Activists Profiled
Oregon Department
of Justice
surveillance
under fire
QR code for
Portland Observer
Online
See Local New, page 3
Professors
in Poverty
Oregon
adjuncts relate
to message
in new film
See Metro, page 9
‘City of Roses’
Volume XLIV
Number 49
www.portlandobserver.com
Wednesday • November 18, 2015
Established in 1970
Committed to Cultural Diversity
photo by o livia o livia /t he p ortland o bserver
A new community-led billboard along Northeast Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard makes a plea to speak up and help bring justice to the families of murder victims.
Cold Case Murders Confronted
New campaign
urges witnesses
to come forward
photo by o livia o livia /t he p ortland o bserver
Taunya Mayo, a grieving mother who lost her son to an unsolved murder in October, embraces Antoinette
Edwards of the Portland Office of Youth Violence Prevention, during a meeting to launch a campaign pleading for
witnesses to come forward with information on homicide cases.
by o livia o livia
t he p ortland o bserver
A long-standing tension between police and black resi-
dents when it comes to witnesses coming forward is being
addressed with a new billboard campaign.
Enough is Enough PDX, a community-led group aimed
at encouraging people to take a stand against deadly vio-
lence, has put forward the new statement: Someone Needs
Information That Can Help – or abbreviated, “SNITCH”
– a loaded term usually referring to informants or people
willing to take information directly the police.
The history of police brutality, discrimination towards
African Americans in law enforcement, and acts of retri-
bution from violent gangs, has created a culture of fear –
fear to confront crime sometimes in community, but also
fear to trust police with sensitive information.
For decades, the term ‘snitch’ hasn’t just been a derisive
C ontinued on p age 4