March 4, 2015
Page 3
INSIDE
The
Week in Review
This page
Sponsored by:
page 2
L OCAL N EWS
All Lives Matter
O PINION
pages 6-7
M ETRO
Lesson in justice
turns to a
call for action
page 9
BY O LIVIA O LIVIA
T HE P ORTLAND O BSERVER
As students rehearse their
speeches in the wings behind the
stage, teachers, parents, family,
staff, and community members file
into the Ockley Green Middle School
auditorium. They are about to see a
presentation on how racial profiling
and stand-your-ground laws un-
fairly favor white killers over black
victims.
The assembly is a project of the
north Portland school’s Mock Trial
team, a campus group that studies
and re-enacts legal cases for stu-
dents interested in law and justice.
As the lights dim, student after stu-
dent goes on stage to give a presen-
tation and a slideshow begins on
the life and death of Trayvon Mar-
tin, the young African American
male from Florida killed two years
ago in a confrontation with George
Zimmerman, a so-called neighbor-
hood watch captain.
Members of the Ockley Green
team testify to the humanity of stu-
dents of color and ask the commu-
nity, and particularly law enforce-
ment, to take the lives of all people
PHOTO BY O LIVIA O LIVIA /T HE P ORTLAND O BSERVER
Reco Garland (left) and Rohan Singh from north Portland’s Ockley
Green Middle School describe their experiences learning about
Trayvon Martin’s death and the pitfalls of racial profiling and
stand-your-ground laws.
more seriously.
An overwhelming diverse school
with large black and Latino popula-
tions, the students share the feel-
ings of fear and discomfort they had
when Martin’s killer was set free.
And despite being shielded from
the news of the killing and subse-
quent trial by parents, many of the
students describe the Martin case
as their first real encounter with a
high profile murder of a young black
person.
Eighth grader Reco Garland
shared his experience, “I watched
the news, my parents were there
with me. I was sad he basically got
killed for no reason. I felt like I can’t
even go outside my house to go to
school. I was scared for life. It led to
a talk - a talk I learned black boys
have been getting for years.”
The talk is the warning many
young black males get about the
dangers of being mistakenly ac-
cused by police officers and other
continued
on page 8
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pages 10-14
C LASSIFIEDS
C ALENDAR
page 14
page 15
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