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Volume X X V I. Number 48
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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.