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About Portland observer. (Portland, Or.) 1970-current | View Entire Issue (Jan. 14, 2015)
January 14, 2015 M ARTIN L UTHER K ING J R . 2015 special edition Page 13 New Leaders Emerge in Struggle for Police Reforms continued from page 7 thrown—with at least three or four thrown around his own feet. Another Portlander who was also protesting came up to Waco after the flash grenades went off and told him “It looked like they threw them in your direc- tion; they landed all around you.” Waco won’t go as far as say- ing Portland Police threw the grenades at him, but it looked like they did before they “let out a war cry” and charged the stunned crowd. Waco said he was inspired to join the struggle for police re- forms and other advancements in civil rights from Teresa Raifford, another black Portland leader on the front lines in the justice movement. “I went down there and I saw Teresa, and she had a mega- phone in her hand and she was just like ‘yo, we need young voices—we need you to lead. Here’s the megaphone.’ I just started leading the chant, you know?,” Waco said. Before becoming one of the faces of the Don’t Shoot PDX movement Waco, a native of north Portland’s St. Johns neigh- borhood and a Roosevelt High School alum, was already a prominent local hip-hop artist. Civil rights activist Glenn Waco is a Portland rap and hip hop artist, and a member of the musical collective known as ‘The Resistance.’ As a solo artist and one third of the Portland based musical collective, along with Mic Capes and Rasheed Jamal, known as “The Resistance”, Waco has lit up stages all around Portland. He tweeted after a Dec. 27 gig at Mississippi Pizza Pub, that the north Portland venue was the most packed it has ever been. Keenly aware of his popular- ity around town, Waco does not want to be viewed as a shame- Angela Davis Keynote Speaker Author, educator, and black rights activist Angela Davis will be the keynote speaker at “Liv- ing the Legacy: The Meaning of Freedom,” an evening com- memorating Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at Portland State Uni- versity. The lecture will take place Wednesday, Jan. 21 at 6 p.m. in the PSU Peter Scott Center. Tickets are $15 and free to PSU students. To reserve a ticket, call 503-725-3307. Davis has become one of the most important black academics and leaders in the struggle for economic, racial, and gender jus- tice. In recent work, she argues that the prison system more closely resembles a new form of slavery than a criminal justice system. MLK Day at WSU Vancouver Washington State University Vancouver welcomes students and community members to cam- pus for the Martin Luther King Jr. Holiday. Activities will take place in the Firstenburg Student Com- mons building on Monday, Jan. 19 from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. The theme will be “Educational Jus- tice: Creating Awareness and Challenging Inequities Within Our School System.” Guests will enjoy music, children’s activities, interactive workshops and a lecture by key- note speaker Charlene Williams, senior director for school per- formance at Portland Public Schools. The opening ceremony will include a musical performance of the Black National Anthem, “Lift Every Voice” by Trenelle Doyle, a university student. The university faculty and staff will offer four interactive workshops focused on educational justice. less self-promoter. While Waco is oftentimes vocal—he likes to embody the strong but silent type too. “If you’ve seen me at these protests I’m usually…holding the bullhorn for other people to speak… because I don’t want to make it seem like I’m just out there promoting myself [or] out there for the wrong reasons. It’s like I wanna give people a voice to express themselves, and use my influence to inspire more people to come out.” Waco mixed both rolls at a meeting last month of a citizen’s committee reviewing Portland Police policies regarding the use of deadly force. He let other members of Don’t Shoot PDX do the talking. That is until it seemed as if the com- mittee was dancing around the fact that it has no real authority to make change, and that the Portland Police Bureau essen- tially reviews itself. Waco, frustrated with Port- land citizen’s lack of power as it pertains to police oversight, and the Independent Police Review and the Citizens Review Committee’s inability to create change, finally spoke up. But once Waco had his say he re- mained stoic and let the others do the rest of the talking. Waco feels like “power needs to be given to the citizens of Portland who pay for police to serve as public servants. Firmly entrenched as a com- munity leader, Waco isn’t going anywhere anytime soon and will be a staple of future marches, meetings and entertainment in the city of Portland for the fore- seeable future. On Twitter?Follow Mike for interesting tweets regarding local sports, international af- fairs and other random timely topics @IlluminatorMike