November 18, 2015
The
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INSIDE
Week in Review
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L OCAL N EWS
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O PINION
photo from b laCk l ives m atter p ortland
A Black Lives Matter banner hangs over a highway overpass in Portland. The Oregon Department of
Justice is under fire for surveillance of activists using the online Black Lives Matter hashtag.
Activists Profiled
Attorney General orders investigation
o livia o livia
t he p ortland o bserver
Racial justice activists in Port-
land and across the state are left
wondering if they too have been
illegally profiled by the Oregon
Department of Justice after it
came to light that at least one de-
partment official was investigated
for using the Black Lives Matter
hashtag.
The matter came to light last
week when Nkenge Harmon John-
son, head of the Urban League of
Portland, along with seven oth-
er civil rights leaders and labor
rights activists, sent a letter to
Oregon Attorney General Ellen
by
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ENTERTAINMENT
F OOD
mon Johnson’s letter said. “We
do know, however, that Director
Johnson was one of them. Be-
cause he had posted tweets using
that hashtag, he was identified
under the Oregon Department of
Justice’s threat assessment pro-
cess.”
Under those same guidelines,
the Portland Observer and sever-
al of its current and former news
contributors would have also been
identified for investigation as us-
ers of the social media hashtag.
Rosenblum’s office and the
Urban League of Portland did not
C ontinued on p age 5
Clamp Down on Tobacco Adopted
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M ETRO
C LASSIFIEDS
C ALENDAR
Rosenblum, demanding an inves-
tigation.
Nkenge’s husband, Erious
Johnson, the director of Civil
Rights for the Oregon Depart-
ment of Justice, was one of the
Oregonians profiled as part of a
threat-assessment program.
Johnson was called to a meet-
ing earlier this month where he
learned that an investigator in his
department used software to fol-
low the Twitter feeds he and other
Oregonians made referencing the
Black Lives Matter hashtag.
“We do not know how many
Oregonians were investigated by
the Department of Justice,” Har-
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The Multnomah County Com-
mission has adopted an ordinance
designed to reduce minors’ access
to tobacco products.
The law requires retailers to
obtain a license before selling
tobacco and will ensure better
enforcement of minimum age re-
quirements, officials said.
Multnomah County has the
highest rate of illegal tobacco
sales in Oregon where an esti-
mated one in three retailers have Loretta Smith
been found to have sold cigarettes
“We know that the vast major-
to minors in 2014, according to a ity of adult smokers start using
state report released this year.
tobacco before they can legal-
ly purchase it,” Commissioner
Loretta Smith said. “Without a
system to enforce minimum age
laws, we’re turning our backs on
our children whose bodies are es-
pecially vulnerable to a lifetime
of addiction.”
Tobacco is the leading cause of
tobacco-related illness in Oregon,
and with the rising popularity of
e-cigarettes, nicotine intake has
skyrocketed among youth.
The ordinance, adopted last
week, provides training for mer-
chants and clerks prior to imple-
menting compliance checks.