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About Portland observer. (Portland, Or.) 1970-current | View Entire Issue (Dec. 2, 2015)
QR code for Portland Observer Online Forum Theater Weekend ‘Phenomenal Woman’ Interactive plays to focus on housing, racial profiling Survivor wins makeover from community supporters See story, page 13 See Metro, page 9 ‘City of Roses’ Volume XLIV Number 51 www.portlandobserver.com Wednesday • December 2, 2015 Established in 1970 Committed to Cultural Diversity Photo by o livia o livia /t he P ortland o bserver Emanuel Price, founder and president of Second Chances Are for Everyone, a Portland nonprofit that focuses on rehabilitating former prisoners. Success found in turning around lives of freed prisoners o livia o livia t he P ortland o bserver Emanuel Price sits at a north Portland café across the street from Portland Com- munity College watching students come and go from classes while grabbing lunch between breaks in the rain. He notices the students surrounding him, he says, be- cause he himself is learning, albeit in a different way. Over a decade ago, Price was a 19-year- old student back home for summer break after attending a historically black college in Virginia. A business management and finances major, he struggled to pay for his education, was anxious about not having by Second Chances are for Everyone his necessities covered, and worried about the big bite of debt that higher education would take out of him. Not wanting to ask his struggling moth- er for money, he took matters into his own hands one night when a group of students held up a convenience store at gunpoint. “I had never held a gun before,” he said. “I thought of it as a prop, I didn’t know how to use it.” His hopes and dreams as a young man were all lost in that fateful decision. The stolen money would not help him get back to Virginia, and he would later be arrested and plead out to four years in prison. And just like that, Price went from an honor roll student to a black felon, and had to rethink how he was going to spend the rest of his life. Price served his time and today he is C ontinued on P age 4