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About Portland observer. (Portland, Or.) 1970-current | View Entire Issue (Dec. 18, 1996)
P agi A? fg t 7 ; r ■ , r J ; r id ! Jr Attention Readers! Please lake a minute to send us your comments. We're always trying to give you a better paper and we can’t do it without your help. Tell us what you like and what needs improvement... any suggestions are welcomed and appreciated. We take criticism well! Get your powerful pens out NOW and address your letters to: Editor, Reader Response. (E ijc J J o r t l a u b (O b se r v e r (t'SPS 959-680) Established in 1970 Charles Washington Publisher & Editor Gary Ann Taylor Business M anager Danny Bell Advertising Sales Manager Mark Washington Distribution Manager Sean Cruz Consultant & Editor Portland Observador Paul Neuf'eldl Production & Design Gary Washington Public Relations Rovonne Black II usi n ess A ss is la n t Contributing Writers: Professor McKinley Burl, Lee Perlman. Fred Heinbry, Eugene Rashad 4747 NE Martin Luther King, Jr. Blvd., Portland, Oregon 97211 503-288-0033 • Fax 503-288-0015 Email: Pdxobserv @aol.coin Deadline Jor all submitted materials: Articles:Friday. 5:00 pm Ads: Monday, ¡2:00pm POS I MAS I ER: Send Address Changes To: Portland Observer, P.O. Box 3137, Portland, OR 97208. Second Class postage paid at Portland. Oregon. Subscriptions: $30.00 per year I he Portland Observer welcomes Ireelance submissions. Manu scripts and photographs should be clearly labeled and will be returned il accompanied by a sell addressed envelope. All created design display ads become the sole property of the newspaper and cannot be used in other publications or personal usage without the written consent of the geneial manager, unless the client has purchased the composition of such ad © 1996 THE PORTLAND OBSERVER ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, REPRODUCTION IN WHOLE OR IN PART W ITH OUT PERMISSION IS PROHIBITED. The Portland O b server-O regon’s Oldest Multicultural Publica- tion--is a member ol the National Newspaper Association—Founded in 1885, and I he National Advertising Representative Amalgamated I ublisheis, Inc, New York. NY, anil I he West Coast Black Publishers Association • Serving Portland and Vancouver. SlJBSi KIBE | ( ) (T|je ^ .lo rtla u b (O bserver The Portland Observer can be sent directly to your home for only $30.00 per year. Please till out, enclose check or money order, and mail to: S ubscriptions T he P ortland O bserver ; P O B ox 3137 P ortland , O regon 97208 Name: Address: City, State: Zip-Code. - h iA N K - V ^ 1 l‘(>l< H eading T he P o r ii , and O bserv e r better '7^0 'Uhe (SJditar Send your letters to the Editor to: Editor, PO Box 3137, Portland, OR 97208 Civil Rights Journal Not In Our town bv B ernice P owell J ackson Q7"* ast year this tim e a grassroots campaign C against racism and hate violence occurred in cities and towns across the nation. Spawned by the actions ofeitizens in billings, MT who refused to allow their Jewish neighbors to be terror ized by local w hite suprem acist groups, the campaign was named Not In Our Town anil culminated in a documentary aired on the Public Broadcasting system. As blac k churches continue to burn in 1996, Not In O urTow n once again is taking place in communities which are saying no to racism and arc re sponding with a commitment to end racially-motivated violence ami in tolerance. This year's campaign be gan on International Human Rights Day, December 10 anil ends with Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday celebration in January. Once again, it will include a documentary, to air on December 23 which will tell the sto ries of what communities across the nation are doing. Stories like that of St. John Baptist Church in south Carolina, which was one of the black churches which burned. For a decade St John had been the target of racially-m otivated hale crimes, including desecrations of the church, its contents and its cemetery on several occasions Now, mem r ¿ j Ì Editorial Articles Do Not Necessarily Reflect Or Represent The Views O f l ök ’ 1 ¡JlJortlanh ODbseruer here was an interesting a rtic le by Richard Harwood of the Wash ington Post recently, analyzing voting behavior In the last elec tion by class status. His conclusion was that big mon ey not only buys special interest in fluence in election campaigns, but also demonstrates its power at the polls. We quote from Harwood: "We all know that m oney talk s in polities...But since there are fewer rich people than there are ordinary citizens, it s all supposed to equal out: You have the money, we have the votes. We can always throw the rascals out. The trouble with this formulation is