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THE DAILY ASTORIAN • FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 17, 2017
WORLD IN BRIEF
Protest: 40 students from AHS took part
Continued from Page 1A
The protest even reached
into the U.S. Capitol, where a
Senate coffee shop was among
the eateries that were closed as
employees did not show up at
work.
Local support
AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais
President Donald Trump walks off stage at the con-
clusion of a news conference in the East Room of the
White House in Washington on Thursday.
The Associated Press
Remember Nixon? There’s history
behind Trump’s press attacks
WASHINGTON — Thomas Jefferson railed against news-
papers as “polluted vehicles” of falsehood and error. Richard
Nixon tangled with reporters in the toxic atmosphere of Water-
gate, considering them the “enemy.” Bill Clinton publicly con-
demned “purveyors of hatred and division” on the public air
waves.
Historians can point to plenty of past presidents who have
sparred with the press. But they’re hard-pressed to find any-
thing that approaches the all-out attack on the media that Pres-
ident Donald Trump seems intent on escalating at every turn.
“There has never been a kind of holistic jihad against the
news media like Trump is executing,” said Rice University
historian Douglas Brinkley. “Trump is determined to beat and
bloody the press whenever he finds himself in a hole, and that’s
unique.”
Trump, who has long had an adversarial relationship with
the media, opened a 77-minute East Room news conference
Thursday by saying he hoped to “get along a little bit better”
with the press going forward — “if that’s possible.”
“Maybe it’s not, and that’s OK, too,” he added.
Oregon lawmakers propose
state control of public land
SALEM — More than half the land in Oregon is owned by
the federal government, but Republican lawmakers there have
raised the possibility of transferring it to state control.
The Statesman Journal reports that a bill sponsored by
Grants Pass Republican Carl Wilson and three other lawmak-
ers would create a task force to analyze the costs and benefits
of such a move.
Wilson says he does not support selling Oregon’s public
land into private ownership.
During a hearing on the proposal, every public speaker
offering testimony opposed the idea of state control. Conser-
vation and sportsman’s groups say Oregon couldn’t afford to
manage the land, while others disputed the need to fund such a
task force when Oregon is facing a $1.8 billion shortfall.
Federal judge scolds Washington
state for treatment of mentally ill
SEATTLE — A federal judge has blasted the Washington
state agency responsible for providing competency services to
mentally ill people in jail, saying the agency doesn’t appear to
understand that these individuals “have constitutional rights
that are being violated.”
The number of people waiting for competency evaluations
or treatment in custody has increased since April 2016 instead
of going down, as the court ordered back in April 2015, U.S.
District Judge Marsha Pechman said Thursday in a written
order.
“They have been charged with criminal offenses but they
have not been convicted, thus they enjoy the presumption of
innocence which is a bedrock principle of our jurisprudence,”
Pechman said. “They have not been found by a court to be a
danger to themselves or others, unlike those under civil com-
mitment orders.”
Yet they wait for weeks or months for competency services
while the state continues to pay fines being found in contempt
of her court order to fix the problem. The state has paid $9.6
million in contempt fines so far.
“This must stop,” she said. “The defendants cannot let the
sanctions pile up while pleading lack of funding.”
Finnish lawmakers reject call to
revoke same-sex marriage
HELSINKI — Finnish lawmakers have rejected a petition
from more than 100,000 people demanding to repeal a law
allowing same-sex marriage.
The move is considered a last-minute attempt to revoke the
law that made Finland the last Nordic country to allow homo-
sexuals to wed.
In today’s 120-48 vote with two abstentions and 29 absen-
tees, Finland’s Parliament rejected a public petition demanding
that marriage remain “a genuinely egalitarian union between
man and woman” and calling for “repealing the gender-neutral
marriage law.”
In Finland, any petition with at least 50,000 signatures is
automatically considered by Parliament.
