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About Portland observer. (Portland, Or.) 1970-current | View Entire Issue (April 2, 1997)
•« .« .A P age A2 A prii 2, 1997 • T he P o r u a n i ) O bserver Editorial articles do not necessarily reflect or represent the views o f (Tlje JJortlanb ©bserucr Attention Readers! Please take a minute to send us your comments. W e’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 appreci ated. We take criticism well! Get your powerful pens out NOW and address your letters to: Editur, Reader Response. P.O, Box 3137. Portland, OR 97208, <37Iiv ^ l o r t l a n h (© b s c ru e r (USPS 959-680) Established in 1970 Charles Washington Publisher & Editor Mark Washington Distsribution M anager Gary Ann Taylor Business M anager Larry J. Jackson, Sr. Director o f Operation Gary W ashington Public Relations Paui Neuieldt Production & Design Contributing Writers: Professor McKinley Burt, Lee Perlman, Neal Heilpern, Eugene Rashad 4747 N E M a rtin L u th e r King, Jr. Blvd., Portland, Oregon 97211 503-288-0033 • Fax 503-288-0015 E m a il: Pdxobserv@aol.com Deadline fo r all submitted materials: Articles .Friday, 5:00 pm Ads: Monday, 12:00pm POS I M A S T E R : Send Address Changes To: Portland Observer, P.O . Box 3137, Portland, O R 97208. Periodicals postage paid at Portland, Oregon. Subscriptions: $30.00 per year The Portland Observer welcomes freelance submissions. Manu scripts and photographs should be clearly labeled and will be returned if accompanied by a self addressed envelope. All created design display ads become the sole property of the newspaper and cannot be used in I other publications or personal usage without the written consent of the ! general manager, unless the client has purchased the composition of such ad © 1996 THE PORTLAND OBSERVER. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, REPRODUCTION IN WHOLE OR IN PART WITH- I OUT PERMISSION IS PROHIBITED The Portland O bserver-O regon’s Oldest Multicultural Publica tion—is a member of the National Newspaper Association—Founded in | 1885, and The National Advertising Representative Amalgamated Publishers, Inc, New York, NY, and The West Coast Black Publishers Association • Serving Portland and Vancouver. SU B SC R IB E IO d i e ^Inrtlaith (©bscruer The Portland Observer can be sent directly to your home for only $30.00 per year. Please fill out, enclose check or money order, and mail to: S ubscriptions T iie P ortland O bserver ; PO B ox 3137 P ortland , O regon 97208 Name: Address: City, S tate:_________________ ___ Zip-Code: T hank Y ou F or R eading T he P ortland O bserver A week ago, Rev. Jackson gave a major address to the National Association of Minorities in Cable. In his speech, Jackson went back through the history of segregation and exclusion in the telecommuni cations industry, showing the path to the neglect of equal opportunity in the industry we see today. Some excerpts: Cable television began in the foot hills of rural Pennsylvania in 1949. Originally designed to bring urban TV signals to rural small towns, cable’s culture until the early 1970s was all-White. In the early 1970s, the cable industry “discovered” Black and Brown A m erica-in the same sense that Colum bus supposedly “discovered" America. The cable industry realized that Black and Brown Americans living in cities are a huge market, their money is green, they watch lots of television, and they are exception ally brand-loyal consumers. But by then, the ownership structure o f the cable industry had already been locked in. Those with a 20-year head start in ownership—none of whom w as B lack o r B r o w n - h a d a hammerlock on the industry. Today, District Cablevision in Washington, D.C., Percy Sutton’s e r C O A L IT IO N token Cable com pany in Queens, NY, Frank W ashington’s 3 small cable systems in CA, and perhaps 2 or 3 other systems, are all that’s left. There has never been a limit on the number ol cable systems one com pany can own. Thus, a handful of huge "multiple system operators " with extraordinary economies of scale con trol the industry today. Indeed, two com panies control a majority f America’s cable households. Compa nies like these can outbid any small company for the handful of cable systems which come onto the market. Whose interests do these com pa nies serve? For years, cable opera tors wired the wealthy and White neighborhoods first, and today they continue to scramble for the so-called “high end” market. It's happening again with the s P e forthcoming Video-on-Demand and specialized Internet services. As tele phone companies provide video ser vices in competition with traditional cable operators, we must watch very closely to ensure that they do not redline poor and minority neighbor hoods—just as they redlined new and enhanced telephone service 20 years ago. Unfortunately, the FCC did not consider segregationists and race discriminators to lack the requisite character to serve as public trustees. Over the course of six decades, the FCC deliberately gave away billions of dollars worth of broadcast spec trum -and, I might add, billions of dollars worth of microwave spec trum in the cable antenna relay ser vice—to licensees it knew would never hire a