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About Portland observer. (Portland, Or.) 1970-current | View Entire Issue (Sept. 12, 1990)
V# ♦V ♦ w v ♦ ¿W« ••*♦ »♦•W w*^h»V»< W« •»> # PO RTLANÖ Volume XX, Number 35 r« * > <»1> W >"» » r W * <4 ♦ ?► «- « e ERVER 25<P September 12, 1990 "The Eyes and Ears o f The Community" B u 1 s ? i 5 w " e ! s £ Gregory Gudger Attorney At Law Internal Strength The mother of an adopted little girl explains the traumas and triumphs of raising a child. PAGE 2 Lillian Herzog Founder of the "Reading Tree" and advocate of adult literacy died on Sept. 7. PAGE 3 Donald Dixon The new basketball coach of Portland Community College divulges his insights and expectations of the forthcoming sea son. PAGE 4 Learning to Love Without Conditions Ullysses Tucker examines unconditional love and intimate relationships PAGES MINORITY AND FEMALE applicants in record numbers showed up at Portland State University on Friday to take the Portland Fire Bureau’s first firefighter examination in three years Among the 190 minority applicants were 72 African Americans-67 men and five women. Commissioner Dick Bogle, who oversees the Fire Bureau, said he “expects to see improved minority and female representation in the very near future." Alright, Parents-Community: Let's "Do the Right Thing" It has been a view which at times has been encouraging and at other orty years o f interaction with this times depressin g -as when I returned from a sojourn in California to find that com m unity-businesses and pro the key Black business area, schools, fession, teaching, com m unity organiza churches and adjoining real estate owned tions, designing and implementing pro- by African Americans had been wiped g ra m s-h a s given me an uncommon out by freeways and the Coliseum Com insight into its people, structure and plex. This “ Urban R enew al” process culture. Like others here, I have a per “ Urban “ Rem oval” ) had happened of sonal and often intimate acquaintance course all over the nation, but it is not with “ three generations’ ’ o f many fam i this Particular Traum a as such that 1 lies, translating into many hundreds of wish to exam ine here. Rather, as I stated families and individuals in this sector of last w eek, I wish to suggest and outline the Pacific Northwest. BY PROFESSOR MCKINLEY BURT F Elected Officials To Tour New Multnomah County Gang Programs Follow ing a May, 1990 Legislative E m e rg e n c y B oard d isc u ssio n o f M ultnomah C ounty’s needs, state legis lative leaders gave M ultnom ah County a green light to begin hiring staff and set ting up program s to stay abreast o f ex- pectedsum m er gang violence. Six weeks later at the July Em ergency Board m eet ing, $1.1 m illion was appropriated for gang programs. This appropriation trig gered an additional $800,000 from the G overnor’s office and C hildren’s Serv ices Division, making a total o f $1.9 m illion available for a com prehensive package o f services to reduce youth gang crim e in M ultnomah County. Forty new staff were hired in July, trained in A u gust, and new programs opened for busi ness on September 1. The $1.9 m illion is being used to fund: ♦ A 20 bed, 30-day detention p ro gram that will be used to house gang involved youth. Education, counseling, alcohol and drug treatm ent, and mental health assessments will be available on site. ♦The Gang Resources Intervention- Team. This team is a specialized proba tion unit operating with significantly reduced caseloads. The new funding allowed probation counselors caseloads to be reduced from 40 to 20. ♦ A wide range of services for gang youth on probation. These services in clude education, mental health, alcohol and drug and em ploym ent raining. ♦ 5 beds at the House o f Umoja. O ver the course o f the year, this package o f services is expected to im prove public safety, divert youth from involvem ent in gang activity, and reduce the num ber of delinquents committed to the McClarcn School for Boys. Approxi mately 300 youth a year will be served by this program. to PARENTS and community a number o f survival and remedial steps to staunch the flow o f vital forces from the very arteries o f our existence here. Many cultural and learning diabilities proceed directly from such dislocations o f the urban environment as described above. A people perform best when possessed o f a CULTURAL CONTINUITY that encompasses tradi tions and institutions transmitted from generation to generation. I can well re- CONTINUED ON PAGE 7 BY_ULLYSSES TUCKER, JR. regory G udger’s dream to be a lawyer started as a youngster grow ing up in W ashington, D.C. He always wanted to advocate for the underdog or people less fo. lunate. W hy the less fortu nate? Because G udger him self grew up adm ist crime, violence, poverty, and racism. W hen his friends chose the criminal lifestyle, Gudger opted for the books and worked hard for a better life. After graduating from McKinley Tech nical High School in 1969, G udger en rolled in college three- thousand miles away at the University of Oregon’s School o f Journalism. The riots of 1968 left him with some painful memories and he wanted to get away. He has been an Oregonian ever since. In the Pacific Northwest, Gudger found inner peace and space to grow as a professional. Since his