Although same-sex couples have been able to live in offi-
cially registered partnerships in Finland since 2002, it wasn’t
until 2014 that Finland decided to approve same-sex marriage,
giving couples right to share a surname and to adopt children.
Pakistani death toll in IS attack
on Sufi shrine rises to 80
SEHWAN, Pakistan — Pakistani forces killed and arrested
dozens of suspects in sweeping raids overnight and into today
as the death toll from a massive suicide bombing by the Islamic
State group at a famed Sufi shrine in the country’s south the pre-
vious day rose to 80.
The terror attack — Pakistan’s deadliest in years — stunned
the nation and raised questions about the authorities’ ability to
rein in militant groups despite several military offensives target-
ing militant hideouts.
It also threatened to drive a deeper wedge between Pakistan
and Afghanistan. Islamabad quickly lashed out at Kabul, saying
the bombing was masterminded from across the border, in mil-
itant sanctuaries in Afghanistan.
Underscoring tensions, Pakistan fired a blistering round of
artillery shells into Afghan territory and shut down the Torkham
border crossing, a key commercial artery between the two
neighbors.
Astoria School District
Superintendent Craig Hoppes
said 40 students from Astoria
High School and 25 from John
Jacob Astor Elementary School
missed classes Thursday as part
of the protest.
Other local schools did
not report a spike in absences
Thursday, although Norma Her-
nandez, a former director of
the Lower Columbia Hispanic
Council who works for Clatsop
County Public Health, said she
had spoken with families who
held their kids out of school in
Seaside.
In Seaside, Dooger’s seafood
restaurant closed in support.
“We heard a little about it
earlier this week,” Doug Wiese,
Dooger’s owner, said. “When
we realized the groundswell of
restaurants across the United
States closing today, we felt the
need to support it.
“We support all the undoc-
umented workers across the
United State, agriculture, hospi-
tality, the whole gamut,” he said.
“The restaurants were closing in
support of it, so we decided to
join them.”
El Tapatio in Astoria posted
a Facebook notice announc-
ing their closure Thursday, say-
ing they were “joining the fight”
of their Hispanic families. Cle-
mente’s Cafe and Public House
in Astoria posted on Facebook,
“Clemente’s will be closed
tomorrow despite a busy week
because Gordon and Lisa’s
families were immigrants to the
United States. Our communities
teachers, our children’s friends,
our firefighters, our policemen,
our doctors, our nurses, our
postmasters, our baristas, our
waiters, and our cooks. We are
all immigrants and tomorrow is
‘A day without immigrants.’
“We believe in people before
profits; compassion, human-
ity and dignity of all no matter
where you have come from.”
Montealban and the El Aza-
dero food truck in Astoria were
also closed, as was Tacos El
Catrin and Emiliano’s Hair Stu-
dio in Warrenton.
Haystack Lodgings in Can-
non Beach reported having
no cleaning staff for the day
because of the protest.
AP Photo/Jacqueline Larma
A mail carrier passes a closed bakery Thursday in south Philadelphia’s Italian Market. In
an action called “A Day Without Immigrants,” immigrants across the country are expect-
ed to stay home from school and work on Thursday to show how critical they are to the
U.S. economy and way of life.
make up the majority — up to
70 percent in places like New
York and Chicago, according
to the Restaurant Opportunities
Centers United, which works
to improve working conditions.
An estimated 1.3 million in the
industry are immigrants in the
U.S. illegally, the group said.
Construction industry
The construction industry,
which likewise employs large
numbers of immigrants, also
felt the effects of Thursday’s
protest.
Shea Frederick, who owns
a small construction company
in Baltimore, showed up at 7
a.m. at a home he is renovating
and found that he was all alone,
with a load of drywall ready
for install. He soon understood
why: His crew, five immigrants,
called to say they weren’t com-
ing to work. They were joining
the protests.
