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About Portland observer. (Portland, Or.) 1970-current | View Entire Issue (Feb. 12, 1976)
Third World Wrap-up We see the world through Black eyes Restore a community Six years ogo the state was reapportioned, rearranging the legislative districts. For some reoson, known only to Secretary of State Clay Myer, who was in chorge of the project. Albina became the center of the state, with all legislative districts in the state fanning oof from a point at Union and Fremont. Perhaps the people of Albina should have been happy -- it is not often that we are ot the center of things; we are usually on the outside looking in. But we found that in this case, being ot the center divided us into four parts. W e now hod four state Senators and four State Representatives - more than ony other neighborhood of course, but without a substantial voice in the selection of any of these. No other neighborhood in the stote was divided. In fact, no other city was divided. Other areas had the political clout to protect themselves but Albina was a political vocumr). We don't think this could have happened in 1976. The days when one could ignore the Block community or control a few "leoders" for permission are over. The people have learned to make their voices heard. We believe this division was purposeful, that it was designed to "divide and conquer" to leave us out of the political process. W e see our neighbor in St. Johns call in their Representative and Senator when they have a problem. But who shall we call? Now we call for a new reopportunist that will restore a community. Reapportionment can be accomplished by the legislator, and an odequate plan has been offered several times by Repre sentative Wally Priestley (one of over four representatives). Never fear, fhis district would still be less than fifty percent Black, but it would represent a viable community, one that has political and social identification. W e propose that the new district, approximating the Model Cities boundaries, has the experience and the structure to become a Model of democracy. Renew the fi< This week is "Block History W eek" in the nation's Bicentennial year. It is a time for assessment of the history of Block people in the United States - the history of a struggle to be free. It is a time to renew that struggle, for the struggle of Block Americans will bring freedom for all Americans. In the years of American History we have seen Block people at the vanguard of the struggles to bring liberation to all people. The fight ogainst slavery, for voting rights, for women's equality, for the union movement, for full employment, and for the programs that would guarantee health care, odequate housing, full education, to all people — all of these struggles have found Block's at the forefront. Since its founding. Blacks have served as the conscience of the nation; yet Blacks are the last to benefit. W e were counted as h of a man in the United States Constitution and still today we are treated as % of a man. Where are the benefits to Blacks in those movements for which we fought and died? The unions hove shut us out; employment is for others; election fraud still steals our vote. But the struggle must go on with renewed strength. But the struggle must not be a selfish one - it must be a struggle for liberation for all people. As we celebrate Block History Week we must remind ourselves that the strides that have been mode by this generation were made possible by the sacrifice of our forefathers It is easy to belittle those who lived m earlier times because they suffered hostility and ridicule to make a better life for their children. We are also in a Bicentennial year — a year where the nation celebrates its 200th birthday. Many Blacks are opposed to any participation in the Bicentennial since Block people and other minorities do not yet have the rights and freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution. However, we have a right ond a responsibility to participate in the Bicentennial observance...it is the ideal vehicle by which to make all Americans aware that Blacks have been an integral part of the building of the nation since the beginning and that we are not yet free. The United States owes its Black citizens a debt and we must not be silent when w e have the opportunity to speak. LETTERS TO THE EDITOR le t t e r to the Editor: One of the problems when a paper like the Oregon Journal exposes weaknesses in government funded programs like those operated by the Portland Develop ment Commission, is that the articles do a good job exposing weaknesses, but fail to come up with a solution to correct them. Dear Editor: Inclosed you will find a letter that I sent to the Oregon Journal on February 2nd. 1976 at the time the Journal was headlining problems that have developed in the PDCs Grant and Critical Mainte nance Programs. Reading the articles one can’t help but get the feeling that the Oregon Journal is more interested in getting rid of the Program and the PDC than trying to improve the delivery of much needed emergency housing repairs. Our members aren't so short that we have forgotten last years attack by the Oregon Journal on the PMSC and its leader Cleveland Gilcrease. To date the Oregon Journal has not seen fit to print my letter in their b etter to the Editor section. I would appreciate it if you can find room to print it in your paper. by Roy Harvey The thrust of the articles in your recent editions, for example, is to kill the program of Home Rehabilitation and to even destroy the PDC. Why don’t you use the exposure to strengthen home rehabilitation delivery that is so neces sary to all of us in Portland9 W hether we like it or not, the Portland Development Commission is the agency, by law, that must carry out programs in our city dealing with government sup ported housing rehabilitation and repair. I t is the agency legally responsible in these matters every bit as much as the Portland School Board has the legal responsibility for the education of our children. I have, as a member of the Sabin Community Association and the Sabin representative to the Model Cities Planning Board, sat through many meetings where