Image provided by: University of Oregon Libraries; Eugene, OR
About Portland observer. (Portland, Or.) 1970-current | View Entire Issue (Nov. 27, 1996)
•.......... £ Ö « S * > . Volume X X V I. Number 48 u « L A ¿ a cj C ommitted to cultural diversity. (£íp ^ o rtla n h (Dbseruer November 27, 1996 SECTION B ninni n n ¡ tu n I e tt li a r C The African market place Beginning November 30-December December 7 (Saturday), 10:00 am .-6:00 p.m. at Multi-cultural Sr. Citizen Center. 5325 N .E. M L K Blvd. Featuring many local vendors ottering Ethnic Art; arti facts; books, black films; food & more. For more information call (503) 284-9552. Free bike clinic Free Bike Clinic on the second Thurs day o f every month from 5:30-7:30 p.m The Bicycle Transportation Alliance spon sored legal clinics for bicyclists with Bike Lawyer Ray Thomas. The December 12 1996, clinic will be held at the Cedar Hills Recreation Center, 11640 SW Parkway in Portland. Contact Karen Frost Mecey at 226-0676 to pre-register or if you have questions. Doris’ Cafe Thanksgiving Rosie A. Dean (above), owner o f Doris ’ Cafe and volunteer's prepare a Thanksgiving Feast at D oris' Cafe. This year mark's the tenth anniversary o f her charitable donations. Free bike clinic Afternoon rides will be from 12:10 to 1:15 p.m. Monday and Thursday. This will be a pair of fast rides with lots ofclimbing Meet at the southwest corner of Pioneer Courthouse Square, between noon and 12:10 p.m. The cost is free. Contact Ray Thomas at 228-5222, or meet at start “The Thrill Is Gone”-For Texaco Sky watch at OMSI Take a guided tour through the uni verse every Friday night at the Oregon Museum ofScience and Industry. At 6:00 p.m. each Friday, O M SI Astronomers present a live planetarium show designed to keep view ers up to date on the current night sky. Topics relating to celestial events, plane tary space probes and astronomy and space science news are covered. Planet places Planet Places is best suited for children ages 6 through 12, but is interesting and informative for beginning astronomers of all ages. As with all astronomy shows, admission is free with a paid admission to the museum. Show times are Tuesdays through Fridays at 2 p.m., weekends and holidays at 11 a.m., 12 p.m. and 2 p.m. For more information, please call OM SI at | (503) 797-4000, or look up the museum’s web site at http://www.omsi.edu. Chronic pain & illness workshop Workshop: “ When You have Chronic Pain & Illn e ss.-”Saturday,9to 11:30a.m., December 14th, 3824 SW Troy, Portland. Come meet, learn about, and discuss re sources, options and skills that enhance quality o f life. Learn more about how you can live your life with greater effectiveness and satisfaction. To register, please call Beyond The Storm Counseling Center, (503)244-4661. Divorce survival & recovery workshop Saturday, 12:30 to 2 p.m., December 14th, 3824 S W T roy, Portland. Learn prac tical approaches for managing the divorce process, protecting the children, develop ing a co-parent relationship, and rebuild ing one’s life. To register, please call Be yond The Storm CounselingCenter, (503) 244-4661. Self-esteem workshop Saturday, 3 to 4:30 p.m., December 14th, 3824 Troy, Portland. Learn skills necessary for greater self-esteem, such as beingassertive, having healthy boundaries with others, etc. To register, please call Beyond The Storm Counseling Center, [(503)244-4661. Couple communication workshop December 8th, Sunday, 6-8 p.m., or December 15, Sunday, 3-5 p.m. 3824 SW Troy, Portland. Improve communication, I conflict resolution, and intimacy. To regis ter, please call Beyond The Storm Coun seling Center, (503) 244-4661. SU B M ISSIO N S: Community Calendar information will be given priority if dated two weeks before the event date. o r . M< K in i n B i m > i i P n rof T k r he Lord don’t like ugly” went an old African American expression and many a head nodded in as sent when lightning struck the Texaco Corporation with the release of tapes indicating official approval of racial and religious bias as well as criminal ob struction of justice. Richard Lundwall, the retired official who hurled the bolt that has shaken corporate America to the core may have prudently kept the tapes as his version of the proverbial gold watch given at many retirement parties; or they were meant to be one of those “golden parachutes”. In any case; it didn’t open and in an ironic twist, Lundwall himselfwascharged in federal court with obstruction o fju stice - a possible 10 years in prison. The bottom line in all o f this is the 1994 class-action discrimination suit brought on behalf o f 1,500 black Texaco employees. Apparently, the added pressures of the in criminating tapes, along with the call for a nationwide boycott, led the company to settle a two-year old suit only 11 days after the shocking disclosures of racial and religious bias. Peter Bijur, Texaco’s President and C E O , said, “we’re just the tip of the iceberg”. a sentiment echoed by blacks across the country. However, it would seem that African Americans have additional and well justified reasons to be unhappy with corporate Amer ica, the media component in particular. Not yet having recovered from a full year of sick, sick media prostitution of the O.J. Simpson trial followed on with a stomach-wrenching and facetious expression of horror at the verdict (An Anglo Saxon play gone wrong), blacks are subjected to a new insult to their intelligence. First, our boastful “fourth estate’ make it quite clear that they are not ready to