“I had an entire day of full
work,” he said. “I have inspec-
tors lined up to inspect the place,
and now they’re thrown off, and
you do it the day before the
weekend and it pushes things
off even more. It sucks, but it’s
understandable.”
Frederick said that while he
fundamentally agrees with the
action, and appreciates why his
crew felt the need to participate,
he feels his business is being
made to suffer as a result of the
president’s policies.
“It’s hurting the wrong peo-
ple,” he said. “A gigantic part of
this state didn’t vote this person
in, and we’re paying for his ter-
rible decisions.”
“I feel like our community is
going to be racially profiled and
harassed,” she said of Trump’s
immigration policies. “It’s very
upsetting. People like to take out
their anger on the immigrants,
but employers are making prof-
its off of them. “
Numbers of students
There were no immedi-
ate estimates of how many stu-
dents stayed home in many cit-
ies. Many student absences may
not be excused, and some peo-
ple who skipped work will lose
a day’s pay or perhaps even
their jobs. But organizers and
participants argued the cause
was worth it.
A school board official said
that more than 1,100 students
went on strike at Dallas Inde-
pendent School District schools.
Marcela Ardaya-Vargas, who
is from Bolivia and now lives in
Falls Church, Virginia, pulled
her son out of school to take him
to a march in Washington.
“When he asked why he
wasn’t going to school, I told
him because today he was going
to learn about immigration,” she
said, adding: “Our job as citi-
zens is to unite with our broth-
ers and sisters.”
Carmen Solis, a Mexi-
co-born U.S. citizen, took the
day off from work as a project
manager and brought her two
children to a rally in Chicago.
Italian Market
On Ninth Street in South
Philadelphia’s Italian Market, it
was so quiet in the morning that
Rani Vasudeva thought it might
be Monday, when many of the
businesses on the normally bus-
tling stretch are closed.
Produce stands and other
stalls along “Calle Nueve” —
as 9th Street is more commonly
known for its abundance of
Mexican-owned businesses —
stood empty, leaving customers
to look elsewhere for fresh meat,
bread, fruits and vegetables.
In New Orleans’ Mid-City
neighborhood, whose Latino
population swelled after the
damage wrought by Hurricane
Katrina in 2005 created lots of
jobs for construction workers,
the Ideal Market was closed.
The place is usually busy at
midday with people lining up at
the steam tables for hot lunches
or picking from an array of fresh
Central American vegetables
and fruits.
Edward Stratton and Laura
Sellers contributed to this report.
All walks of life
Organizers appealed to
immigrants from all walks of
life to take part, but the effects
were felt most strongly in the
restaurant industry, which has
long been a first step up the eco-
nomic ladder for newcomers to
America with its many jobs for
cooks, dishwashers and servers.
Restaurant owners with immi-
grant roots of their own were
among those acting in solidarity
with workers.
Expensive restaurants and
fast-food joints alike closed,
some perhaps because they
had no choice, others because
of what they said was sympa-
thy for their immigrant employ-
ees. Sushi bars, Brazilian
steakhouses, Mexican eater-
ies and Thai and Italian restau-
rants all turned away lunchtime
customers.
“The
really
import-
ant dynamic to note is this
is not antagonistic, employ-
ee-against-employer,”
said
Janet Murguia, president of the
Hispanic rights group National
Council of La Raza. “This is
employers and workers stand-
ing together, not in conflict.”
She added: “Businesses can-
not function without immigrant
workers today.”
Presidential response
At a White House news
conference held as the lunch-
hour protests unfolded, Trump
boasted of his border secu-
rity measures and immigration
arrests of hundreds of people in
the past week, saying, “We are
saving lives every single day.”
Since the end of 2007, the
number of foreign-born work-
ers employed in the U.S. has
climbed by nearly 3.1 million
to 25.9 million; they account
for 56 percent of the increase
in U.S. employment over that
period, according to the Labor
Department.
Roughly 12 million peo-
ple are employed in the restau-
rant industry, and immigrants
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