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About Portland observer. (Portland, Or.) 1970-current | View Entire Issue (April 4, 2018)
April 4, 2018 Page 15 Issues Raised at Black Voices Candidates’ Forum C ontinued from P age 6 “It doesn’t make sense that we have 88 people who have died in our streets last year when we have a building we spent $100 million for and that we spend $500,000 a year to maintain and has no one is in it,” she said. Emmons said he agreed with Smith on Wapato, and doesn’t think the city is doing nearly enough to ease the housing pres- sures. He released his own com- prehensive housing plan last week, called the Portland Home Project. “I don’t think the mayor is pri- oritizing homelessness enough,” he said, despite a recent bond measure that will create 1,300 more apartments. “There are 25,000 people who are in need of affordable housing,” Emmons said. “We see after four years hardly any change in home- lessness and hardly any change in affordable housing,” he said. “I want to turbocharge our bond dollars and our public monies to get as much housing built as pos- sible.” Jo Ann Hardesty, a former state representative who stepped down from her role as president of the Portland NAACP to seek the city office, agrees. “We have way too many people living on the streets, and our solu- tion has been to criminalize them or warehouse them,” Hardesty said. “We need affordable housing in every neighborhood in the city of Portland.” Felicia Williams, a history pro- fessor, said she has worked on a diversion program for the “hard- core homeless” and found after a survey that their greatest need was for medical care, followed by housing, substance abuse help and mental health treatment. “So when we’re talking about homelessness and housing issues, we need to understand that it’s a public health issue instead of just a shelter issue,” Williams said. “If we’re going to be sending money from the city budget over to the county we need to make sure it’s going to go into a position or the resources necessary to break the cycle of homelessness. “That’s our job: to protect our people,” she said. Williams said she grew up poor in South Dakota, one of 15 kids, and joined the Air Force after high school where she spent five years managing crisis situations. She’s also been a neighborhood associ- ation leader, “in the trenches,” for years, she said. “I’ve seen what the city does well and what the city does very badly,” Williams said. “I know how to reach consen- sus. I know how to get unanimous votes,” she said. “There are things we need for fix. I want you to sup- port me to get things done.” While Hardesty and Smith are both African American, Valderra- ma said she is a first-generation Peruvian American and is con- cerned about police racially pro- filing residents in her low-income neighborhood. “I come home to an area where I don’t see sidewalks and my own family is at risk of being profiled,” she said, questioning what “equity lens” the city is using to keep it- self accountable. Emmons said one way that City Hall can help increase racial equity is to support training in the building trades in high schools. “If we want to have more mi- nority-owned businesses we need to support schools and support those projects,” he said. Hardesty said she was “very disappointed” with a lack of ac- complishment from the city’s Of- fice of Equity and Human Rights, which she was on a panel to help form a few years ago. “What has happened in the city of Portland is they hired 1.5 staff persons and made them the equity coordinator so that the director, the elected official, is no long account- able for eliminating racial inequita- ble outcomes that are systemic in the city of Portland,” she said. Hardesty also discussed gentri- fication and hate crimes. She said gentrification was pushing black residents to the edges of the city who are then pe- nalized with higher transportation costs. She said public transporta- tion should be free. “We’d rather criminalize peo- ple for not having $2.50 rather than creating a world-class transit system that is made for the people who are most transit dependent,” Hardesty said. Valderrama said she’s been the target of hate crimes, with white supremacists showing up at her school board meeting, receiving death threats, and having her car vandalized. “The fear is real and something I personally experienced she said. “I’ve also heard testimony from parents who are scared of being deported, and who are afraid to get medical services.” Hardesty claims there are white supremacists in the Portland Po- lice Bureau and that city leaders have been “deathly silent” about racism in the ranks. “As an African American wom- an, we need leadership that’s not going to pretend that we’re not living this reality,” she said. Hardesty also criticized leaders for not doing more to protect un- documented residents. “Let’s stop telling people we’re a sanctuary city. There’s absolute- ly nothing sanctuary about the city of Portland and Multnomah Coun- ty We have to fight this as a com- munity and I would love to see us developing a new underground railroad,” Hardesty said. June Key Delta Candidates Forum The Portland chapter of the historic black so- rority Delta Sigma Theta and Portland’s AARP invite the public to join them for a forum with candidates running for the Portland City Council on Wednesday, April 11 at the June Key Delta Community Center, located at 4940 N. Albina Ave. and Ainsworth Street, across from Penin- sula Park. The forum will begin at 6 p.m. and there will be a social time proceeding the session at 5:30 p.m. All six candidates running for the post to replace current City Comissioner Dan Saltzman, who is retiring at the end of the year, have been invited. Candidates confirming their plans to attend are Jo Ann Hardesty, Loretta Smith, Andrea Valder- rama, Felicia Williams and Stuart Emmons. Together, we do good things. TM This page is sponsored by Oregon Lottery R April 2018 C alendar SUNDAY MONDAY TUESDAY WEDNESDAY THURSDAY 1 2 3 4 5 International Chil- dren’s Book Day Easter April Fool’s Day One Cent Day 8 Trina Schart Hy- man born, 1939 9 Robert E. Lee sur- rendered (1865) Find-A-Rainbow Day First iPad sold in the U.S. in 2010 10 Encourage a Young Writer Day National Sibling Day First U.S. flag ap- proved (1818) 11 President Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act, 1964 National Read a Road Map Day Educator Booker T. Washington born, 1856 12 Space Shuttle Columbia First Launched - 1981 FRIDAY SATURDAY 6 7 North Pole Discov- ered In 1898 U.S. entered World War I (1917) 13 3rd President Thomas Jefferson born, 1743 No Housework Day World Health Day, established 1948 14 Webster’s Dictio- nary Published, 1828