Black man or woman in I / any capacity except that of janitor, would never put a Black man or woman on the air except in news stories focusing on crim e, and wouldn’t even allow a Black church to sponsor the devotional messages which concluded the broadcast day. Generations o f White men re ceived a vast head start in obtaining the skills, experience, and network of contacts required to become me dia owners. Those denied these op portunities in the 1950s—due to rac ism -lost their chance to be broad cast station and cable system middle managers in the 1960s, entrepre neurs in the 1980s, and broadcast group or multiple cable system ow n ers in the 1900s. In 1978, the FCC realized at last that because the airwaves belonged to the people, and we were part of “the people," it had to do something to ensure that we would attain own ership of our fair share of the spec trum resource. This wasn’t going to be easy, because 99% of the spec trum had already been given away to Whites. But the FCC tried anyway, adopt ing the “tax certificate policy,” which meant that com panies selling a broadcast station or a cable system to minorities could defer the capital gains tax. r e s Can Small (Lending) Also Be beautiful? ast w eek's column— Small Is Beautiful, Or Is It ? ”— described a down-scaling of the development efforts by Western nations in the poorer nations of the ‘Third World’. It was seen that successful eco nomic systems must take into ac count the customs and traditions of the people. And the "In focus” section of the April issue ot the highly regarded “Scientific American” magazine fea tures a related article (P-16) on an innovative way to finance individu ally-owned enterprise in the same countries: "M icro-finance is prov ing that the poor are creditworthy, but will the movement try to grow too last"? At a recent summit meet ing in Washington DC. representa tives oves from irom I 13 I j countries endorsed a Northeast Portland and Ligni K an - Urban Renewal or Removal? ubllc mass transit has cerns. My biggest issue is that no (commercial on the ground floor always seemed like a one I know (o f the general public, with apartments upstairs) will have Kl good public service to that is) had seen these maps. I be even greater impacts. me; affordable transit is a ne lieve that the Affected public-those I am not leading an anti-light rail cessity for people who don’t have whose homes and businesses will be campaign, and I am not trying to cars, and everybody wishes there directly impacted by a public project- “save anyone. I was asked to write were fewer cars on our city -should have first place in any de this article after the light rail meet streets. bate and decision about projects like ing was shown on local cable TV. What about light rail? Like most this. My point is that peoples’ homes and people, I hadn’t paid too much at So, why do I care, and why should businesses should not be clinically tention to the dozens o f meetings on you care? Last month I was asked to examined as "under-developed real light rail and the huge costs o f build do a presentation on Urban Renewal estate"; these are places where people ing the South/North light rail line— program s and their im pacts on live and work, not just "through until recently. Portland s African American neigh routes” for travelers in North/North- All o f the light rail route maps we borhoods, for a history symposium east Portland. I believe that we all have seen in the newspapers and at at Portland Community College. In have a civic duty, that is sometimes meetings are "conceptual", like most preparing my presentation, I spent an unpleasant one, to speak up and planning maps. They show light rail several weeks re-visiting those pro participate in the many public plans route alternatives running along city grams from the 1950s-1970s and that affect our future. To their credit. streets, and look like they are in the their devastating “removal” o f hun City o f Portland and Metro staff street right-of-way. But a short time d re d s o f h o u se s, b u sin e sse s, have contacted me, gone through ago, a public agency planner called churches, and other buildings in the the Cornerstones book, and are ex me and asked: "A ren’t you doing African American neighborhoods pecting to get information about building research in North/North- that stood in the way o f Memorial other buildings we are identifying east Portland, and have you seen Coliseum, Interstate 5, the Fremont for the African American Buildings these maps that show buildings that Bridge, and hospital expansion. I History program. All known im will be removed along the different comforted myselfsomewhat with the pacts must be included in a Draft routes?” I told him that yes, we are belief that things are different now, Environmental Impact Statement for continuing to identify buildings as and that this could never happen any project with federal funding. sociated with Portland's African again, not today. Well, today Page, So what should you do? Remem American history, and n o - l haven’t I illamook, Wheeler, Flint, and Van ber that just like you, I am only one seen these maps. He brought me a set couver A venue are what remain from person, but that together we make