that it isn't necessarily true. The influence of money shows up in the ballot boxes as well. Voting behavior is heavily influenced by social class, meaning our place at the top or bottom of the income and education ladders.” Two groups—people with college degrees, anti people with less than a high school education -each make up about 20% of the adult population in America. People with college de grees, though, not only pull in a far have been released by Senior analyst David Bosilis of the Joint Center for Political and Economic studies. From his analysis of voter News Service exit polls and estimates from the Committee for the Study of the A m er ican Electorate, Bositis concludes that African American turnout rose to a 10% share of the 1996 electorate (up from 7% in 1992, with a large increase among African American males(; and that Latino/Hispanic vote share increased to 5% in 1996 (up from 3% in 1992, and earlier report ed as 4%). Combine Harwood’s anal ysis with that of Bositis, and one conclusion is very clear: million and millions of lower-middle-class and poor whites stayed home on election day, allowing upper-and middle-class voters to dominate the voting. (Since union voting also went up in 1996, this means these non-voters were largely non-union, most likely peo ple who once were considered "blue collar" workers in the days when the U.S. manufacturing base was strong.) Do these skewed voting patterns affect public policy ? O f course, and in ways distinctly unfavorable to wards the poor and lower-income classes. 31? p e r C O A L IT IO N Voting Top-Down greater share of income; they also east 7 times as many votes as people with less than high school educa tions. ♦People with less than a high school education east only 5.5 mil lion votes, a mere 6% of the total (favoring Clinton 2 -1 ). Jaxfax's conclusion: hail people with less than a high school educa tion voted at anywhere near the rates that people with college degrees did. the U.S. Congress would look a lot different today. *14% of families earn more than $75,000 a year—they east 25 million votes, with a large majority for Dole). *16% of families, almost the same share of the population, earn less s p than $15.000 dollars a year-they east about 10 million votes, with 2/3 for Clinton. The obvious conclusion: had fam ilies at the low end of the income scale voted in equal numbers with families at the high end, speaker Gingrich would have been replaced. Harwood makes another interest ing point: “The most ardent Demo crats were single women, who, in financial terms, are the poorest class of people in the country. They fa vored Clinton by more than 2 to I - 62% to 28%. Their median income in 1992 was less than $ 18,000. For sin gle women with children, the median was $13,445,” Related voter turnout numbers e c t i r e s Who Told You That You Were Naked, P art II W ell “sure and begorra and blessed indeed are the saints” as the Irish would say. Parents and grand parents were calling me like com m unications would soon be out of style - seems that last w eek's column provoked a bit of activity aimed at retaining some of the terra firma to which African Americans still hold title. T hat’s cool, a little late (about 35 million late), but a step in the right direction. One "exasperated” wom an wrote that even before my more recent disclosures of how well black people of all ages, religions and so cial persuasions understood and man aged their urban infrastructure ("Ev idences of progress among Colored People" 1908), I had detailed nota ble economic progress early on in Northeast Portland. This reference was to a piece I wrote almost a decade ago on the urban real estate development cor porations form ed by the black pullman porters, red caps and dining car waiters, during the 1930's and 1940’s. These ‘non-university’ en trepreneurs did not fall under the mantra of Carter G. W oodson's “The Mis-Education O f the Negro” - but rather, pooling their paltry salaries and their tips, pursued a prais worthy tradition which unfortunately did not ‘take’ with the succeeding genera tions. They built and/or took over apart ment houses and commercial units By Professor Mcklnley Burt w hieh they either leased or operated themselves Since these firms were among my very first public account ing clients (1946-1954), I can per sonally attest to both their financial viability and their solid social inte gration into the community; support ing many societal functions, charita ble or recreational. I he facilities either housed, oper ated or incubated by these progres sive entrepreneurial spirits included contractors, retail stores, restaurants, dry cleaners, billiard parlors, night clubs, record stores, coin-operated