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About Portland observer. (Portland, Or.) 1970-current | View Entire Issue (March 18, 1992)
Volume XXII, \iiiu hcr 12 ‘‘The Eyes and Ears of the Comm unity” a p e< Sc a.rv ty o< March IS. 1992 -•9 o n on ^ 9 en ®’ 9 7 ^ ”* ^pnrtíanh ©hseriirr News In Brief Portland Women's Crisis Line The Portland W omen's Crisis Line is pleased to announce openings for its spring volunteer direct service worker training. Volunteers would receive a forty-six hour training, spread out over four weeks, which would prepare them to answ er the crisis line. Final date for application for admission to the pro gram is April 28. Trainings begin on May 2. N o e x p e rie n c e is n e c e s s a ry . Practicum students are encouraged to apply. C redit is available. Interested women should call 232- 9545 M onday - Friday, 11 am to 7 pm. Oregon Business Network “Business After Hours” Networking Meeting *Date: Tuesday, March 31 ,1 9 9 2 •T im e :6 :3 1 P M ♦Place: Travelodge Hotel - 1441 NE 2nd Avenue Business Contacts, Leads, Referrals, Bring Plenty O f Business Cards and Brochures Join The Hundreds O f Local Area B usi nesses & Professionals That Have Dis covered O ne O f The Best Business Trends O f The 9 0 ’s..Networking (small door prizes welcomed, but not required) P.S. Last m onth’s meeting drew stand ing room only ...therefore we encourage you to arrive early for good seating Oregon Business M embers And Non- M embers Invited Registration Opens for Oregon Writers' Workshop Classes Trip Permit Limited To 120 Days The Oregon State regulation re garding trip permits has been tighten to limit trip permits for one car to 120 days within the calendar year. Those apply ing for trip permits must now sign an affidavit stating that they have not used the trip perm it for more than 120 days in the calendar year. However, that does not track the use o f perm its by individuals. The fee for trip perm its are: $5.00 for 10 days, $10.00 for 30 days and 10 days each for each 30 day interval up to 120 days. History Series Program Public is invited to attend the His tory Series program sponsored by the Sons & Daughters of Oregon Pioneers organization, M onday, March 23, at 10:30 a.m. in Beaver Hall at Oregon Historical Society, 1230 S.W. Park. Free coffee and admission. Speaker will be Mary T. Howard, Editor o f Genealogical Forum new slet ter, The Insider, and a vice president o f the Forum. Her topic will be “Oregon Pioneer Cem eteries in Distress.” She is active in protection and prevention o f vandalism o f these older gravesites. An excellent, upbeat speaker, and it will not be a dead subject! Henry Welnhard’s / KPTV Party Cruise Sunday, April 6.1992 Z 100 p resen ts the Final Four NCAA W idow s Cruise, an all male review, featuring the Men of Paradise. Celebrate the college Basketball tour nament in style! Boarding is in Cascade locks at 6:30 p.m., cruise time is from 7:00 - 9:00 p.m. Sunday, April 19,1992 Registration has begun for spriing term classes at the Oregon W riters' W orkshop. Taught by well-known Oregon writers, the W orkshop classes are open to people o f all skill levels who wis'n to make a serious com m itm ent to writing. Classes begin the week o f March 30 at the Pacific N orthw est College o f Art, 1219 S.W . Park Avenue, Portland. F o r m o re in f o r m a tio n , c a ll Kathleen C ulligan, 239-0504. KBOO presents a very special E as ter Gospel Cruise featuring the talented Mr. Kirk Green along with his very special guests. Board at SW Front and Stark at 7 :3 0 p.m., cruise time is from 8:00 p.m. -1 0 :0 0 p.m. For more information call 221-0244. Queen’s Coronation Moves To New Date Warmer Weather Decreases Food Stamp Benefits Food stamp benefits will decrease by $20 to $30 per month for about 70,000 Oregon households in April as the result o f warmer weather. W arm spring and summer weather reduce the cost o f utilities, a factor in the food stamp formula, which includes living expenses, income and household size. The key to gauging the effect of utility costs is the Standard Utility A l lowance, which is low er in the spring and sum m er, higher in the fall and winter. The lower spring and sum m er allow ance begins in April and contin ues through September. About 40,000 households supply information using actual utility costs and are not affected by the seasonal adjustm ent in the Standard Utility Al- lowance. If food stam p recipients’ actual utility costs are higher than the allowance, it is to the recipients ’ ad van - tage to use actual figures rather than the allowance in order to capture the great est food stamp benefit. Food stamps are federally founded through the U.S. D epartment o f A gri culture and adm inistered by the Oregon Adult and Family Services Division. The 110,000 households receiving food stamp benefits in Oregon encompass 254,000 individuals. A pproximately $17 million in food stam ps are issued each month in Oregon. Over a year’s time, that adds up to about $204 m il lion, channeled through Oregon gro cery stores. Whats Inside... Page 5...........Birthdays & News Around Town Page7.... 