homeless
youth
agency—is the father
of Portland’s first
openly queer cop,
Katie, who is suing
the state for the right
to marry.
According to his
staff, Potter was too
harried to handle all
the media requests
lobbed his way in the
past several weeks, but
he found time for a
brief e-mail interview.
He prefaced his Tom Potter and wife Karin
responses by saying,
“As mayor, 1 look forward to serving our won
derful gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered and
questioning Portlanders.”
F
Meg Daly: Last year you spoke at Equity
Foundation’s Safe Schools Summit about bul
lying and harassment of queer kids and chil
dren of gay, lesbian, bi and trans parents. As
Equity’s study has found, an estimated 20,000
high school students in Oregon reported that
T he B uck S tops H ere
users, while locking up the dealers; and insisting
on school programs designed to help children
and young people with meth-addicted parents.
Incoming Mayor Tom Potter takes on school funding,
meth abuse and homelessness
MD: How will the new strategy to deal
with chronic homelessness help street youth,
30 percent of whom are queer?
TP: As mayor, 1 support our comyiunity’s
efforts to eliminate homelessness in 10 years.
The city of Portland is spending an additional
$11 million to provide housing for homeless
individuals and families. Currently, street youth
are served by New Avenues for Youth, Outside
In and Janus Youth Programs. All three pro
grams have counseling and other programs tar
geting gay and lesbian youth. Homeless youth
programs have seen public funding reduced over
the last several years, and these agencies are
increasingly relying on fund raising and grants to
pay for services.
As with so many issues in our society, we
seem to have more problems than people and
resources to solve them. Homeless youth need
you to volunteer to work with them. Eighty per
cent of homeless youth come from abusive fam
ilies, and many have dropped out of the foster
care system. Homeless youth need more individ
uals and families who will provide nurturing
environments and homes. I am asking the Port
land GLBTQ community to become a Big
Brother, Big Sister, foster parent or mentor to
our homeless youth and youth who need foster
care. All of us share in the responsibility to pro
vide safe environments for our GLBTQ children
and youth. The buck stops with us. JH
by Meg Daly
Hansen at the mayor’s inauguration ceremony
they had been targeted with anti-gay harass
ment at school or traveling to and from school.
How will you address these issues? What kind
of funding needs to be made available?
Tom Potter: I would discuss this with the
school administration to see what programs they
do have in place to support these groups in our
schools. If there are no support programs in
place...then I would ask the administration to
provide them.
MD: How do you plan to partner with local
agencies and nonprofits that serve gay and
bisexual men, a population that has been hit
hard by meth use, leading to increase rates of
STDs like syphilis, HIV and AIDS?
TP: This problem is enormous and well
beyond the capacity of government to single
handedly eliminate meth. It requires a sea
change in the culture and thinking of Amer
ica that accepts drugs, in all their forms, as an
acceptable part of community life. Much like
the cultural shift in behaviors of gay men
when HIV/AIDS hit in the ’80s, we need a
change in behaviors on a similar scale with
all people.
As we challenge the community to change
its behaviors, 1 will convene police, neighbor
hoods, businesses and nonprofits to begin the
systematic reduction of meth use in Portland.
Specific to nonprofits that work with gay and
bisexual meth users, I will stress the need, and
funding, for more education, prevention, inter
vention and treatment. Since this epidemic
faces many neighborhcxxls, and the effects of
meth are felt in every area of society, we need a
broad-based strategy to eliminate meth labs
through enforcement; stricter control of the
substances used in the manufacture of meth;
providing more treatment alternatives to jail for
Staff Writer M eg D aly can be reached
at megdaly@justout.com.
w-1
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Deborah Hetron
Karen ftilsing
Mark Hardy
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