problems of education in our schools were discussed, but have yet to hear anyone discuss these problems from the point of view of getting rid of the Portland School Board. I have heard this lots of time about PDC all over town. A t the insistence of neighbors in terested in improving the quality of Portland education, changes have been made in the way the frequently reluctant School Board does things. The Com munity School concept is just one example of this. Changes should be made in the way the PDC carries out its programs when they are shown to have Southern Africa Upheaval January 28th Zambian President Ken neth Kaunda proclaimed his country was in a state of emergency, due to the PR A ’s victories in Angola. The actual reason for Kaunda's efforts towards outright dicta torship is the collapse in the world copper market, and the cut off of IM F credits. Kaunda is expected to impose draconian austerity* in order to get IM F World Bank loans. It has been the shut down of industry in the industrial countries that Forces for the Liberation of the Congo. Zambia and Zaire, while the C IA and its agents push the notion that the cut off of the Benguela railroad is responsible (copper earns up to 90 percent of Zambia's foreign exchange). Kaunda's efforts to create a w ar atmosphere are backfiring, as students and laid off copper workers are pro PRA The londoo Dully Telegraph I January 30 th I suggests the weaknesses. Especially the Grant Programs or those like the Critical Maintenance Loans. There is no reason why we cannot approach this problem, which is reallv two fold lone of combining benefits to low income recipients and the training of skills) in the same manner that we approach the training of doctors in our County Hospital. Future doctors, few of whom come from low income families, receive their training by practicing on the poor The key to the success of this program, is that the trainees are under constant supervision of some of the finest doctors in Portland. I propose, as I have in the past when this question came up, that any PDC program involving grants, be used as a training program set up under the superv ision of skilled mechanics from the various building trades. Retirees could be involved in this. These men should be placed on the payroll ol the PDC or some funded agency with the responsibility of seeing that the recipients of the Critical Maintenance Ixians and other funds in the form of grants get work performed on their homes in the manner of "Best Trades Practices." These men would have under their supervision paid train ees who would learn the various trades by working with these skilled men as they do the work on the recipients’ 1st Place Community Service O N P A 1973 Published every Thursday by Exie Publishing Company, 2201 North Killingsworth, Portland. Oregon 97217. Mailing address: P .0 . Box 3137. Portland. Oregon 97208. Telephone: 283 2486. 1st Place Best Ad Results O N P A 1973 Subscriptions: $5.25 per year in the T ri County area. $6.00 per year outside Portland. 5th Place Best Editorial N N P A 1973 homes. This will eliminate the problem we have today where a homeowner, with in many rases a bottomless pit'ot home re- pair problems feeling cheated by a con tractor who can’t do much for $1,500 to a home in the first place There is another aspect to this whole urban renewal program that the Oregon Journal should consider. In the past, as it will be this time, whenever the economy has be« n in a slump, one of the major methods of getting the economy mov ¡ng again is through home building and remodeling This work which involves every kind of commodity from concrete lumber paint, etc. to refrigerators rugs drapes, etc puts lots of people to work. For grant programs, dealing as they do with many hundreds of thousands of dollars, consider that every foot of lum ber and bucket of paint is brought from some Portland store where the mark up of profit is in no way discounted because the merchandise is used to fix a low income families home. We should improve this program and continue to qualify as many neighbor hoods of the city as ,«ossible Then when the government finally begins to rut loose with funds for this work. Portland will be ready to use it. One final word: I f a Journal reporter will call on me at my shop office at 4306 N. Williams. I will be glad to take the time to show him or her some work on homes in the $60,000 bracket that will make your heart ache I only hesitate to include addresses in this letter so as not to embarass individual homeowners who I can assure you are just as angry at their contractors as the homeowners men 'ioned in your articles. fours truly. Herb Simpson Wrong I Second Class Postage Paid at Portland. Oregon The Portland Observer's official position is expressed only in its Publisher’s column (W e See The World Through Black Eyes). Any other material throughout the paper is the opinion of the individual w riter or submitter and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the Portland Observer. MEMOIR Oregon Newspaper I Publishers Association MEMBER N e W p A L per Aeeoeiebon - Found'd f«M leads the pro development forces in the government, refusing to offer up their populations for the genocidal labor intensive public works projects in return for World Bank credits (virtually non existant). The president of Mexico was initially one of the leaders in th <figh t for the new world economic order, though Echeverria hesitated to organize and arm the peasantry in their land reform program, leaving the field open to the large land owners and their vigilantees to terrorize and break the peasantry. The right wing, headed up by Finance Minister Mario Reteta (representing the IM F ) and Interior Minister Moya Palen ria, have met extensively with IM F representatives in the past two weeks, and have pledged Mexico's population (sixty million) to “work and austerity" through labor intensive road building, full peasant debt repayment, and an expansion of the disastrous Yucatan labor intensive agricultural hydro elec trie project. Armando Labra, columnist for the Mexican Daily Excrlcior writes (January 30th): ‘‘colonialist pressures of North American agencies and the IM F are attempting