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About Portland observer. (Portland, Or.) 1970-current | View Entire Issue (Feb. 2, 1978)
Henry Friaoo. on the scaffold at the Albina Mural Project headquarter*, ¡taint* a ■cene depicting the dog'* attack on civil rig ht* marcher* in Birmingham. D arryl Clegg watches Isaac Shamsud^Un and Cbonitia Henderson ¡minting mural that w ill be placed on the outside walls of the Albina Human Resource Center. Albina Mural Project unveils first panel PORTLAND On February 10th, Mrs. Marie Smith - a longtime community activist and maker of Black history - will unveil the first mural produced by the Albina Mural Project. OBSERVER Volume 8 No. 6 Thursday, February 2, 1978 10c ;»er copy Council candidate hits park levy The Jefferson High School Freshman Rally Squad - Lina Franklin, Jill Lundström. Tracey Palmer. V anesaa Syke* | standing |, Loretta Har.ieie and Tafley Shreiner - will Join the “Mother's March” Saturday, collecting money lor the March of Dimes. The students will assist M rs M arilyn Sykes, Chairman lor the Northeast Area. The annual AAve raise* money lor research and treatm ent of children w ith birth defect*. Arnold Biskar, candidate for Position 2 on the City Council, now held by Commis sioner Mildred Schwab announced Tues day that he will oppose the city park levy that is to appear on the Primary Election ballot in May. Biskar said he based his decision on a management report made on the Port land Parks Bureau by the Bureau of Management and Budget. According to Biskar the study was done at the request of the new director of parks and was submitted to Ms. Schwab in November. He demanded that she release the study immediately and that the City Council reconsider its approval of the levy. Biskar said his campaign staff has "discovered that the management of existing park programs and monies is so poorly performed that we cannot in good conscience stand by and allow the Council to ask the people of Portland for another 19.7 million dollars from the people to be used in a similar fashion. An examination of the management report on the bureau will reveal that the bureau has insufficiently defined organi zational goals and objectives; that plan ning and development functions are not thoroughly identified and understood; that budget development responsibilities and authorities are unevenly divided, understood and executed; and that the bureau is not properly organized to achieve its mission." Biskar stated that in his opinion Ms. Schwab should complete the reorganiza tion of the Bureau which she was directed (Please turn to page 4 col. 3, Legal Aid opens office for elderly poor Legal Aid Service opened a new program Monday, designed to aid low income elderly people with legal prob lems. The project will concentrate on prob lems associated with nursing homes, government benefits, consumer com plaints (hearing aids and dentures), health insurance and funeral plans. Elder ly people with other problems will be assisted by an afternoon hotline service. A survey by the American Bar Founda tion showed that 23 percent of all elderly poor people need a lawyer. Applied to Multnomah County census data, that figure means that about 4,870 older people with low incomes here need legal help. In 1975, Multnomah County I^egai Aid records show that 835 clients 65 years of age or older were served. This under utilization of the program is attri buted to funding limitations on the types -- ------------ — —- — — — a vuvnil In e mural consists of ten scenes from Black History. ” of services being provided, the difficulty benefit programs. of travel for many older people and a lack Attorneys Mentzer and Richard Wy of knowledge about available help. The man will be assisted by Jim Clark, a new Senior Law Project, which will serve paralegal who has worked with social people sixty years of age or older, is service agencies in Alaska and Hawaii, intended to address all of these difficul and Susan Tuno, office manager. ties. The Senior Law project is located at A “hotline" will be in operation each the Northeast Portland office of Legal afternoon to answer questions and make Aid, 517 N.E. Killingsworth Street. The referrals. People with problems other Senior Citizen Hotline number is 284 than the five mentioned above will be 9413. directed to other Legal Aid units and to Appointments can be arranged in the attorneys involved in a volunteer effort downtown Legal Aid office, 310 S.W. 4th to help seniors with estate problems and Avenue, for seniors who find it difficult to wills. The decision to concentrate on just appear at the Northeast Portland office. five problem areas was based on an The program will be conducted by the assessment of how much casework two Multnomah County U g a l Aid Service lawyers could competently handle. and is funded by the CETA and Legal The program will be supervised by Aid. CETA funding will end October 30, Bonnie Mentzer, a Legal Aid attorney 1978, so the project will have to obtain with extensive experience with legal the support of the Portland Aging Ser problems having to do