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About Just out. (Portland, OR) 1983-2013 | View Entire Issue (Nov. 21, 2008)
NOVEMBER 21, 2008 |USt OUt 9 outstanding Outstanding Person of the Year: Portland Mayor-elect Sam Adams by Stephen Marc Beaudoin he glass closet finally burst into a thousand pieces when .X' openly gay City Commissioner Sam Adams was elected mayor of Portland with 59 percent of the vote in the May primary election. Because of this au gust achievement and our belief in his wisdom, vision and courage as the first openly gay mayor of a major U.S. city, Just Out is pleased to honor him as our inau gural Outstanding Person of the Year. At the same time that we offer up this scepter and crown to Adams, we also hand him a bottle of aspirin. As mayor, Adams will face massive city specific challenges in the months and years ahead: a 43 percent dropout rate among high schoolers in the Portland Snapshots of Sam Adams through the years: as chief of staff to Mayor Vera Katz, as City Commissioner and now as Stumptown’s mayor-elect. Public Schools district; a litany of exces sive force charges against the Portland Police Bureau; a lack of affordable housing and his sprawling ambition. Adams never met an idea to marketing living-wage jobs that have vexed this city for at he didn’t like, and he needs the queer community executives. least a generation; and the question of how to grow to help him stay on track. He plans to Portland’s economy and population without sacri As mayor of Portland, what will his priori unveil the ficing the small-town, DIY charm that attracts the ties be? Adams rattles off “reducing [the] high next stage of so-called creative class. schixil dropout rate, reducing over 30 percent of this initiative in January. Adams will also face heightened scrutiny from Portlanders who are unemployed or on a poverty And about that whole gay thing—Adams has the sexual minorities community. It would be easy wage, and bringing Portland to a new level of not only been open about his sexual orientation to elevate him to queer martyrdom before he even sustainable practices” as some of his top places to for the better part of a decade, he’s worked in smart takes office in January. That would be a mistake. press forward. He is also taking the unusual step of and innovative ways to advance causes important Yes, we’re grinning with pride about Adams’ elec retaining his arts commissioner role as mayor; cre to queers: He led the founding of Portland’s facili tion to office and his banner year as a city commis ative people across the city should be dancing in ty for the sexual minorities community, Q Center, sioner, but we also hope Portland queers continue the streets about this. Adams has already embarked and he helped pass an ordinance prohibiting the to challenge, question and debate with him once on an ambitious Creative Capacity Initiative that city from contracting with anti-gay companies. he’s in the driver’s seat, if there’s one character seeks to identify and open new funding streams And his mayoral staff, so far anyway, is stuffed flaw that might prove fatal to Adams as mayor, it’s for folks in the creative sector, from musicians with fabulous openly gay people like Shoshanah V ■ E verybody ^ FOR KIDS OF ALL AGES! 7l 7 FAMILY OWNED J ON. LOMBARD ST., 503.432.8732 G arden C enter Hydroponics Grow Lights Garden Tools Oppenheim, C e v e r o Gonzales and Wade Nkrumah. This month Adams at tended the red carpet world pre miere of Portland filmmaker Gus Van Sant’s biopic about Harvey Milk. Adams openly acknowledges the “great debt” he owes to Milk’s work, which helped “pave the way for viable gay candidates to elected office.” And at the Nov. 15 Portland ral ly to protest the pas sage of California’s Proposition 8, Adams himself raised the spectre of Milk’s extraordinary legacy when he grabbed a bullhorn, took the stage to roaring crowds and updated a signature Milk rallying cry for his own purposes: “My name is Sam Adams!” he bellowed to wild applause. “And I’m here to recruit you!” © Celebrate the inauguration of Sam Adams during the M ayor ’ s B all Jan. 31, 2009, at The Nines Hotel, 525 S.W. Morrison St. Tickets will be available in early January; proceeds benefit Q Center and Creative Advocacy Network, an arm of the Creative Capacity Initiative. For details visit www. commissioner sam. com.