to take advantage of the crisis of transition of executive power in Mexico to deepen and extend economic and social dependence...the permanent penetration of the IM F comes paired with the retraction of productive expenditures and the retraction of the generation of socially and economically profitable em ploy ment." Triagist Igenocidist) William Paddock predicted some years ago in his book Famine 1975 that Mexico was destined to loom- some forty to fifty percent of its population through starvation (along with many other Third World countries called the 'Fourth World'). It was the pro development policies of Echeverria that stopped this genocide. With Echeverria now isolated from a working class and peasant base, with the Soviet Union still sitting on their thumbs ('contained') with regard to the extension of credits (allowing for a moratoria on dollar debt) and trade agreements (an embracing of the new world economic order). Mexico now again lurches toward genocidal austerity and the police state necessary to implement it. BLACK JOURNAL - Sff* Portland Observer A L F R E D L. H E N D E R S O N M itor/P u W isher likelihood of a coup attempt against Kaunda. Food prices (basic foodstuffs: meal. milk. rice, etc.) jumped 100 percent in Zambia, as well as fertilizer and other petroleum products. In Zaire General Mobutu fears political upheaval due to the collapsing prices of copper (Bema mine workers are being laved off as one copper plant after another shuts down) and the returning Zairean troops from defeat in Angola Much of eastern Zaire, according to IPS. is already in the hands of the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of the Congo, headed by Antoine Gizenga (Gizenga was second under Patrie Lumumba, the Prime Minister of the Congo who was assassinated by the C IA in 1961 J. In South Africa support among Blacks for the People's Republic of Angola and against the South African regime is so strong that it is openly expressed in that police state. 'Hemocida! Maniacs' The use of mercenaries in Angola has dominated coverage of the war this week, with one of the C IA funded British recruiter mercenary revealing his CIA connection and calling his leading mer cenary ’a good soldier and a homoridal maniac'. Last week General Mobutu made noises to the effect that he would not conduit mercenaries into Angola through Zaire. This public move was in response to Senator Clark (head of the Subcommittee on Africa) determination that foreign assistance to Zaire is predicated on Zaire's cutting off the C IA funded F N L A . Mobutu to brother in law Holden Roberto: 'It's over Holden - you can either go to South Africa, or you can join Moynihan at Harvard, and teach African history The State Department continues to hold out for some sort of coalition in Angola, but the PRA last week said this was fantasy' while lavestia February 1st called the I'N IT A and the F N L A 'traitors to Angola*. The PRA army has taken the F N L A -U N IT A headquarters Novo Lis boa I Huambo), now holding better than half of Angola Mexico suffers set-back The fight in Mexico is one of implementing the new world economics order versus the right wing latifundist and the banking groups tied to the IM F World Rank President Echeverria New W erU lae t h t i a a F .f .b b .h id The Group of 77 Non aligned nations in their Manila meeting last week complet ed initial steps for instituting the new world economic order, forming a tri continental headquarters in Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City). Mexico City, and Conakry. Guinea. A t the Manila meeting Peru seconded Algeria's President Bou medienne call for (1) the reduction of ndebledness for the Third World coun tries (21 an integrated global program for international trade dong term multi lateral trade contracts, raw materials production) (31 transfer of technology from advanced sector for Third World development. The leadership of this group is currently meeting in Paris (February llt h l. in a reopening of the North South Conference. The Group of 77 will meet in Nairobi in May, and in the United Nations in the Conference on Trade and Develop ment (U N C T A D ) before that. In spite of the fact that the implemen tat ion of debt moratoria was not begun following the Manila meeting, the inter national machinery has clearly been set up. It is significant that the Africa headquarters are in Conakry - rather than Algeria this is a move toward involving Black Africa. Sekou Toure. president of Guinea. sUted a month ago that bis country would pull out of the O AU if that organization did not overwhelmingly recognize that direction of Angola (PRA). This is a move in that direction. Though February 10th the O AU itself recognized the People's Republic of Angola. Honorable Mention Herrick Editorial Award N N A 1973 2nd Place Best Editorial 3rd Place Community l^adi O N PA 1975 To the Editor: There probably should be some excep tion to a statement in the Portland Observer Community Calendar of Feb ruary 5th. 1976 As a private citizen. I feel that the public should know that the above men tioned calendar fails to ronsider that at least one area ol Portland Public Schools has formalized plans There might be others Enclosed is an Area I I I brochure regarding February 1976. Sincerely, Mrs. Osly J. Gates • Are the government and media conspiring to prevent the REV. JESSE JA CK SO N from attaining a national following? Hear the Rev Jackson speak out on this and why we need more Black FBI agents • Was Malcolm X truly ahead of his time? Learn why his philosophy has gained new acceptance in the New Nation of Islam M IN . ABDUL FARRAKMAN discusses Wallace D Muhammad's sweeping structural changes affecting all Black Muslims • Jo_in tost T O N Y BROWN and CHARLYNE H U N T E R of the N Y Times for this special edition of BLACK JOURNAL Monday, February 16th 10:30 pm KOAP-TV, Channel 10 PBS AfiKlAL Made possible through a grant from Pepsi-Cola Company. SUBSCRIBE NOW $7.50 Other Areas . $8.00 Tri-Cornty area Name Address ............................................... City ............................... State ............. PORTLAND OBSERVER 2201 N. Killingsworth Street Box 3137 * Portland, Oregon 97206 (503)283-2436