9...Classif ieds Bids &Sub-Bides Page 11..... Religion PCC Vice President Receives Distinguished Achievement Award Portland Community College Vice PresidentofEducational Services James Van Dyke was honored as “Scholar of the Y ear” February 11 by the Hillsboro, Oregon, Cham ber of Commerce at its 1992 D istin g u ish e d A ch ie v e m e n t Awards ceremony. The PCC educator, who is a Rock Creek area resident, was cited for his achievem ents as an educator and ad ministrator and also for his longtime community service. Van Dyke is a di rector o f the Lintner Center for A d vanced Education, housed at PC C ’s Rock Creek Cam pus in W ashington County. He is also on the board of the Saturday Academy, a Portland-Van couver area program o f after-school and Saturday activities for sixth to 12th graders, intended to provide access to community resources outside the regu lar school curriculum. He serves on the board of Ed-Net, and is affiliated with several state and national education associations. Starting his career at PCC in 1965 as an instructor of mathematics, he has subsequently been department chair, division dean, and executive dean of all three PCC campuses. He was interim president o f the college during the 1985- 86 academic year. He has held his present position since 1989. Katz Asks Governor For More State help In Fighting Portland Gangs 250 It’s In His Blood! Tony Polk has taken on "perhaps the most ambitious project the Red Cross has ever undertaken." BY BRIAN RUBERRY Tony Polk has dedicated his life to something most of us take for granted, but none o f us can live without. He is one o f the w orld’s authorities on blood banking, the process o f testing, storing and making this fragile fluid available to some four million patients every year. A fter 26 years in the m ilitary’s blood program, supplying blood for soldiers during the Vietnam and Per sian G ulf wars, Polk has joined the American Red Cross to lead a massive, $120 m illion modernization program o f its blood centers. Because the "role of the state is key to any success" in battling the region's growing gang violence. State Repre sentative and P ortland mayoral candi-~ date Vera Katz today appealed to G ov ernor Barbara Roberts for more help from the state. "I am writing to ask that you offer your leadership, as you have dem on strated in the past, on a problem whose impact is growing throughout Oregon — increased activity by violent street gangs," Katz wrote in a letter to Rob erts. "You've been there for us in the past and today we need your help again. I urge you to take additional action by expanding the state's effort to com bat rising gang violence," said Katz. In her letter, Katz cited statistics that indicate that gang activity has in creased rapidly in Portland and other communities around the state. Law enforcem ent agencies have identified over 2700 gang members statewide, far above the 370 known gang members in 1989. G ang-related violent crim e has doubled, and the total number of gang crimes has increased from 1,970 in 1988 to more than 3,240 in 1991. Katz said she is especially con cerned about the spread o f gangs and drug activity in Portland. by E.T. Elliott "Any lasting solution to our gang Local opponents o f a $5 million problem will require involvement o f construction contract for improvements community leaders, parents, schools, to Holladay Street in Northwest Port police, private and public agencies, the land began picketing activities last courts, and city, county and state gov week. A coalition of A frican-A m eri ernments. "Those groups m ust all be part of can contractors, truckers and construc the effort to suppress street activities tion workers led by the National A sso and provide coordinated efforts for in ciation o f Minority Contractors o f O r tervention programs and prevention," egon (NAM CO), charged the City o f Portland with practicing a form of insti the letter said. "The role of the state, though, is the tutionalized racism against African- Americans. key to any hope o f success." According to a flyer being distrib- In addition to supporting tougher For anyone else, the thought of taking on what Red Cross president, Elizabeth Dole, calls “perhaps the most ambitious project the Red Cross has ever undertaken” may seem like an overwhelming task. But for Polk, the new job is simply the latest challenge in a career that has taken him on a m ete oric rise to the top o f his profession. “ I always wanted to get into m edi cine, always wanted to help people,” says the affable Polk, who at 49 is a retired Army colonel. “I believe I was put on earth to be in blood banking.” His title at the Red Cross, director o f transformation operations, seems innocuous enough until you read the job description. Polk