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About The daily Astorian. (Astoria, Or.) 1961-current | View Entire Issue (Aug. 22, 2016)
10A THE DAILY ASTORIAN • MONDAY, AUGUST 22, 2016 Photos from Kayla Jill Photography Fuller Events, of Portland, will produce the finish line party in Seaside on Saturday. Race organizers are prepared for a repeat of last year’s inclement weather, which caused the cancellation of the traditional finale celebration. Hood to Coast: Comedian Kevin Hart will compete Continued from Page 1A wishing to see the event com- pletely leave Seaside, city councilors were unanimous in their support of the race for at least this year and 2017. This week, the event gets a fresh start. “The relationship has been excellent since last October,” said Dan Floyd, chief operating oficer for the Hood to Coast Race Series. Organizers and represen- tatives for local stakeholders — including the city, the Sea- side Chamber of Commerce and the Seaside Downtown Development Association — collaborated to address local concerns. “We were able to have a good open discussion about the beneits of Hood to Coast and utilizing Seaside and Clat- sop County,” Floyd said, add- ing organizers are happy to be in Seaside for the next two years, and “hopefully many years.” Last year’s inish party was disrupted by a debilitat- ing storm that dismantled the chairs, tents and other struc- tures set up on the beach. This year, in case of more bad weather, organizers have booked the Seaside Civic and Convention Center for Satur- Racers compete in the nearly 200-mile Hood to Coast Relay. Racers compete in the nearly 200-mile Hood to Coast Re- lay, which has filled to capacity for the past 18 years. ‘We’re trying to be more ... respectful of our neighbors and the city of Seaside, which is hosting us.’ Dan Floyd chief operating officer for the Hood to Coast Race Series day, convention center Man- ager Russ Vandenberg said. Route change For the overall safety of par- ticipants, organizers decided to make a small tweak to the race route, which is not uncommon, Floyd said. The traditional route uses the Portland’s Springwater Cor- ridor trail for about 20 miles. This year, however, “we’re avoiding a 40-block stretch of the trail,” from Southeast 82 nd to Southeast 122 nd avenues, to bypass a homeless camp, Floyd said. The route change will affect Leg 11 and add about a mile to the course. Volunteers and security per- sonnel will be placed through- out the trail in Portland and Gresham, and a mobile bicycle patrol will monitor the entire corridor. Organizers spent several hours on the trail, which is scheduled to be cleared of the homeless camps in the near future. They wanted to under- stand the extent of the issue involving the homeless popu- lation and make a decision to beneit everyone, Floyd said. They decided to change the route in an effort to preserve participant and volunteer safety without tampering with the homeless camps. Hood to Coast’s mission also includes showcasing the state of Oregon, and “we’ve got to do it in the best way pos- sible,” Floyd said. That portion of the trail currently “doesn’t show who we are,” he added. Party on Hood to Coast will get some celebrity attention. Comedian Kevin Hart, known for movies such as “Central Intelligence” and “Ride Along,” will run for the Nike team. “We don’t know which leg he’s running, and we do know he’s planning to make it to Sea- side,” Floyd said. The inish line party, which starts Saturday afternoon, will follow the same format as pre- vious years. The Seaside Chamber of Commerce’s Beer and Wine Garden will open at 11 a.m. Brian O’Dell Band will perform on the main stage from 12:45 to 3:45 p.m. Various award cer- emonies and announcements will take place starting at 4:50 p.m. Radical Revolution will perform from 6:45 to 11 p.m. The main stage is being moved to the southeast corner of the party where it will be pointed more toward the ocean, rather than the Promenade. “We’re trying to push the noise away from people,” Floyd said. “We’re trying to be more aware of our surround- ings and the people that are there and more respectful of our neighbors and the city of Sea- side, which is hosting us.” There will be potential impacts to trafic low in cer- tain areas before and during the event. The pedestrian bridge over U.S. Highway 101 in north Seaside will be set up today after 7 p.m. Trafic along Youngs River Loop may be affected from 2 a.m. to 4:45 p.m. Saturday. Traf- ic along Lewis and Clark Road and U.S. Highway 101 may be affected from 4:30 a.m. to 9 p.m. ‘White Out’: Microaggressions are small indignities that add up Continued from Page 1A — unintentionally shifted dis- cussion away from power and equity. “We can do a lot of multi- cultural celebrating but not a lot of understanding about how power and difference are creat- ing different access to resources in our society,” Drew