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About Street roots. (Portland, OR) 1998-current | View Entire Issue (Sept. 30, 2011)
8 street roots Sept 30, 2011 P ie candid candidate Jeri Williams offers up her own brand o f politics as she puts herself into the race fo r Randy Leonard’s City Council Seat BY JAKE THOMAS we’re going to have a whole group of people who aren’t. ongtime community organizer Jeri If the city doesn’t look at creating a Williams faces a tough battle against broadband strategy that will allow Steve Novick for the City Council seat everybody to have the Internet, then being vacated by Randy Leonard. But this those families’ kids who don’t have isn’t the first time Williams has faced a internet will do worse in school. You get tough fight. , unemployed people who are told to go Decades ago, Williams was pimped by a home and go online and apply for benefits. gang and coerced into walking 82nd Avenue Well, what if you have no online to go every night into the early morning hours. home to? If you’re a 6-year-old girl and After escaping, Williams went on to become your mom works until eight o’clock ait a labor and environmental justice organizer, night, and you need to get on the Internet and now manages a program in the Office of and do something for your report, it’s not Neighborhood Involvement aimed at getting going to get done because Mom’s at work. under-represented communities involved in And if you listen to the people who use the city governance. library computers, they’ll tell you, you have Now Williams hopes to make the jump to stand in line a long time and you only from organizing to making policy. Williams is have so long to use i t We’re creating this confident she has a fighting chance to win digital,divide, which is once again going to the seat if she can activate communities that create privilege for some and lack for other often shy away from the political process. So people. If you have enough, you tend to not far, she’s gotten the endorsement of former think about those who don’t. Mayor Tom Potter. If Sam Adams and I were to; drive down Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd, we would see Jake Thomas: You said you’re things differently. And I think that my view disappointed with some of the things you see is as important as what he sees. He may see going on with the city. What are those things? all the buildings that are LEED-certified sustainable. I may see the homeless people, Je ri Williams: One of the frustrating and the people who have drug problems things is the Last Thursday event and how walking up and down the street So we need long it’s been going on and how long the city people in office who can think about all has been paying for this party and just the those things. inequity of it. There are a lot other things People say, “I believe in equity,” so let’s the city should be spending money on, not give East Portland some sidewalks. It’s way somebody’s party. more than East Portland getting sidewalks. There are equity issues around the fact East Portlanders need a voice. If we get that we are making giant investments in urban renewal areas, we get them because certain groups of people, and those groups some communities have been blighted like of people are the ones most favored by the Mississippi, and it gets built up for another people in office. And I guess people would community, and the other community gets say that’s politics; I think that’s the way it moved into a pocket in Southeast Now works. So if that’s the way it works, we need gentrification is no longer an unintended to get someone in there that cares about consequence. We know it happens when we homeless populations, who cares about make these decisions. We plan for our people who are not being heard. prosperity, but we don’t plan for our poverty. We need to talk about people of color issues and have the race discussion^ We J.T.: I f elected, you’d be the only person of need to get somebody in office to do th at I color on City Council. There have been a hear that my opponent is a really nice couple of disturbing reports that have come out progressive guy, but I don’t think that he’ll in the past couple of years, the State of Black do th a t Oregon and the Coalition of Communities of Ethnocentrism is basically: I know what I Color reports. What would you do to address know because of what I grew up around. So the needs of minority communities? we’re all ethnocentric. My Indian and Mexican parts of me, and the white part of J.W.: We have to look at policy. So we’re me, all create what I grew up with, it creates doing that now through the Office of Equity my knowledge base. I can’t expect people and Human Rights, which we just passed and like Dan Saltzman to understand what it’s a lot people were really critical of. I told The like to be poor. I can’t explain what it’s like Oregonian that the way it reported it is like to him to be poor. I can’t explain to him it s a joke; it’s not a joke to the people who what it’s like to be homeless, a woman, a asked for i t The people who asked for it are woman of color. saying, “we need you to pay attention to us. That’s why we have a bunch of high rises We need you to take care of our needs downtown. That’s why we have because if you’re not taking care of “sustainability” centers and not “worker” everybody’s needs then you’re not doing centers. That’s why we have no shelters for your job.” little girls getting trafficked. We’ve chosen to It’s like people don’t want to have that look the other way on a lot of issues we find discussion about race. They just don’t distasteful, and that’s homelessness, that’s During the Office of Equity vote, Dan human trafficking, that’s the drug issue, So Saltzman said, I don’t want to see any more as long as we don’t make investments, real dialogue. Well then, how are people going to investments, in people — not just little Band- learn? Hasn’t it always been that we learn Aids, not just throw crumbs at them — we’re through education about each other? not going to have a solution. We’re going to have people who are happy because they J.T.: So what are some specific things have what they have and they’re fine, and you’d like to see come out of the new Office C O N TR IBU TIN G WRITER H Street Roots is conducting a series of interviews with the candidates for City Council. If you missed an edition, you can catch up at www. streetroots. wordpress.com P H O TO C O U R TESY OF JERI W IL L IA M S of Equity and Human Rights? J.W.: One of them is the sit-lie policy and eventually we need to look at how the contract with the day labor workers center will be ending soon and are we going to continue to fund it. As the Cully Neighborhood gets built up can we make sure that those people are not displaced. It’s hot a historically black community; it’s more Latino, Asian and white people. But can you make sure that those people don’t get displaced when you put the new infrastructure in? We don’t want to force people out because of economic reasons, and we can take action on this and learn lessons from i t We can’t keep pushing people all over town. J.T.: The city recently created Drug Impact Areas that exclude people from sections of downtown. The city also continues to enforce a no-camping ordinance, even though there’s not enough shelter space for homeless people. How do you intend to address these issues? J.W.: It’s almost like we need to do an inventory on the empty buildings that we’re not using right now, but for profit’s sake we’d rather have them remain empty than have people live in them. We have to shift this. We have to increase shelters. And we’re getting ready in December to open up the first human trafficking center for teens with the county, but there have to be other options. What I know is that the squeaky wheel gets the grease. I went and talked to Dignity Village, and we need to support many different modes of living in Portland that we currently don’t We have to really, really, really think outside the box. I don’t support the no-camping ordinance. Where am I supposed to go if I don’t have anywhere to go? The city is saying I’m a criminal. So we’ll put you in jail, or kick you out of town or harass you and take all the items you have and destroy them because you don’t have enough to worry about already. It’s not a sustainable idea to th in k that we can continue on like this. I believe that really at the core of what I’m saying is that if you don’t make those investments at the bottom, you’re not going to really be blessed. J.T.: You’re a survivor of human trafficking. How wiU you bring that experience to City Council? J.W.: I’m pushing for more support to get people out of trafficking. We need to make See WILLIAMS, page 9
