Let me say this about that
...First black judge
(From Page 2)
ized by city police. He was walking home from a downtown dance and taking a
shortcut through a white neighborhood when stopped by two cops in a police car
who asked why he was there. Because he did not take off his hat while replying
to them, they knocked him down. “I left because I felt I would be killed,” he said
in recalling the incident.
SERVING IN THE ARMY after World War II, Brown saw duty in Ger-
many and France. After receiving his honorable discharge, he used the GI Bill to
attend Southern University in Louisiana and Fisk College in Tennessee. Next, he
moved to Canada and got a job on the Canadian Pacific Railroad as a porter,
joining the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. He wanted to see Canada and
he’d heard the tips were good, which would give him a chance to save some
money for law school. In that job, he got to know the union’s founder and pres-
ident, A. Philip Randolph. A legendary figure, Randolph later became the first
black person to hold a seat on the AFL-CIO Executive Council and was a civil
rights leader.
BROWN DECIDED ON PORTLAND as a place to move to because he
could take day or night classes at its downtown Northwestern School of Law,
which years later became part of Lewis and Clark College in Southwest Portland.
He relocated to Portland in the early 1950s and supported himself with a day
job as a public welfare caseworker. He found that Portland had some racism, but
he was not harassed by police and there were no “white” or “colored” signs on
drinking fountains and restroom doors. Things improved after the 1957 Oregon
Legislature at Salem passed civil rights legislation known as the public accom-
modations law and it was signed by then-Gov. Mark Hatfield.
After earning his law degree in 1957, Brown began participating in Democ-
ratic Party activities. Aaron also joined two civil rights organizations, the Na-
tional Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the Urban
League, and he and Avenice met and married. She had started working at the
Pacific Northwest Bell telephone company as a member of the Communications
Workers of America. She later was promoted to a supervisory post outside of
the bargaining unit and out of the union. After a federal judge broke up the Bell
system Avenice Brown went with the American Telephone and Telegraph
(AT&T) long-distance company. She helped United Way charity fundraising
campaigns as a loaned executive, and assisted in the Junior Achievement youth
organization and in Red Cross training programs.
JUDGE AND MRS. BROWN raised two sons, Gregory and Eric, and a
daughter, Yvette, in their Portland home. As parents, the Browns participated in
the Boy Scouts; Aaron also served on scouting’s Portland regional Executive
Council. Now, Gregory works at a Portland bank; Eric and Yvette live in Dallas,
Texas, were they run businesses. Aaron and Avenice also have four grandchil-
dren. A half-dozen years ago, to be near her siblings and other relatives, Aaron
and Avenice decided to move to her hometown of Holly Springs, Mississippi.
Aaron said they enjoy driving to nearby Memphis, Tenn., to tour Elvis Presley’s
Graceland home, and visit other places of interest. Occasionally they are ac-
companied by friends from Portland.
★★★
PRESIDENT LYNDON B. JOHNSON, the 36th chief executive of the
United States of America, made the following comments to a group of AFL-CIO
labor editors on Nov. 26, 1965:
“You who edit and produce the la-
bor press perform a most useful and in-
dispensable function in our free demo-
cratic society. The labor press is the
effective voice of a movement that has
consistently advanced and supported
programs to elevate the dignity of
American working people and to ad-
vance the well-being of our country.
“Today the efforts of American la-
bor — and the labor press — are paying
rich dividends. Most of our citizens en-
joy a level of prosperity unprecedented
in history.
LYNDON JOHNSON
“The labor press has played an in-
valuable role in defining our national
goals at home and abroad by keeping union members abreast of where we are
heading — and should be heading.”
NOVEMBER 16, 2007
U.S. House passes Peru trade deal;
Wu and DeFazio vote against it
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Peru
Free Trade Agreement passed in the
U.S. House Nov. 8 by a vote of 285-
132.
The Change to Win labor federation
opposed the agreement and the national
AFL-CIO was neutral. In Oregon, the
state AFL-CIO passed a resolution at
its convention in October opposing the
trade deal.
Democrats opposed the Peru meas-
ure by a 116-109 margin (70 percent
were freshman lawmakers), while Re-
publicans supported it, 176-16.
Only two of Oregon’s five represen-
tatives sided with labor in opposing the
trade deal. They were Democrats David
Wu in the 1st District and Peter De-
Fazio in the 4th District.
Supporting the Peru Free Trade
Agreement were Earl Blumenauer in
the 3rd District, Darlene Hooley in the
5th District, Greg Walden in the 2nd
District and Brian Baird in Washington
State’s 3rd District.
Wu said that although he saw im-
provements in the Peru deal over past
trade deals, he rejected it because it did-
n’t put human rights on an equal foot-
ing with environmental and labor pro-
tections.
“Trade agreements are one of the
few, one of the key levers to promote
democracy, human rights and the rule
of law abroad,” he said. “I do hope ... to
reach a day, some day, when human
rights will be included in trade deliber-
ations on an equal footing with envi-
ronmental and labor protections.”
AFL-CIO President John Sweeney
called the Peru pact “far from perfect,”
and criticized many sections, including
letting firms that get government con-
tracts export those jobs.
Sweeney said the federation is dead
set against two other looming free trade
pacts, with South Korea and Colombia
and would lobby hard against them.
Congressional Dems want to expand
program to help workers hurt by trade
WASHINGTON, D.C. (PAI) —
Defying yet another veto threat by
President Bush, the Democratic-run
U.S. House of Representatives mus-
tered a bipartisan 264-157 vote on Oct.
31 to extend and expand the Trade Ad-
justment Assistance Act, the program
that helps workers who lose their jobs
to subsidized foreign imports.
The TAA program was first created
in 1962 to help push trade pacts through
Congress. But it now applies only to in-
dustrial workers who directly lose their
jobs to subsidized foreign imports —
and even then, only after the Labor De-
partment agrees. As a result, TAA helps
far fewer workers than it should.
The new version (HR 3920) doubles
trade adjustment assistance’s author-
NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS
ized budget. It also extends TAA to
service-sector and public-sector work-
ers who lose their jobs to trade or off-
shoring.
“The Trade and Globalization As-
sistance Act provides a critical safety
net for the millions of workers who lose
their jobs every year due to off-shoring
and increased imports,” said national
AFL-CIO President John Sweeney.
“Our nation has lost 3 million family-
supporting manufacturing jobs on
Bush’s watch alone. Flawed trade pol-
icy continues to send manufacturing
and service-sector jobs overseas.
Working men and women need assis-
tance of TAA more than ever.”
The Office of Management and
Budget had a different take. The Ad-
ministration strongly opposes the bill,
stating the reforms impede the pro-
grams’ flexibility. Instead, the agency
charged Congress with converting TAA
“from a trade-related program to a uni-
versal income-support and training pro-
gram.”
OMB called the extension of TAA
to public-sector and private- service
workers “inappropriate and unwork-
able.” And the department denounced a
provision saying that state-named
“merit workers” — not outsourced
workers overseas — must run retrain-
ing programs for workers who lose
their jobs.
OMB said its senior advisers will
recommend that Bush veto the bill if
changes aren’t made.
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