Seahawks
stun Packers
AHS rally
falls short
SPORTS • 4A
SPORTS • 4A
MONDAY, JANUARY 19, 2015
142nd YEAR, No. 144
ONE DOLLAR
Marquis
argues
for speed
Prosecution wants
Jessica Smith tried
for murder soon
By KYLE SPURR
The Daily Astorian
Clatsop County District Attorney
JOSHUA BESSEX — The Daily Astorian
Kathleen Sadaat, a Portland-based equal-rights activist, speaks during the “Don’t Let Go!’ Keeping the Dream Alive” event Friday. Among
other things, Sadaat spoke of the “triple evils” of poverty, racism, and militarism.
‘Don’t let go’
See TRIAL, Page 9A
Equal-rights activist calls
for us to ask why some
By DERRICK DEPLEDGE
The Daily Astorian
K
athleen Saadat, who is black, a woman and a
lesbian, challenged a mostly white audience at
Clatsop Community College Friday afternoon with a
straightforward, yet uncomfortable, question: In a nation where
everyone is supposed to be equal under the law, why is it that
The Portland equal-rights ac-
tivist, who appeared in Astoria
for events marking Martin Luther
King Jr. Day, did not provide an
easy answer.
Her message is that discussions
about race, gender and sexual ori-
entation are inherently complex
and dependent on a willingness to
speak honestly with one another
about personal biases and about the
nation’s painful history of discrim-
ination.
“I’m not sure you can get
through this without having your
feelings hurt,” she said. “And if
you want it all to be nice, go to a
movie ...”
“It’s not nice. It’s complicated.
It’s painful to even think about,
don’t call you names then we’re
“It’s not that simple.”
Martin Luther King Jr., the civ-
il-rights leader who was assassinat-
ed at 39 in 1968, is rarely out of the
nation’s conversation on race and
justice. But his legacy of courage
and nonviolence is being keenly
remembered this year because of
“Selma,” a dramatic account of
King’s drive for voting rights in
Alabama in 1965 that is nominat-
ed for an Academy Award for best
picture, and by the social unrest na-
tionally after the fatal police shoot-
ing last year of an unarmed black
teenager in Ferguson, Mo.
Activists like Saadat have traced
the arc that King — who would
have been 86 this year — did not
live long enough to witness.
“He left his moral footprints on
the road to equality,” she said, “and
he left a path for us to follow.”
Saadat, 74, whose great-grand-
mother was a slave, was born in St.
response Thursday to Jessica Smith’s
defense attorneys, who claim a trail
is not possible
before summer
2016.
A trial date
had
initially
been set July 7
for Smith, the
mother accused
of
drugging
and murdering
her
2-year-
Josh
old daughter
Marquis
and attempt-
ing to kill her
13-year-old daughter in a Cannon
Beach hotel last summer.
Marquis has written and said in
court multiple times that a trial needs
to occur within the year, especially
since the case involves a surviving
child, Alana Smith.
JOSHUA BESSEX — The Daily Astorian
Kathleen Sadaat speaks during an event sponsored by the Lower
Columbia Diversity Project Friday.
‘I’m not sure you can get through this
without having your feelings hurt.’
Kathleen Sadaat
equal rights activist
IN MLK’S HONOR
A candlelight walk through downtown Astoria is 5:30 tonight.
Meet at the corner of 12th and Commercial streets
Louis and grew up in an era of seg-
regated schools, relegation to the
back of the bus, and consignment
to what she remembered as the
“nigger roost” at movie theaters.
The Reed College graduate
retired at the end of 2012 as the
-
tive action for the city of Portland.
She also worked with the Cascade
AIDS Project and as the state’s di-
other posts, and has been widely
revered for her advocacy of equal
rights.
Many positive changes on
race, Saadat suggested, echoing
both King and actor and come-
dian Chris Rock have happened
not because blacks have made
progress, but because whites have
recognized and re-examined their
prejudices.
“So when you look at it like that,
me pushing against somebody who
is standing in my way,” she said.
“As opposed to, somebody who is
don’t have to do this.’
See SAADAT, Page 9A
Westport
praises
mill’s gift
County, Wauna
land donation
By KYLE SPURR
The Daily Astorian
Wauna Mill’s decadelong process
to donate 27-acres of unused, water-
front land to Clatsop County for the
creation of a community park came
to a close Friday.
-
cials gathered at the mill Friday for
a brief celebration to recognize the
successful land donation, valued at
$230,000, that opens the door for a
new Westport park.
to donate the land to the Clatsop
County parks department in 2004,
but hit a roadblock when the Oregon
Department of Environmental Qual-
ity suspected contamination in the
area from a sawmill operation in the
1950s.
After a lengthy regulatory pro-
See GIFT, Page 9A
Strong-minded seamanship student makes history
Shamiqwa McDowell, a
seamanship student at Tongue
Point Job Corps Center, is
in rare company among the
shipborne African-American
community.
The 23-year-old, from Nor-
folk, Va., has been studying
seamanship at Tongue Point
since July 2013 and recently
-
ber of the Engineering Depart-
only African-American wom-
an at Tongue Point to do so.
After checking with the Na-
tional Maritime Center, it ap-
pears McDowell is one of only
34 African-American women
-
tionally, Community Relations
Director Tita Montero said.
It’s only one of several cer-
has worked her way around
Tongue Point’s training vessel
-
galley work, handling hazard-
One of the crew
“You can never judge a
book by its cover, and that’s
makes McDowell an unli-
censed junior engineer, a se-
nior unlicensed crew member
who maintains and repairs
the engine, steering and other
parts of a ship’s infrastructure.
until they saw me work,” said
McDowell, who worked her
way from the deck of the for-
mer U.S. Coast Guard cutter,
to the galley, back to the deck
and then down into the engine
room, where she’s made his-
tory for Tongue Point.
See McDOWELL, Page 9A
Submitted photo
Shamiqwa McDowell recently became the first Afri-
can-American woman from Tongue Point Job Corps Cen-
ter to earn a Qualified Member of the Engineering Depart-
ment (QMED) certification.