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About Portland observer. (Portland, Or.) 1970-current | View Entire Issue (Oct. 5, 1983)
Page 4 Portland Observer, October 5, 1963 r EDITORIAL/OPINION ■ " AND W A G IN G BIOLOGICAL WARFARE IN SOUTHEAST ASIA THE W i USING CM6U1C/L WFXpDNS IN AFGHANISTAN-. Who supports the sales tax? “ The major clamor has occurred in this build ing [the State Capitol], on the editorial pages, and in the board rooms o f the state,” Represen tative Larry H ill said o f the sales tax. As he noted, there has been no public outcry for a sales tax. As of today, it looks like a sales tax will ap pear on the ballot— in a special election to be held in March. The so-called liberal Democrats, including Tom Throop, Grattan Kerans, Bar bara Roberts, Vera Katz, etc., have pushed it through the House once again and they, along with Senate Democrats and Governor Atiyeh, finally bulldozed it through the Senate over Sen ate President Ed Fadeley’s opposition. The proposed 4 percent sales tax would raise approximately $685.6 million in the remaining 13 months o f the 1983-1985 biennium, becoming effective on June 1, 1984. It would reduce tax on all types o f property— residential, commercial, industrial, etc.— by about 39 percent. While the homeowner now assessed $1,000 in property tax will save about $390, the major corporations with taxes assessed at $1 million will save $390,000. The ordinary homeowner who spends nearly all o f his money in Oregon will pay 4 percent on his expenditures, excluding food, drugs and medical care. When he spends $10,000 on cloth ing, furniture, a car, school supplies, tuition, shoes, restaurant meals, gifts, newspapers and magazines, theater or game tickets, and any other expenditures, his taxes will have equaled the amount he saved from his property tax. The large corporations are another matter: their largest expenditure, depending on the na ture o f the business, is on wages (no sales tax) and on materials and supplies, often purchased out o f state. It is not difficult to see why the clamor for a sales tax came from the board rooms o f the giant corporations and the editorial pages o f the newspaper chains. A survey o f campaign contri butions should reveal why it also came from the Capitol Building, The Legislative leaders are anxious to put a limit on state spending. Perhaps they could ob tain a voluntary pledge by the supporters o f the sales tax on the amount o f money that will be used to try to cram it down the voters’ throats. The tipping-point? When Robert Blanchard was in town we used to hear a lot about the “ tipping point.” It was his theory that when a school became 35 percent Black— or in some cases 25 percent— the white students would leave and the school would be come all-Black, or worse, empty. As calmer heads prevailed, that theory and its accompanying discriminatory regulations were removed from school district policy and no one is too worried about the all-Black schools that never happened. The “ tipping point” theory is again being promulgated in the community, this time to fight low-income housing. The Eliot Neighbor hood Improvement Association is using the City policy against concentration of subsidized hous ing to fight the development of housing for the handicapped between Union and Seventh Avenue. The neighborhood now has 20 percent subsidized housing and they fear that 25 percent (or 35 percent?) could be the tipping-point which brings white flight. This brings out several unanswered questions this community has dealt with for many years: a) As older Black people die or go to nursing homes, their homes are sold. In the current economy home-buying is pretty well restricted to the middle- and upper-income people. This fact, combined with high unemployment o f Blacks, has brought an influx o f young, white middle class families into the Eliot neighborhood— re placing the elderly Black residents who have lived there for years. b) Federal and local policies calling for scat tering o f low-income subsidized housing were established to help the low-income person inte grate into the community, not to protect com munities against low-income people. Is concen tration of low-income people— which in this community generally means concentration of low-income Black people— in an area detriment al to the community? c) Should low-income housing for families and especially for the elderly be provided in the community where they have lived, where they have social and family ties? Or should they be sent to other parts of town solely to avoid con centration of poor black people in an area? Exclusivity has not been a characteristic of Black people. They have welcomed all and espe cially the poor and the oppressed. We do not believe the addition of handk capped residents of 30 units will be detrimental to the community and it might even have some benefits. We do not see opposition from the Black residents of the area. We believe the City hearings officer’s compromise— zoning the area R-2 and restricting it to either the planned pro jects or low density housing— is proper and should be acceptable to all. The decision to oppose the project was made almost exclusively by white residents. The