with government vices Division in order to continue. For the past eight months -- a group ot artists have been designing and painting a huge mural that will cover two sides of the Albina Human Resource Center. The mural depicts ten scenes from Black history, four demonstrating the Black experience in Oregon and the others showing Black contributions to the world and the nation. The Albina Mural Project, which is sponsored by the Center for Community Mental Health employs seven artists through a CETA grant. Although panels were designed by individual artists, and therefore show varied style, the artists are all involved in painting each scene. The first section to be completed depicts scenes from the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The mural is being painted off-site and will be attached to the building as panels are completed. This insures that if the Albina Human Resource Center, a state agency, leaves the building at Vancouver and Alberta, the mural can be moved. All of the artist/designers are profes sionals. Isaac Shamsud-din, a well-known Portland painter, is director of the project. Henry Frison, trained in com mercial art, is in great demand as a portrait painter. Larry Scott, a sculptor and painter has produced super-graphics on buildings in the community. Chonitia Henderson, a graduate of the University of Colorado, is a costume and clothing designer, interior decorator and painter. Jenny Harada, a native ol Japan, is a graduate of the University of Oregon in Fine Arts. She is a painter and print maker. Charles Tatum is a Portland sculptor He is producing a low relief wood sculp ture that will go over the Vancouver Avenue entrance of the AHRC building. Documentarian for the project is Darryl Clegg, who has documented the progress of the project in film. Clegg has been involved in television set design, graphic arts, directing and producing and in film making. He also is a painter. The unveiling ceremony will be held on February 10th at 1:00 p.m. Mayor Neil Goldschmidt, City Commissioner Charles Jordan, AHRC Manager Ben Talley, and other public officials have been invited to participate. Residents protest empty houses t 11 a a MB ~. J _ J _ a a l* . Over SV** one ft* hundred residents of e Albina met to confront owners of abandoned and dilapidated houses in their neighbor hoods. Also invited to the meeting was Doug Miller of the City Bureau of Neighborhood Environment. The meeting was sponsored by Albina Fair Share, a new community action agency that is affiliated with Oregon Fair Share. Among the empty houses discussed were: 3813 N.E. 9th Avenue. This empty house is owned by Adolphus Clay, 2136 N.E. 9th Avenue, who appeared at the meeting and said he had been out of work for three years and had not been able to repair the property so it could be rented. The group referred Mr. Clay to Marion Scott of the Portland Development Com mission to explore financing. 536 N.E. Knott Street. This house burned on Labor Day and has not been repaired. Although the law states that burned houses are to be boarded up in ten days, it has not been boarded. The City has just posted the property for condem nation and has been informed that it will be torn down. The house is owned by Hal Investment Company, 2600 N.E. Union (Lampus). 4305 N. Kerby is owned by Armand Scarci of 11441 S.W. Collins. This property is partially boarded. Scarci also owned two houses at Skidmore and Commercial that were moved onto the property approximately a year ago and have not been repaired or occupied. According to one neighbor, a good house was torn down and then two dilapidated houses moved there -- “There are piles of dirt and rats." “We could not get a response from PDC.” 4022 and 4028 N.E. Rodney are owned by the Multnomah County Urban Invest ment Corporation of 5133 N.E. Rodney. Mr. Bush, who appeared at the meeting for the company, said they would decide within ten days what to do with the property. In the meantime, one house had been boarded and the other partially boarded. This house was described as being open and empty, with debris in the back yard and an old car in the garage. The Portland code says, “4.6.070 Un protected Structures: It is unlawful for the owner or person having control of any real property to permit any building or structure in which doors, windows or apertures are open or broken, to remain in that condition for more than ten days without boarding over or otherwise close openings, so as to prevent access by unauthorized persons. A building or structure that has an opening to it unclosed for more than ten days is a public nuisance, subject to abatement as provided in this chapter.” The code goes on to say that if the requirement is not met, the City shall have the building removed. Miller explained that it takes 150 days to condemn a building but that “when property is condemned, it .is torn .down? Citizens took issue to this statement, saying some buildings had been con demned two or three times and were still standing. He also added that if the property is boarded, it cannot be con demned. Miller told the