graduation from the U of O (Spring, 1975), Gudger has spent the bulk o f his career working as a journalist and with the Metropolitan Human Rela tions Commission. At the Commission, he started as a Human Relations Special ist and Program Coordinator before en rolling at W illiam ette U niversity to complete his dream. He later cam e back to MHRC after graduation from Law School in 1968. Gudger has received countless awards for his community involvement, professional endeavors, and volunteer efforts. He was also voted by the Downtowner M agazine as one of the “ O regonians To Shape Portland In The 90’s ” . A divorced father o f three beautiful daughters (Imani Sertha, 14; Eboni Sagi- rah, 5: and Neysa Andrea, 4), G udger glows when he talks about achieving his lifelong dream and the challenges he faces daily as a lawyer. How does a person go from being a journalist to leading a human rights organization to being an attorney? G udger-” One does that by follow ing a common thread or by dedicating your life to a certain area. I view m yself as a communicator. I view m yself as an activist and advocate. I also view m yself as a person, who is dedicated to helping CONTINUED ON PAGE 12 Marion Barry: Can We Talk Now That the Smoke Has Cleared? BY ULLYSSES TUCKER, JR._______ "...Well, it is argued, Mayor Barry is a person o f celebrity, a role model. So are many rock singers, film actors, and athletes who in recent years have con fessed to drug use. Few i f any such persons have persued and prosecuted as has B arry..." Benjamin L. Hooks Executive Director NAACP W ashington Post, 1990 Now that the primary smoke has cleared from the recent drug trial of W ashington, D.C. Mayor, Marion Barry, I will attem pt to share my perspective as a nation’s capital political insider (in the ghetto) and journalist. As stated count less times to colleagues in the media industry, there was no way in the world that Marion Barry could be rode out of town and to a Federal Pen as many ex pected. In culturally polarized towns like Boston, Chicago, Birmingham, Cleveland, or possibly even St. Louis, Barry would not have stood a chance because the jury would not have been majority black. W ashington D.C. is full of black people, black churches, black businesses, black radio stations, black newspapers, and black people...it’s full of black pow er. W hen you get only two whites on a jury, in a city where Marion Barry has touched and helped so many families with services/jobs, there was no way the charges would/could stick. I won money on the outcom e, bcl ieve it or not. People did not believe that it would happen, the outcom e, like it did. I know D.C. general attitude on the streets and in the ghetto. Regardless of how much is wrong in your life, the white man or fed eral governm ent is perceivd to be the problem. Marion Barry got caught, in their minds (the great majority) because they set him u p -n o t because he was irre sponsible, used drugs for years, or lacks regard for the law. The white man did not make him take drugs. Barry took drugs on his own free will. Had he not been a drug abuser, he would have never found him self in a position to be “ stung' ’ in a STING OPERATION. W here does right and wrong come into play here? I know the speed limits established by the state of Oregon, its DUI laws, the penalties for carrying a concealed weapon without a permit, and what will happen if 1 decided to sell drugs and got caught. We all knoe right from wrong. So does Marion Barry, who knows he dodged a bullet in this case. I used to say that Marion Barry had to ei ther be the smartest man in the world D.C. had the dumbest law enforcement people in the world, because he never got caught. Now, I conclude that it’s the latter. Barry is a dumb human being and the law enforcement o f the city, who allowed him to walk in several other attem pts to “ bust” him, is just as shal low. Ever amazing, I talked to my grand mother shortly after the trial and she said that Barry was still her mayor. I asked why. “ Because he begged his pardon and admitted his m istake.” There arc a great many “ oldtim crs” , especially in the black church, who feel the same way as my grandmother. Besides, Barry helped her to cut through miles of “ red tape” when she had problems obtaining checks from the Social Security Administration after retirement. He has been God to her ever since. Barry had always been a “ grass- root street hustler’ ’ or ’ ‘activist” to pul it in the language acceptable to a Western society. My first encounter with him came as a thirteen year old, who worked for a group called OPERATION PRIDE, a grassroots or ganization that employed young people/ex-offend- ers to spread rat poison, clean up allies, neighbor hoods, and areas plagued by slum lords or damaged during the 1968 riots. He promoted pride in the com munity and pro vided thousands of black people with jobs. W e took pride in moving old exars and being called the RAT PATROL. One dollar and sixty cents per hour was a lot in those days. Barry had so much p ow er on the streets during the riots that he liter ally told people to get off the streets and go home. Mayor W alter E. W ashington, the Mayor at the lime, stood aside help- Photo by Ullysses Tucker, Jr. Icssly. Barry rode the credibility straight CONTINUED ON PAGE 6