Portland observer. (Portland, Or.) 1970-current, July 01, 2015, Image 6

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    Page 6
New Prices
Effective
May 1, 2014
Martin
Cleaning
Service
July 1, 2015
O PINION
Carpet & Upholstery
Cleaning
Residential &
Commercial Services
Minimum Service CHG.
$45.00
$VPDOOGLVWDQFHWUDYHO
charge may be applied
CARPET CLEANING
2 Cleaning Areas or
more(DFK$UHD
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(Includes: 1 small Hallway)
1 Cleaning Area (only)
$40.00
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(Hallway Extra)
Stairs (12-16 stairs - With
Other Services)
Area/Oriental Rugs
$25.00 Minimum
Area/Oriental Rugs (Wool)
$40.00 Minimum
Heavily Soiled Area
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(Requiring Extensive Pre-Spraying)
UPHOLSTERY
CLEANING
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6HFWLRQDO
&KDLURU5HFOLQHU

7KURZ3LOORZV (With
Other Services)
ADDITIONAL
SERVICES
• Area & Oriental Rug
Cleaning
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• Deodorizing & Pet
Odor Treatment
‡6SRW6WDLQ
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• Minor Water Damage
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SEE CURRENT FLYER
FOR ADDITIONAL
PRICES & SERVICES
Call for Appointment
(503) 281-3949
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shapes our
society
S ARAH B ROWNING
When I say pub-
licly that I’m de-
scended from slave
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let the tension hang a moment
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someone has to be, right?”
This usually gets a laugh,
or at least a humph of recog-
nition. Because many of us
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to disassociate ourselves from
one of the founding horrors of
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“My family didn’t arrive un-
til after the Civil War,” some
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blame them? It’s a profoundly
shameful history.
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the structure of our society
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undoing its legacy. White peo-
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that the extreme race-based
BY
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es denied to others
based on their skin
color.
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labor of black peo-
ple sent me to Har-
vard.
My great-grand-
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ginia’s Rappahannock Coun-
ty during the Civil War. Like
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people, his family held onto
their land and barely compen-
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ended.
By the time my grandfather
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a farm in Culpeper, in central
Virginia’s fertile Piedmont re-
gion.
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dy started a real estate busi-
ness. He bought up land sur-
rounding Culpeper and put it
into a trust for his grandchil-
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my turn to go to college, my
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ley and a Baptist church, cov-
ering most of my tuition.
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credibly hard all his life, but
he had an enormous leg up
compared to his black neigh-
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he’d been given by his father.
And I inherited that advantage
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cation at private schools and
then attended an Ivy League
university.
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hands of some folks and not
others is perpetuated.
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leges accorded to us solely by
dint of our skin color.
Even if your family came
long after the Civil War, you
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EH IROORZHG RQ VXVSLFLRQ RI
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buy a house in their neighbor-
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day that your son could be
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and brothers are denied ba-
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nessed the murders of Tray-
von Martin and Eric Garner.
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violently subdue black teenag-
ers at a McKinney, Texas pool
party.
And, motivated by an ide-
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murdered nine black churchgo-
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² LQ D VWDWH WKDW VWLOO ÀLHV WKH
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mantle this oppressive sys-
tem? Part of this process must
be a reckoning, a truth-telling
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state of radical inequality.
'XULQJ WKLV WK DQQLYHUVD-
ry of the Civil War’s end, let’s
examine our history since that
time. Let’s set ourselves on a
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make amends.
At the very least, let’s be
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great-great grandparents may
have taken your ancestors and
held them as their property. It
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Sarah Browning is execu-
tive director of Split This Rock
(splitthisrock.org) and is an
associate fellow at the Insti-
tute for Policy Studies.