and one Saturday I went over to the vibrant neighborhood centered up "the public”. We, “the public”, North Flint, Vancouver, Page, and around Williams Avenue that was are invited to attend and speak at Tillamook Streets, near Williams destroyed for construction o f Me public meetings on light rail. The and Russell Strcets-and I got angry. morial Coliseum. next one is scheduled for Wednes I saw some o f the houses included in In 1957, 456 housing units and day April 9th, at the 1995 publication “Cornerstones many, many businesses, along with 6:00 PM, at the Oregon Conven o f Community: The Buildings o f Bethel AME Church were “dis tion Center. It’s being billed as the Portland's African American His placed", with inadequate notice and South/North Light Rail Cost-Cut tory ’, and I pictured them gone, if inadequate compensation Today, ting Measures meeting. You can the Wheeler/Russell Light Rail al anything like that really should not call M etro's transportation hotline ternative is built as “conceptually” and must not happen again. The at 797-1900 to get any public infor planned (I confess, I have not had affected public needs to be heard mation you want about light rail. the time to search out the impacts on from, and that includes people who Most importantly, we must show up North Kerby or North Interstate.) live and work within the 1000 foot and participate, if we want light rail Last month, I joined some 300 areas along both sides o f light rail to be built the way we want it, if it’s people who turned out at a Saturday routes; that s where the city’s adopted going to be built morning light rail meeting at Kaiser policies o f encouraging high-den This article was written by Cathy Town Hall, and I took my three sity residential (that means apart Galbraith, Director o f the Bosco- allotted minutes to state my con- ments) and mixed-use developments M illigan Foundation J ÍJ N A T IO N A L goal of extending loans to l(K) m il lion of the world’s poorest families by the year 2005. So what does it all mean? In last w eek’s article we sought a correla tion with the accelerated growth of small business in America that was principally initiated by workers dis placed by mergers and other dow n sizing. We would note that a great num ber w ere highly skilled, in c o n tra st to the Third World en trepreneurs described in the Scien tific American magazine as follows. "Seamstresses, carpenters, street vendors and the proprietors of other small businesses in Bolivia would typically be shunned by banks. For these people, the only possible sources for loans have traditionally been family members or money lenders charging up to 10 percent interest daily.” "Yet 72,(XX) of them have been welcomed at BancoSol, turning that institution into the bank with the largest customer base in the country. The banks decision is neither lunacy nor charity but rather a new finan- cial experiment...demonstrates that borrowers without collateral can of ten be very good credit risks, faith fully paying back loans of a little as even $100.” You may have last weeks' article before you or you may just reflect that the typical approach of western nations to e c o nom ic d e v e lo p ment in poorer By countries has too Professor olten been a "top- Mckinley down' imposition Burt ' o f c la ssic e c o nomic systems of mass production and economies-of- scale. We pointed out in “Small Is Beautiful...” that “successful eco nomic systems must take into ac count the customs and traditions of the people.” Certainly, we already see that Small Lending" can accomplish this "social fit in the microeconomics and surprisingly or not so surpris ingly we have the following from Scientific American. "M icro finance is not confined to the Third World. It was not happen stance that a sprawling convention hotel in Washington, D C. was cho sen as a summit meeting place rather better ‘Co Che CLihter Send your letters to the Editor to: Editor, PO Box 3137, Portland, OR 97208 than quarters in La P a/ or Dhaka. In tact, BancoSol and Grameen have served as models for legions of U.S. copycats, most ot which are run by small nonprofit groups. The idea of pulling onesell out of poverty by building a food stand in La Paz-or a hair styling salon in Chicago-has a universal attraction.” And we have this, “The notion holds an appeal to a federal govern ment pledged to ease people off wel fare. In a .survey, the Aspen Institute in W ashington, D.C., found that 250 "micro enterprise' programs in the U.S. last year represented more that a doubling from four years ear lier.” However, we do not find complete satisfaction with these alternative eco nomics in either the Third world or America-Overseas there is concern that Small Lending (micro finance) could become an all encompassing approach rather that a tool within a larger antipoverty strategy.” And here in America, there is not only that concern, but a premonition that the mini-economics could lead to return ol the demeaning “cottage industry of the 19th century. Hun- jg dreds of thousands of the poor eked out a bare living performing “piece 4 work at home by manufacturing articles from raw materials deliv ered by corporate agents who picked up finished goods tor a mere pit tance.