Eliot Neighborhood Improvement Association must find a way to bring the old-time residents o f the Neighborhood— and especially the Black resi dents— into the planning and decision-making for their community. Letters to the Editor_____ ____ Stop private utility charge to ratepayers To the editor: In 1978 Oregon voters passed Bal lot Measure 9 overwhelmingly with the intent o f prohibiting POE and PPA L from ever charging ratepay ers for the costs o f uncompleted and abandoned projects. I was the chief sponsor and campaign director for Ballot Measure 9. PO E and P PA L have never ac cepted the voters’ decision. First, through secret meetings with Ore gon legislators and then working hand-in-hand with the Public Utility Commissioner they have tried to channel the costs o f the defunct Pebble Springs project to their rate payers throuah a device known as a “ debt-equity sw ap," which is cur rently being challenged in court by Forelaws on Board and the C oali tion for Safe Power. PO E has also run into trouble with the Bonneville Power Administration by improper ly including the Pebble Springs debt f ilB y 8 ■ ■ « w Association ™ in the high-cost power tney nave ex changed with Bonneville for low cost power. Unfortunately for PO E and P P A L investors, more bad debt looms in the termination o f the Ska git project which was to be built on the Hanford Reservation in Wash ington. PO E has invested $126 mil lion and P P A L $89 million in that one project, which has not proceed ed because o f regional energy sur pluses. Unwilling to let their investors take a loss (they took the risk), POE and P P A L have asked Public U tility Commissioner John Lobdell for a declaratory ruling that would permit them to charge their ratepayers for their abandoned investments and in effect administratively overturn the mandate o f Oregon voters when they passed Ballot Measure 9. As chief sponsor o f Ballot M ea sure 9 I have intervened in opposi tion to the POE and P P A L request Dave M e Teague >0«“ ’" « i . , Th« P o rtla n d O b server IU S P S 959 6 8 0 1 i t p u b liib a d (v a r y Thursday by E iia Pubtuhing Company, Inc . 2201 North Killings worth. Portland Oregon 97217. Post Office Bos 3137 Portland. Oregon 97208 Second class postage paid at Portland Oregon 'M W The Portland Obvrrver was satabliahad in 1970' Subscriptions MEMBER N W A PER Asaocrafton - Founded IM S S16 00 par year m the Tri County area Post m aster Sand address chancaa to the P o rtla n d O bserver. P O Bos 3137. Portland. Oregon 97208 A lfre d L. Henderson. Editor/Publisher A l Williams. Advertising Manager — ———— ■—“ “ “—“ “ “ ———— , Prosecute the Kian by D r. M anning M arable The most dangerous yet seldom noticed aspect o f Reaganism is the overall political climate it estab lishes for racism and violence. Reagan’s brutal disregard for public housing and health care, his bellicose statements attacking human needs spending, and his open contempt for civil rights, clear ly set a national tone for racist vigil ante violence against Blacks, Jews and other national minorities. The evidence is clear enough. Since the late 1970s. according to the N ation al A nti-K ian Netw ork, nearly 500 cases o f Ku Klux Kian terror and murders have been documented. Five hundred more instances o f anti-Semitic and anti-Black violence have been recorded— not counting other forms o f brutality, such as po lice violence. O nly a few recent examples, col lected by the U .S. C ivil Rights C o m mission, the A nti-K ian Network and Atlanta activist Imani Clairbone, are sufficient to illustrate the prob lem. O n M ay I , 1981, Robert L . H en derson, a Black Pennsylvania resi dent, was abducted at gunpoint by three white males. After undressing him, he was taken to a junkyard where the racists tried to lynch him from a crane from his rectum. Fail ing at this, they then forced a metal pipe seven inches long and four inches wide into Henderson's rec tum. The Black man had to undergo surgery and was long under inten sive care after the incident. On March 10, 1982, a Jewish fe male student at the University of M aryland/C ollege Park was shot five times with a BB gun on campus. Her attacker yelled " H e il H itle r" and other anti-Semitic epithets while he shot her. An underground cam pus newspaper surfaced after the shooting, hailing the racist as a hero and suggesting that "next time he use a flam ethrow er" on the victim. O n M ay 4, 1982, five white C olo rado males were arrested for plot ting to execute two Federal judges and bomb the Denver Internal Ser vice officer. One o f those arrested was the local Kian president, and other would-be vigilantes had Kian connections. Obviously, the President has a t tempted to distance himself from these crude manifestations o f his own political philosophy. In a brief introduction to a U .S . C ivil Rights Commission's report, " In tim id a tion and Violence: Racial and Reli gious Bigotry,” Reagan denounced racist violence, but in a very limited and faulty manner. " A few isolated groups in the backwaters o f A m er ican life ," he stated, "still hold per verted notions o f what America is all a b o u t." The statement above is unsatisfactory in at least two re