enter the 21st century. As a neighbor o f mine said, “There is nothing so demeaning as when your daily newspaper pretends that the primary' issue with Texaco is name-calling’, deroga tory epithets by good-ol-boys’ who should have known better. We know that the corpo rate boardrooms of the media are shaking their heads in sympathy with Texaco, we feel your pain’." I sent out several dozen faxes to contacts around the country asking about the media approach in half a dozen major cities. It was pretty much the same as Portland, with the dailies almost universally ignoring the job issue, the antisemitism and Texaco’s ‘glass ceiling for women. The same neighbor ob serves, “it was these very same paragons of virtuous and democratic journalism who rushed to print the latest statistics showing great and continuous gains for the black middle class. How, now, they must ask them selves, do we explain away the reality—at’ the Texacos and at our own plants? There is black gain, white gain.” It is as equally distressing to have the Associated Press take both blacks and whites as somewhat naive, if not complete simple tons, by churning out dispatches emphasiz ing Texaco’s embarrassment.” And engag ing in endless speculation about the mone tary size of a settlement—even digging up figures on the 1.2 billion Congress appropri ated in 1988 to compensate Japanese who were interned in World War II. At any mo ment we expected new reviews of the earn ings of top black sports figures, and Oprah Winfrey, of course-no valuation at all to be placed on the angst of millions of non-ath letes of color, never in their lifetime to be allowed to compete as equals in corporate America. We can ‘affirm’ that, if nothing else. W ithout except ion, my contacts stated that the print media in their cities deplored the very suggestion that their good, good colored people’ would contemplate a boycott of ma jor corporations-this would be no poignant exercise fn civil rights by young students at lunch counters. Wall Street shudders and the Dow Jones Average reflects the concerns that African Americans should begin selec tively throwing around their quarter of a trillion dollars a year purchasing power. The thrill would be gone—long gone! How else do frustrated and exasperated citizens deal with the pious hypocrites who desperately guard the portals to the 21st century-what do they tell their youth who become increasingly contemptuous of a sys tem vigorously and blatantly exercising its cultural preferences? No great perspicacity is required to un derstand why the corporate print media seeks out ‘colored’ men to grace its Forum pages with boycott disinformation-advertising rev enues could be jeopardized. But at the same time tacitly endorses boycotts which white middle-class Americans direct at corpora tions operating in countries denying human rights. Next week “ Harlem, the Village Light Rai! B uilt” Community urges McCabe to "Do the right thing” aluent White wants her home back from the businessman who got it for a steal. Earlier this year, Douglas McCabe bought Ms. White’s 4-bedroom home for just $7,000 cash and a promise (on contract) to payoff property taxes and liens totaling $21,000. V The Northeast Portland community mem bers and leaders traveled to McCabe’s Lake Oswego home in hopes o f meeting with McCabe and convincing him to settle the dispute with the 67-year-old White. McCabe has a deal pending to sell the house for $67,900. On Saturday, November 23rd, Northeast Portland residents and representatives from the Black United Front and Gray Panthers went in the street in front of the home of Douglas W. McCabe at 4077 Buck Brush Lane in Lake Oswego (15-20 minutes from downtown Portland, off 1-5 at highway 217 exit). The community members hope to meet with McCabe. “ Ms. White has no home.” Says Richard J Brown ofthe Black United Front. “Today we come to Mr. McCabe’s home to ask him to do the morally right thing and settle this matter with Ms. White.” If McCabe declines to workout a settlement with White, community members will go door-to-door in McCabe's neighborhood to enlist McCabe's neighbors in their cause. After two heart attacks and after spending nearly one month recovering in the hospital following a pacemaker implant. Valuent White gave-in and agreed to sell her home of Ms. White's effort to block McCabe from selling her former home at 836 NE Jarrett Street forty years after an employee of McCabe’s convinced White that her house would be foreclosed for delinquent taxes. At the time Ms. White was on medication and still recov ering from the implant surgery. She was also unaware of the state's property tax deferral program for senior citizens. Using a new state law intended to protect the elderly from physical and financial abuse, Ms. White’s attorney Michael Haglund has filed a lawsuit against McCabe. Unfortunate ly, the new law may not work as intended. On October 31st, Circuit Court Judge Jeffrey Kilmere ruled against Ms. White’s effort to block McCabe from selling her former home at 836 N E Jarrett Street The case now goes to the Oregon Supreme Court, which is ex pected to make a decision by Thanksgiving. Community leaders hope this situation will serve as a warning to others who might otherwise fall victim to those who prey on the sick and elderly. On November 1 ,1996 a jury ruled in favor of a woman who sued McCabe after selling him her house for $5000. The woman was intoxicated when she sold McCabe her house The women’s attorney expects McCabe to appeal the ruling.