amusement device distributors (joke boxes and cigarette machines), dance halls, hotels, grocery, haberdashery, pharmacy, moving and storage. After the grim reaper of Urban Renewal swept all of this away, with no prescience, intervention or relo- e a tio n fu n c tio n s in stitu te d by W oodson's "helpless generation of superbly educated sons and daugh ters”. And now, of course, th e ’third’ generation is for the most part em ployed by or agents of the ’ newcom ers' on this feverish northeast stage - - where the actors now are federally- lunded and are ’pale’ imitators of what was or could have been (pun intended). This is what happens when the ‘social engineers’ are placed in con trol of the destiny of a people, when the shrewd, smooth, neo-carpet bag gers (or “co rruptionists” as Dr. Woodson called them) ally them selves with the establishment media and are enabled to control the leader ship Iront lar off academic or bank- ing/economie enclaves. As several parents said last week; “It worked in Africa, it worked in India, it worked in Central America, and for a long while in China, Russia and IndoChi na. Why not in Albina?" and, of course, other bitter and disillusioned residents point to these situations and make the connection to the urban terroron the mean streets. They, too, deplore the resulting soci etal and cultural vacuum where there are no individual or cultural role models, no sign posts and no bench marks I've known Rev Willie Banks for over twenty-years and remember seeing his "Junior" as an infant. Mr. Banks, a U.S. Forest Service 'c o m puterized map-making technician’ worked with me during the 1970’son the programs I developed for the agency’s out-reach programs to m i nority youth. I grieve with him over the recent senseless killing of his son. But I must grieve too for the name less child who took away his life-- as I must for the many youth on either side of this frightening human equa tion. Who told those who are in the roles of power and leadership “that (hey were naked?” Who told them that it is no longer the ease that know ing who you are and what you have accomplished last decade, last cen tury or in past millenniums forms a key element of your education as well your culture? But there are some of us who have more than adequately demonstrated that African Americans are a far cry from being naked and we have done so in the community, in the class room, on television, on the lecture circuit and by practical real time dem onstration. Parents are asking is it too late to take back the leadership from the TV spin doctors, the poseurs, the sub stance abusers, the tired and the so cial engineers? V o l t a g e P o in t : “Campaign For A New Tomorrow” continues -.....« in R un D A. aniels More than 200 people from 10 cities across the country recently gathered in Philadelphia to assess the 1996 presidential election and consider the idea of forming a new political party . Noted author and lec turer Cornel West, Mike Albert, Ed itor ol Z Magazine, Don Rojas, former Director of Communications for the NAACP, and nationally syndicated talk show host Bob I.aw were among those who addressed (he conference. Convened by the Campaign for a New Tomorrow (CNT), a Black and people of color led multi-racial Inde pendent Political Organization which is an outgrowth of the 1992 Ron Daniels for president Campaign, the bers of that community, along with labor union members and church members from other parts of the coun try, are rebuilding St. John. Stories like two women in Ohio who began a “Not In Our Agency" education campaign for thousands of stale employees after an annual Ku Klux Kian cross burning on the state house lawn. Or the follow-up to the original Not In OurTown Story, which occurred in Billings, Montana and in cludes a look at the quality of life in the Jewish community there today. Not In Our Town is being used by town and city governm ents, by schools anil ministerial associations. Many programs will focus on young by A skia M uhammad people, helping them to understand t the Aberdeen Army the impact of racially-motivated vio Proving Ground, north of lence. Many cities will use the video Baltimore, Maryland, and tape as a part of (heir Martin Luther at the Fort Leonard Wood Base in King, Jr. celebrations. Missouri, several commissioned In this year o f black church and non-commissioned officers burnings, in this year where we see have been placed on leave, while the continuing racism of the criminal they are investigated in a nation justice system and other incidents of al probe of sexual misconduct in racism all across our nation, Not In the military. Our Town is one way to get every W e now have w o rse -th a n - community to