August 22, 2018
Page 13
Opinion articles do not necessarily represent the views of the Portland Observer. We
welcome reader essays, photos and story ideas. Submit to news@portlandobserver.com.
O PINION
Disarm Portland State Campus Police Now
More guns
multiply
the risks
l ew C hurCh
Jason Washington: Say his
name! At Portland State this sum-
mer, Jason Washington, an Af-
rican-American grandfather and
a 20-year-veteran worker at the
U.S. Post Office, was shot and
killed by two campus cops outside
the Cheerful Tortoise bar. As I said
on my KBOO radio program, this
shooting makes me ashamed to
have gotten my Masters degree
(M.Ed., 2005) from what activist
students now call “Police State
University.”
There will be a community fo-
rum on police accountability and
interactions between the house-
less and immigrant communities’
vis-à-vis local police on Saturday,
Aug. 25 at 4 p.m. at the PSU Chit
Chat Café, 1907 S.W. Sixth on the
Green Max next to Hot Lips Pizza.
The speakers and invited speakers
include Luis Balderas-Villagrana,
president of the Associated Stu-
dents of PSU and a Dreamer; city
council candidates JoAnn Hard-
esty and Loretta Smith; police
officials Chief Danielle Outlaw
by
and union president Daryl Turn-
er; Kayse Jama of Unite Oregon;
representatives from houseless
groups Sisters of the Road and
Street Roots; and Jason Washing-
ton family members. The forum is
structured to be a polite conver-
sation, with Q and A, focused on
compassionate solutions.
Since the death of Jason Wash-
ington at PSU, Don’t Shoot Port-
land and Black Lives Matter,
along with PSU Student Union,
have advocated for disarming the
campus police force. Students
advocated against arming the
campus cops three years ago, but
were overruled by then-universi-
ty president Wim Wievel. After
the shooting, students activists
protesting the misuse of force at
school joined city council candi-
dates JoAnn Hardesty and Loretta
Smith in a protest at downtown
Portland’s Pioneer Square.
Jason was the one person trying
to defuse a fight situation outside
the Cheerful Tortoise when he was
killed, yet the decision was made to
shoot the peacekeeper in that situ-
ation. In her excellent commentary
(Arming Teachers Makes Matters
Worse, Portland Observer, Aug. 1
issue) Basura Ismail, a conflict res-
olution student and mother of two,
eloquently pleads for sensible gun
laws, including less guns at our
schools. As we know, the Trump-
NRA forces have argued -- incor-
rectly -- that putting more guns at
schools will “improve” an already
unsafe situation.
The shooting this summer at
Portland State also demonstrates
why it is a mistake to even put
guns into the hands of campus
safety personnel. As a grad stu-
dent in the PSU School of Educa-
tion and someone who has been on
the inside teaching history at two
schools with hundreds of students
each day, Benson and Franklin,
more guns and more bullets only
serve to multiply the likelihood of
injury or death.
One of the reasons we held
a pro gun control conference at
PSU, funded by a grant I wrote
from the McKenzie River Gath-
ering Foundation, was to broaden
and deepen the efforts started by
national gun safety groups like
Sandy Hook Promise and Every-
town for Gun Safety. I also was
able to go with Portland Moms
Demand Action (six moms plus
me) to Earl Blumenauer’s office
to present thousands of postcards
for gun safety and speak with the
congressman for a half hour in his
office.
At PSU, Black Lives Matter!
And the two campus cops who
shot Jason Washington -- Shawn
McKenzie and James Dewey --
are still on the PSU payroll, as of
this writing. What’s wrong with
this picture? Moreover, Portland
police union president Daryl Turn-
er recently stated that believes,
due to the homeless problem, that
Portland has become a “cesspool.”
Mayor Ted Wheeler has come un-
der fire from both police and pro-
testers -- for not doing enough.
As we enter the campaign for
the November General Election,
there is even a pro-profiling ballot
measure on the ballot, against Or-
egon’s sanctuary city law -- a law
which Republican gubernatorial
candidate Knute Buhler says he
supports!
Are immigrants, houseless
folks, and black and brown peo-
ple simply being marginalized,
even more than in the past, by
the Trump-NRA alliance? It is
little surprise to some of us that
Trump’s largest corporate dona-
tion in the 2016 presidential elec-
tion -- some $30 million -- came
from the National Rifle Associa-
tion, now headed by the notorious
Oliver North.
But what is to be done, and who
is responsible in the case of Jason
Washington? First off, firing the
two officers is the first step. Sec-
ondly, Wim Wievel, the former
PSU president who pushed to arm
campus police, bears responsibili-
ty, although he has switched jobs
and now makes $600,000 a year
as president of Lewis and Clark
College.
