Vote early: Ballots
due before 8 p.m.
on Tuesday, May 20
School Celebration
Community Transitional
School celebrates the opening
o f a new permanent site fo r
teaching homeless kids
VOTE
* ★
★
★
★
f
For more information, call Multnomah
County Elections 503-988-372(1
See Education & Careers special, inside
‘City of Roses’
Established In 1970
www.portlandobserver.com
Committed to Cultural Diversity
Volume XXXVIII, Number 20
Wednesday • May 14, 2008
T1Week ¡n
Thc Review
Critical
Moment
for Voters
Obama Leads Oregon Poll
A new poll shows
Barack Obama with
a 55 percent to 35
percent lead over
Hillary Clinton in
Oregon as the state
heads into the final week before its
primary election votes are counted.
Both candidates will be in Oregon
over the weekend.
B
iM id r -»
uiw i n
ViML t
BMW '
Panel says Sheriff Lied
M u ltn o m a h
C o u n ty S h e r iff
B e rn ie
G iu s to
s h o u ld lo se h is
b a d g e fo r ly in g
nearly 20 years ago when he told
his state police su p e rv iso r he
wasn't having an affair with the
wifeofthen-Gov. Neil Goldschmidt.
A state police standards com m it­
tee m ade the recom m endation
M onday.
Presidential pick
rests on our state
by R aymond R endleman
T he P ortland O bsera er
U h
í fimo •*«*•»
Soaring Gas Prices
Gas prices shot to a new record i
over $3.73 a gallon Tuesday with
little sign o f slowing before M e­
morial Day weekend, the traditional
start o f the sum m er driving sea­
son, less than 10 days away. M any
analysts have predicted a surge
past the $4 level on a national basis
within the next couple of months.
£ ¡« ■ 5 1
w* ->W5J
___
fe
photo by
M ark W ashington /T he P ortland O bserver
Kimberly Howard (left) and Adrienne Flagg o f the Interstate Firehouse Cultural Center express hope for the multicultural
facility's future even as the mayor's city budget proposal slashes 24 percent of its budget.
Stamp Price Increase
Be prepared to pay an extra penny
for mai 1. The price o f a stamp rose to
42 cents on Monday. The increase
is part of what could be an annual ’
hike by the U.S. Postal Service.
Campers Given Notice
The conflict between the m ayor j
and about 100 hom eless protest­
ers o f P ortland’s cam ping ban
reached a clim ax on Tuesday as
police prepared to clear tents from
sidewalks in front o f City Hall while
the activists made a civil-rights
issue out o f circum stances that
necessitate living outside.
Jefferson Voices Concerns
M ayorT om Potter follow ed up on
initiatives a, Jefferson HighSchool
with a school visit on M onday, but
proposed cuts in staffing and lead- .
ership adjustm ents have students
wondering if their learning envi-1
ronm ent will ever stabilize. See
story, page A2.
Budget Cuts Multicultural Center
Firehouse’s diverse offerings in jeopardy
by R aymond R endleman
T he P ortland O bserver
The Interstate Firehouse Cultural Center
faces a critical situation for the diversity of
its offerings as M ayor Tom Potter’s pro­
posed city budget excludes any help for
north and northeast Portland’s premiere
institution for m ulticultural theatre, dance,
com m unity events and art education.
IFCC staff rem ained "very hopeful” that
losing the 24 percent o f budge, currently
provided by the city w on’t close the center.
However, if the center couldn’t replace the
$80.000 loss with private funding, it will
becom e greatly lim ited in its ability to o ffer
inclusive programming.
“(Our program s) help nurture em erging
artists from diverse and often underserved
com m unities so that they can becom e fis­
cally sustainable and artistically am bitious,"
says A drienne Flagg, IFCC creative direc­
tor. "The budget deficit will force us to cut
these program s and becom e a rental facil­
ity."
D isbelief spread through the com m unity
as Potter, against the advice o f other city
com m issioners and thc budget com m ittee,
cut the facility now celebrating its 25th
anniversary.
Many neighbors see the cen ter's mis-
sio n to uplift as especially im portant given
its location in a gentrifying com m unity
that just experienced the divisive attem pt
by a m ayor-supported coalition to renam e
Interstate Avenue after Cesar Chavez.