said. Claiming to “not see race” could ignore the reality of being a person of color. “There is something so dis- honest and painful about era- sure,” Drew said. “How can you deal with me as a white person if I can’t talk about one thing that’s shaping your daily experience?” Though some suggested racism ended when Barack Obama was elected president, Drew showed evidence that suggested otherwise. The Pew Research Cen- ter indicated income inequality along racial lines further wid- ened after the recession, and federal data showed an increase in schools with primarily poor black or Hispanic students between 2011 and 2014. Seem- ingly racially diverse schools may have racially segregated college-bound and remedial courses, and a study showed “white-sounding names” are more likely to get callbacks on resumes than “African-Ameri- can-sounding names.” Americans today are “inun- dated with daily coverage of yet another person being shot and killed by police,” Drew said, displaying a photo of a black man, Walter Scott, running from a police oficer last year before being fatally shot. The audience discussed unconscious bias, psychologi- cal effects of racism, media rep- resentation and narratives about black men. Microaggressions, like a person of color being treated differently by a store clerk, are small indignities that add up, Drew said. “Sundown towns” are areas of informal racial exclusion, through surveil- lance, name-calling or the pres- ence of symbols like Confeder- ate lags. Moving forward and healing How do we deine race in an increasingly racially diverse country? “Race is going to become this amalgam of how we self-identify, how members of our group treat us and how society at large treats us,” Drew said. “Sometimes it’s not about our appearance but the second we open our mouth.” She encouraged the audi- ence to think about two vastly different perspectives. “If white people are saying, ‘It’s not about racism until you prove that it is,’ and people of color enter a situation saying, ‘Racism is involved until you prove to me it’s not,’ no won- der we miss each other,” Drew said. The audience was prompted to discuss how racism is main- tained. Some said it felt frus- trating and uncomfortable to discuss, because we are not accustomed to it. “White people have a whole lot of work to do on our own,” Drew said. “People of color also need to do internal work and healing around their trauma.” The audience offered ideas on how to create a more equi- table and inclusive commu- nity, which included address- ing economic equality, learning each other’s histories and lis- tening to what people of color experience. Learning “a perfectly log- ical explanation” for racist behavior “serves to deny and minimize whatever the person of color just said,” Drew said. Lastly, Drew encouraged the audience to think about one action they would be willing to take to disrupt racism. “Our hope is that these cou- rageous conversations can become one of our tools for healing,” she said. “Dialogue accompanied by the actions we’re willing to take I’m hope- ful can turn the tide around.” Ridgway: His most memorable trip was going on a safari tour in Kenya Continued from Page 1A Because his father was quartermaster in the army, Ridgway spent some of his childhood summers in West Africa. He spent a year in Ghana and went to an Ameri- can school for a year. “It was kind of strange surf- ing on a beach on Christmas Day,” he remembers. During most school years, Ridgway went to boarding school in England, which he credits with sharpening his communication skills. “You have to learn to get along with people,” he said. Before his career in hospi- tality and destination market- ing, Ridgway was an accoun- tant. He moved from England to Alberta, Canada, while working for John Deere. “It was quite a culture shock,” he said. After working as a gen- eral accounting supervisor for a group of hotels, he became tired of “looking backwards all the time.” “I wanted to make things happen,” he said. He became owner and gen- eral manager of Hospitality Services of Canada. Finding solutions for hotels that could not afford marketing sparked his interest in the ield. Eleven years ago, Ridgway and his wife, Georgia, got mar- ried at Hug Point in Cannon Beach. They would return to celebrate their wedding anni- versary, and their love of the area led them to eventually move to Cannon Beach full time. Ridgway started attend- ing Wednesday morning busi- ness meetings and got involved with the chamber through knowing local residents. It’s no surprise that Ridgway, after an extensive career in pro- moting destinations, is an avid traveler. He recently went to Ire- land with his wife. Their most memorable trip was Kenya, where they went on a safari tour. Ridgway and his wife live near Tolovana with their cat, Nera, and dog, Aren, who enjoys run- ning around the beach every morning. — Lyra Fontaine