gathering that the Bureau of Neighborhood Environment is not enforcing the code requiring boarding up abandoned buildings. There are an estimated 161 abandoned houses in Al bina. Miller also said there are more house fires in Albina than in any other district and often owners have to wait several years to collect their insurance money. If arson is suspected the insurance com panies do not have to pay until the statute of limitations for catching the arsonist has passed. When this situation exists, the city is lenient in enforcing condemnation. Blaming the deterioration of the neigh borhood as lack of code enforcement by the City, many members of the audience determined to pursue the problem with the City. “We are not going to stand by and let City Hall degrade our property.” United Airlines promotes Wasson Edwina Wasson, a native of Portland, has been appointed assistant to the regional vice president of United Airlines in Washington, D.C. Miss Wasson is the daughter of Mrs. Isaac Wasson of Portland. She attended Vernon Elementary School and Jefferson High School. At Jefferson High she was a member of the acapella choir and tra veiled with the choir to Japan. A member of Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church she was a member of the Usher Board and the choir. Miss Wasson graduated from Portland State University with a degree in Socio logy. She and her younger sister, Jennifer, were the first Blacks on the PSU rally squad. Miss Wasson was one of the founders of the Martin Luther King Scholarship Fund of Oregon. She has been with United Airlines for nearly six years, joining as a flight attendent in Chicago in 1972. Later she was a supervisor of in flight services at Chicago, then was personnel representa tive for the western region at San Francisco. Miss Wasson reports d ir e d v to the vice president of the Mid Atlantic Region and is responsible for coordination of marketing, scheduling, food service and operations in the area that includes Philadelphia, Allentown, Baltimore, Rich mond, Norfolk and Newport News. W A SSO N Is America heading into a new cycle of racism? by Joel Dreyfus* |P N S| - Now that the victories of the civil rights movements have become history, there is a growing fear among Blacks that racism is again taking hold in America. The revival is seen by many as more subtle and elusive than in the past, and thus harder to fight, because a majority of white Americans, supported by an influential body of intellectuals, denies it is real. The controversy over the Bakke case and affirmative action is partly respon sible for reopening the debate on race relations that had been dormant since the 1960s. It has also exposed, quite clearly, the new sophistication of racial attitudes that have continued unabated since the 1950s. “Racism is alive and well," says Dr. Price Cobbs, a Black psychiatrist and co-author of the best seller Black Rage. "You run into good, well-motivated people who think they are fair, who feel they have turned around from attitudes and beliefs they grew up with. But they continue to view Blacks in a deficit model: less than,' not as good as.’ 'if we could only do such and such to bring them up to speed.’ ” The notion that racism is no longer a significant force in America is implicit in the work of Nathan Glazer, one of the leading intellectual champions of neo-con servatism. In his book Affirmative Discrimination, Glazer announces that racism has been defeated and calls on the courts to withdraw from the battle for equal opportunity so "the forces of political democracy in a pluralistic society can do their proper work.” The concept is attractive if you believe that race is now a benign factor. But many Blacks see signs of just the opposite signs in unemployment and income statis tics, in surveys of white racial attitudes, or in the portrayal of Blacks in the popular media. A Louis Harris survey last summer reported that "a majority of Blacks feel discriminated against while a majority of whites feel Blacks are not." “Much of what passes for benign race relations," says Dr. Cobb, “is some kind of social comfort on the part of whites who are dealing with Blacks. There many whites who can be comfort with Blacks socially but who don’t I any idea of the depth and degree of t remaining negative assumptions al people who are different." The white complacency goes bad the period following the death of Martin Luther King, when the Nixoi ethic of law and order submerged race debate. Edward C. Banfield, a Ni urban affairs advisor, provided an ii lectual rationale for dismissing the i issue in his 1970 book The Unheavi City. "The lower class individual lives in the slum and sees little or no reason to complain," wrote Banfield. “Features that make the slum repellent to others actually please him.” Banfield s attitude has become wide spread today, according to Stanford University sociologist Seymour Martin U pset, another neo conservative. Most whites, says U pset, "accept the reality of at least some racial discrimina tion but see Black problems as stemming (Please turn to Page 6 Column 3)