talk about what racism Tialhook-2, a widening investiga means in 1996 and the responsibility tion o f abuse of authority by all- that all people of good will have to powerful army drill sergeants and light it wherever and whenever we recruit company commanders forc confront it. We must all say loudly ing female trainees to have sex with and firmly, "Not In Our Town." them ...or else! For more information on Not In T here’s no question about it, the Our Town, call (510) 547-8484 or guilty should be punished and will be fa x (510) 547-8844. punished. In military life, unlike ci . goal ol the conference was to review the progress of CNT since 1992 and to discuss the Principles of Unity, Platform and Program for a new po litical party The meeting was characterized by a lively and productive exchange of views about the challenges and pros pects o f organizing a new political party. Time and time again activists from around the country rose to ex press their displeasure with the "less er evil polities” of the Democrats and Republicans which largely ignores the interests and aspirations of Black people and people of color. Hence the critical question debated at the meeting was not if there should be a new political party, but what kind of party is needed and the timetable for organizing a new parly. There was a thought provoking discussion over whether the party should be a Black political party, Black led. or Black and people of color led multi-racial party as CNT had originally envi sioned it. There was strong sentiment, how ever, that whatever the raeial/ethnic composition of the party, the objec tive of the party must be to promote fundamental change and social trans formation. J he CNT chapter reports from New York, Washington D.C. and Pittsburgh gave a clear indication that (he groundwork is being laid for an independent political party. Ac- cordingly, the National Coordinat ing Committee of Campaign for a New Tomorrow resolved to move forward with the idea of creating the Independent Progressive Party. How ever, there was a clear consensus that much more work is needed to sharp en the Principles of Unity, Platform and Program of CNT and a much stronger organizational and member ship base is required as pre-condi tions lor actually creating the Inde pendent progressive Party. Consistent with that consensus, the National Coordinating Commit tee agreed that CNT would become the National Organizing Committee lor the Independent Progressive Party. The Army Sex Scandal: Is It More Than ‘Skin Deep?’ vilian life, soldiers can still be pros ecuted for sex crimes like "adultery," and “conduct unbecoming an offic er.” So far, all 3 men who have been brought up on charges at Aberdeen are Black. At Ft. Leonard Wood, 7 or 8 African-American drill sergeants arc under investigation. Therein lies “the rub.” W hile Pentagon spokeswoman Maj. Natalie Perkins told me: “As far as the Army is concerned, this is not a racial issue," the circumstances smell mighty fishy, even if they don’t “look" like they are race-related At least one drill sergeant at Ft. Leonard Wood told this reporter that he has been suspended while the Army investigates 10 charges against him, all brought by white females. This Sergeant insists that at least 7 other colleagues are in the same situation. Black male soldiers have been charged with harassing white female recruits, while no Black females have com plained about these same officers. The sergeant also informed us that before this current outbreak of sexual harassment complaints, he had been charged with 5 sexual incidents, inves tigated, and cleared of all allegations. Now, he says, all 5 have been re opened and added to 5 new charges as a part of this house-eleaning effort. In one of the incidents where he was beening investigated and cleared, the woman said he offered to lend her money. He said when he learned that she was having a financial problem, he told her that there were facilities on the base where she could borrow money in an emergency. The other incident, he said, like the first, is a matter of two different interpreta tions of a situation that in fact hap pened. The sergeant said training officers often use the expression: “You owe me," referring to push-ups, or other punitive assignments, when recruits make mistakes. He said a white fe male learned that she was not going to graduate from basic training and told his commander he threatened her with "You owe me," referring to sex. When asked, the sergeant said, 'Ol course, I said it. Everyone says it .” But he insists he did not mean she owed him sex. He also informed that the recruit had already heen trans ferred out of his platoon, and was using the incident to get revenge. <
