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Established in 1970
www.poftlandobserver.com
Volume XXXX, Number 8
Wednesday • February 24. 2010
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‘City of Roses’
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years
^com m unity service
Committed to Cultural Diversity
Hot Seat at City Hall
Police reform
demands
gain traction
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by J ake
T homas
T he P ortland O bserver
Police reform, a long elusive goal for the
African American community and a handful
o f committed activists, might be within strik­
ing distance as pressure on City Hall reaches
a fever pitch in the aftermath o f the fatal
shooting o f Aaron Campbell, an unarmed
Portland black man who was shot by police
after a tense stand off.
"I think it could be different this time," said
Jo Ann Bowman, a local African American
political leader and longtime police critic who
serves as executive director o f Oregon Ac­
tion.
Rev. Allen T. Bethel, the president o f the
Albina Ministerial Alliance, an organization
representing black churches, and someone
who has long been on the front lines of
policing issues, echoes Bowman's remark.
"This time it seems to be sustaining a lot
o f momentum, more than it has in the past,"
said Bethel, who attributes the surge to last
w eek’s visit by national civil rights icon Rev.
Jesse Jackson.
Jackson was invited to address Campbell’s
death as he traveled to Oregon for a prior
Black History Month engagement at the
University o f Oregon in Eugene. He met last
continued
on page 7
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photo by J ake
T homas /T he P ortland O bserver
Mayor Sam Adams (front) and Police Commissioner Dan Saltzman, announce their support for a federal civil rights investiga­
tion into last month’s fatal police shooting of Aaron Campbell.
A Campaign
for Equity
in School
Desegregation ruling
impacts Portland
by J ake
T homas
T he P ortland O bserver
In 1954, winds ofchange started to slowly breeze through
the country when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that schools
could no longer segregate students by race- even if they
promised the same quality education.
Portland, a city that still struggles with its own racist past,
was slow to launch efforts to desegregate its schools after
the landmark ruling. And even today, the city finds itself
grappling with the same problems that seemed insurmount­
able when the issue first surfaced.
Minority students are still concentrated in a few schools.
There is still a sobering achievement gap, and there are still
disparities in how discipline is applied in public schools.
“The history o f desegregation and integration efforts in
the Portland Public Schools is almost as old as the school
district itself, reads a document from the PPS archives,
which explains that Portland, being a virtual frontier in the
remote Pacific Northwest, has always had to grapple in­
fluxes o f different kinds o f people.
The same document states that after the court ruling there
was “little community pressure to deal with it.”
That was until the 1960s, when civil rights activists- like
William McClendon o f the local NAACP grew fed up with
continued
on page 23