"W e need more cross-cultural dialogue
to build understanding across a diverse
population." said Kira Higgs, an IFCC vol­
unteer o f the nonprofit N orthwest Busi­
ness for the Culture and the Arts. “IFCC is
one o f the few places in town where this is
fostered and can happen formally and in­
formally as members and attendees com e
together with shared interests and co n ­
cerns.”
continued
on p a g e A 3
So it all comes down to Oregon. Who
would have thought that our state with
one of the final primaries in the 2008
campaign would have such an impact in
the Democratic Party's pick for presi­
dent?
Such is the reality of politics this year.
The last time the state had such a major
role in the nominating blitz, was in 1968
when Oregon Democrats nominated
Eugene McCarthy over Robert Kennedy
two weeks before Kennedy’s assassina­
tion in California.
This year, voters will have until 8
p.m. on May 20 for their ballots to affect
the vote-by-mail election. Because post­
marks do not count, the ballots need to
be mai led by this weekend or dropped by
a county elections office or a, a desig­
nated county-election drop box before
the 8 p.m. deadline.
Sen. Barack Obama’s campaign has
indicted it hopes to declare victory not
only in Oregon but across the country
no, long after the Oregon polls close. A
victory here is expected to give him the
majority of designated delegates in the
extremely close Democratic contest no
matter what happens in the few remain­
ing primaries.
However, Sen. Hillary Clinton said
she plans to dispute such a claim at least
through the last June 3 primary and
perhaps longer.
"This is just amazing,” says Kelvin
Hall, the African-American executive
director of northeast Portland’s Equal
Advocacy Center who threw his sup­
port to Obama.
“From his virtually unknown status a
continued
on page A2
Lasting Legacy of the Vanport Flood
Massive Chinese Quake
The toll o f the dead and missing
soared past 12,000 as rescue w o rk -!
ers in a rem ote southwestern prov­
ince o f China dug through flat- ;
tened schools and homes on Tues- i
day in a desperate attem pt to find i
thousands o f buried survivors of
7.9-m agnitude quake.
Violence Returns to India
Seven bom bs went off in close
succession on Tuesday evening
near a Hindu temple and a crowded
bazaar inside the walled enclave of
the historic pink city o f Jaipur,
about 160 m iles from New Delhi.
Authorities described it as a terror
attack that killed at leas, 45 people
and injured 100.
60 years ago
families lost more
than possessions
hastily stuffed into the car, but at least 15
Vanpor, residents died amid the disaster's
wake.
“ I did not get baptized that day, not by the
church, but I almost got baptized by the
flood,” she says.
W ith the car taken up by her parents and
an elderly man in theircare, White joined her
brother and sister in traversing the sleep
by R aymond R endleman
T he P ortland O bserver
M arghree W hite began May 30. 1948.
with a special day in mind, but not
because she thought that breaching
levees would destroy the largest hous­
ing project in the nation, leaving thou­
sands o f fam ilies like hers homeless.
The H ousing A uthority o f Portland
h ad s lip p e d a n o te u n d e r ea ch
resident’s door that morning saying
“the dykes are safe at present,” so the
14-year-old W hite continued tochurch
I i kc any other Sunday, except she wore
new red high-heels in preparation for
acom ing-of-age ceremony.
The citizens o f the second-largest
city in Oregon, situated just north of
P ortland's Kenton neighborhood in
the lowlands near the Colum bia River
and protected by levies, were reas­
sured by good w eather and a soon-
approaching sum m er,o help lower the
river's unusually high w ater levels.
Now, sitting in her house on North
V ancouver Avenue, W hite had tears A Washington High School graduation photo
in her eyes as she recalled how the circa 1951 shows Marghree White three years
governm ent misled V anport'spopula- after the Vanport Flood dislocated her family.
tion, a large proportion of which were
slope toward North Denver Avenue.
African A m ericans, in a sim ilar way to the
“We ran up the em bankm ent, and when
residents o f New O rleans at the brink of
I turned around and looked, the water had hit
H urricane Katrina.
Her family of six made it out with nothing
but a sewing m achine and some mementoes
continued
on page A3
photo ba
R aymond R endi . eman /T he P ohti . and O bserver
Marghree White would like to see more done to honor the memory o f Vanport 60
years after the flood, including renaming Delta Park, which now covers much of
the former city.