is overseeing the overhaul of the organization’s 50 blood centers which supply more than half o f the blood in the United States. Building new blood testing laboratories, retrain ing thousands of technicians and de signing a national computer system are only a handful o f his duties. Polk points our that the overriding responsibility o f his new post is ensur ing a safe blood supply. ‘T h e Red Cross has the safest blood supply in the world, but the world has changed and we must change with it if we want to keep people’s trust,” he says, noting that the AIDS epidemic has caused blood banks worldwide to re evaluate their systems. For the last eight years, Polk di rected the Armed Forces’ blood pro gram, the crow ning jew el of a stellar military career. His mission at the D epartment o f Defense was to develop and im plem ent a system to get blood quickly from the United States to any battlefield in the world. Like any good Army man, he drilled his troops until they knew his system inside and out. He had 7,200 pints o f fake blood made up to add realism to the drills. His troops practiced packing the bogus blood, icing it, shipping it and unloading it during annual battlefield exercises overseas. On A ugust 7,1990, practice made perfect. Polk put his system into action during Operation Desert Storm, send ing more than 100,000 pints o f blood to Saudi Arabia. The system worked bet ter than even he expected. Anthony Joseph Polk was bom in New Orleans and raised in Lake Charles, La. His parents divorced early in his life. His mother washed clothes and worked other domestic jobs to keep him Continued on page 7 NAMCO Plans Rally enforcem ent and penalties for criminal activities, Katz is a strong supporter of m ulti-level approaches to reducing crim e - education programs, alterna tive activities, and employment train ing — aimed at children and teens, katz recently called for a more coordinated effort by local governments to fight crim e by increasing the number of po lice in Portland, adding more prosecu tors to handle the caseload, creating more jail space, and giving tougher sentences to drug traffickers. Katz also 1 isted a number of projects the state established in recent legisla tive sessions to com bat drug and gang continued on page 7 uted by the protesters, Mayor Bud Clark, together w ith com m issioners D ick Bogle, Mike Lindberg and Earl Blu menauer voted unanimously to award the contract to Slayden Construction, Inc., of Stayton, Oregon, in spite of considerable opposition. O.B. Hill, spokesman for the pick ets, said, “The award by the City C oun cil had violated the integrity of the competitive bidding process and dam aged the credibility o f the purchasing Bureau’s Minority Business Enterprise Program .” Slayden was given an additional week to increase M BE participation on the project from 2.5 to 10.6 percent. In doing so he denied an African-Ameri can firm, Holefield Construction, the opportunity to negotiate a contract and gave additional work, including work items in H olefield’s bid, to out of town firms who did not initially bid on the job. “W hat Slayden has been allowed to do is break all the rules of good faith effort by refusing to consider Holefield as a Sub contractor”, Hill said. The demonstrators plan to con tinue picking activities and have given the city and Slayden a thirty day notice, demanding that ten African-Americans are provided jobs on the project Slayden has offered to hire two laborers thus far. A march and rally is planned on M onday, March 23, at Holladay Park. Located at N.E. 13 th Avenue and M ult nomah Street, the event is scheduled to begin at 10:00 am. Plans are to have a petition signing, speakers, and a brief march. The organizers are requesting support from all concerned citizens who are against Institutionalized Racism and public officials who aid and support General Contractors and workers from p articip atin g in local construction projects, . gMMMNN iogle Endorsement The Portland black Firefighters Association and the International A sso ciation o f Black Professional Fire Fight ers (I ABPFF) have endorsed City Com missioner dick Bogle for re-election to the Portland City council. In announcing the endorsement, W illiam E. Kendrix, President o f the Portland Black Firefighters Associa tion, said, “ I have found the Commis- sioncrof Public Safety, Dick Bogle, has ) r had an open door policy to the organi zation and has been supportive to the needs o f Black firefighters in the Bu reau.” The local chapter of IABPFF rep resents African American firefighters who work for the City of Portland Bu reau o f Fire, Rescue and Emergency Services. IABPFF Endorsed City Com m is sioner Dick Bogle Don’t Forget The Albina Plan Rezoning Committee Schedule March 24th PCC Cascade Campus, Terreel Hall, 705 Killingsworth. March 31st Peace Luthern Church, 2201 Portland Blvd. 7:00 PM. April 7th King Facility, 4815 N.E. 7th Ave. 7 XX) PM.