spects. First, racist violence is a normal and indeed integral aspect of any institutionally racist social order. Second, there is a direct cor relation between the emergence of Kian and racist brutality with unem ployment and rising ethnic hostility, a cultural and political environment which Reaganism deliberately pro vokes. How do we effectively combat ra cist violence? Most civil rights ex perts concur that no new legislation is needed to place the most danger ous racists behind bars. As the N a tional A n ti-K ian N etw o rk’s Coor- dinator, Lynn Wells, and National Chair Rev. C .T . Vivian note, laws adopted during the 1860s which tar geted the post-Civil W ar Kian are still on the books. These federal "A n ti-K ian Statutes" read in part: "Conspiracy Against Rights o f C iti zens: I f two or more persons con spire to injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any citizen in the free ex ercise or enjoyment o f any right or privilege secured to him by the Con stitution or laws o f the United States ___ I f two or more persons go in disguise on the highway, or on the premises o f another, with intent to prevent or hinder his free exercise or enjoyment o f any right,” they are subject to Federal prosecution. Reagan's Attorney General, W il liam French Smith, claims that vir tually all o f the recent cases o f racist violence fall outside of Federal ju r isdiction— in direct contradiction to Federal law. The U .S. Justice De partment has prosecuted barely two dozen cases— and the carnage and terror continues. Early this year, the National Anti- Klan Network launched an am bi tious educational and political cam paign to force the Reaganites to en force the A nti-K ian Statutes. The Network, Klanwatch, the SCLC, and other civil rights agencies in volved in anti-racist work merit our financial and political support. We must elevate the demand for Federal enforcement o f A nti-K ian laws into a major issue in next year’s election. But in our long-term task to isolate and ultimatley destroy Kian and all racist violence, we must have a cor rect understanding o f the organic links between economics, politics and white supremacy. Eliot housing decision (P U C C A S E U M -1 3 ) joined by Forelaws on Board, Coalition for Safe Power, and U .S. Representa live Jim Weaver. Oregonians who don’t want to pay for unfinished and abandoned utility projects should write Public U tility Comm is sioner John Lobdell. Labor A In dustries Bldg., Salem, Oregon 97310 to object and support Ballot M ea sure 9. Although I have intervened in this P U C proceeding, it is clearly illegal. The whole intent o f Ballot Measure 9 was to prevent exactly what POE and P P A L are asking. Oregonians should never have to pay for the utilities’ bad investments and power they will never receive. In our free enterprise system, the investors take the risks, the profits and the losses. Bailing out these Fortune 500 monopolies is lemon socialism o f (he worst kind. Portland Observer WE AAU£T STOP THE USE OF THESE NILE. (Continued fro m page I column 6/ Committee that a San Francisco de velopment they had praised as the type Eliot should seek is also a sub sidized project, "b u t for $18,000- $20,000 a year people, rather than the handicapped." He said the issue has nothing to do with the handi- epped, but with the cost o f land. "O n ly because they are asking for a zone change is the Neighborhood in volved." Otherwise, they can build anywhere they choose. Ted W ainright, a former resident and now a landlord, favors the pro ject. “ When Emanuel ripped out houses, the freeway took away neighborhoods, it destroyed the eco nomic base, ,'m in favor o f bringing payrolls, people.” He said one man involved with the Land Use C om New York The Observer welcomes Letters to the Editor. Letters should be short, and must contain the writer's name and address (addresses are not p rin t ed). The Observer reserves the right to edit f o r length. Thanks to you it works... Portland’s largest blai7-ôwwe^newsfx!fKr^ ■ ■ ■ ? PORTLAND OBSERVER News fo r and about you. 283 2486 N a tio n a l A d v e rtis in g R e p re s e n ta tiv e ¿ \m e lg e m e te d Publishers. Inc mittee decision had told him the people would be "transients,” here for a little while. " I thought maybe it wasn't a good idea, but then, if it was someone who belongs to me I would be happy for th em ." This statement was met with hos tility and the epilath "absentee lan d lo rd ." Even more anger was ex pressed when in the name o f "d e mocracy" he said the people living in the neighborgood should make the decision. "T his is a mostly Black neighborhood. Where are the Blacks? I would like to know what they w an t.” Following the vote to appeal to the C ity Council, Bob Russell said, " T h a t’s were democracy sets in .” Everyone can testify and those on the "s ig n -in " sheet will be notified. PLEASE PRINT Matt to Portland Observe« Boa 3137 Portland Oregon 97206 N a m e ___________________________ A d d r e s s _________________ _______ C ' t y ________________________S ta le Subscribe today! Yaa. I would Ilka a aubacriptl to tha Portland Observer. [ ] I have enclosed my check or money order for »15, for a one year subscription