The current PSU president,
Rahmat Shoureshi is responsible,
ultimately for everyday campus
safety and allowing campus secu-
rity officials to “carry” on campus.
The best defense PSU has is a sta-
tistic: 90 percent of 3,000 colleges
in Estados Unidos have cops with
guns. But, like Trayvon Martin,
and the far too many others like
him, and now Jason Washington
-- people who are shot and killed
by either private security guards,
college cops or regular police --
are not statistics!
Jason was a real person and
he will live on in the memories
of friends, family and coworkers.
But no matter how much people
will treasure his memory that is
but cold comfort to knowing that
Portland State chose to enable this
unacceptable loss.
Lew Church is coordinator
of Portland Gray Panthers and
founding publisher and editor of
the activist papers, PSU Rear-
guard and PSU Agitator.
Moral Imperative to Support Refugee Resettlement
Grave concerns
about the soul of
our nation
Editor’s note: The following
commentary is from Ecumenical
Ministries of Oregon:
Ecumenical Ministries of Or-
egon—a statewide, ecumenical
and interfaith organization—along
with Catholic Charities and Luther-
an Community Services have been
resettling refugees in Oregon for
many decades. Religious organi-
zations dedicate themselves to this
work because each of our traditions
speaks with moral clarity about our
responsibility to love, to protect,
and to welcome the “stranger” in
our midst.
As people of faith, this is not an
option, it is a command. The Bible
says in Leviticus, “When a stranger
sojourns with you in your land, you
shall not do them wrong. You shall
treat the stranger who sojourns with
you as the native among you, and
you shall love them as yourself.”
As Americans we value chari-
ty, hospitality, tolerance and jus-
tice. Read the words enshrined on
the Statue of Liberty, the United
States’ great symbol of welcome to
the refugee: “Give me your tired,
your poor, Your huddled masses
yearning to breathe free … Send
these, the homeless, the tempest
tossed to me …”
Today we come together with
grave concerns about the very soul
of our nation. The number of dis-
placed people in the world has nev-
ically. During the 2016 fiscal year,
under the Obama Administration,
110,000 refugees were resettled in
the United States. Last fiscal year,
the Trump Administration reduced
that number to a historic low of
45,000.
In Oregon, over 67,000 ref-
ugees have been resettled since
2003. However, those numbers
have fallen sharply since the Trump
seeking to dismantle the entire
refugee resettlement system in our
country. This is un-American, and
it is unacceptable.
It is unconscionable that the
United States, in a time of unprec-
edented crisis, should turn its back
on the suffering of ordinary people
fleeing extraordinary adversity. We
implore the Trump Administration
to increase the number of refugee
Make no mistake, the Administration is seeking
to dismantle the entire refugee resettlement system
in our country.
er been higher. By the end of 2017,
there were over 68 million forcibly
displaced people in the world, in-
cluding 28.5 million refugees.
Yet, in each year of his presi-
dency, Donald Trump’s Adminis-
tration has drastically reduced the
number of refugees who are al-
lowed to seek safety in our country,
as they flee persecution, oppression
and war.
In just two years, the number of
refugees allowed to resettle in the
United States has been cut dramat-
Administration’s immigration poli-
cies took effect in 2017. During the
2016 fiscal year, 1,780 refugees
were resettled. At the end of June
2018, with just three months left in
the fiscal year, only 465 refugees
have been resettled in our state.
It has recently been reported
that the Administration is consid-
ering lowering the number of refu-
gee arrivals to the United States in
the coming fiscal year to anywhere
from 15,000 to 25,000. Make no
mistake, the Administration is
arrivals to 75,000.
Our refugee resettlement agen-
cies provide vital and on-going
services to our refugee population
once they arrive. This marginalized
community has many barriers to
overcome in order to reach their
full promise and potential in their
new homes. If refugee resettlement
agencies are forced to shut down,
the safety net for our refugees with
be gone.
To deny the world’s most vul-
nerable people their last hope of
living and thriving in safety is to
deny our common humanity. This
is not who we are. Our hearts are
heavy for refugees who believed
our promise to them; for their fam-
ily members who are here and des-
perately waiting to be reunited with
their sister, brother, parent or child;
and for the spiritual poverty of a
nation that would close its borders
to a world in need.
We are resolved today to contin-
ue standing in solidarity with our
refugee and immigrant brothers
and sisters. Together with our part-
ners and the many communities of
welcome across the country, we
will not waver in pursuit of all op-
tions at our disposal, so that we can
continue serving and protecting
refugees, regardless of where they
are from or how they pray.
Ecumenical Ministries of Ore-
gon is a statewide association of
Christian denominations, congre-
gations, ecumenical organizations
and interfaith partners working
together to improve the lives of Or-
egonians through community min-
istry programs, ecumenical and
interreligious dialogue, environ-
mental ministry and public policy
advocacy.