All Things
Being Equal
Warming
Heads and
Hearts
Artist explores
discrimination
in popular
culture
Diverse sewing
group gives back
See Metro, page 6
See A&E, page 7
Established in 1970
‘City
of
Roses’
Volume XLVIII • Number 40
www.portlandobserver.com
Wednesday • October 9, 2019
Committed to Cultural Diversity
photo by b everly C orbell /t he p ortland o bserver
Mingus Mapps, a public policy consultant and former employee in Portland’s Office of Civic Life, is running for the Portland City Council, challenging his former boss
Portland City Commissioner Chloe Eudaly. Mapps lives in the Buckman neighborhood where he is raising his two sons.
In the Middle of a Fight
Candidate opposes former boss and code change push
b everly C orbell
t he p ortland o bserver
A proposed change to city code by City Commissioner
Chloe Eudaly to lessen the power of neighborhood associ-
ations to better serve diverse and underserved populations
has become a contentious issue. One of Eudaly’s chief
critics is her former employee, public policy consultant
Mingus Mapps, who plans to run for her seat.
Eudaly fired Mapps last summer, unjustly he says, but
by
that’s not why he is running.
“I’m not running because of Chloe,” he said. “I’m run-
ning because of what I think I can bring to the job. In
terms of this specific process, no one, including the com-
missioner, is saying the process worked well and is right.
So I don’t think there’s any debate that something is seri-
ously off the rails here.”
Mapps is a southeast Portland resident with deep com-
munity ties. He was the fourth member of his family to
graduate from Reed College. He has a PhD in government
from Cornell University and before work for the city of
Portland he was employed by the Portland School District
and Multnomah County.
Eudaly’s push to change city code has advocates in
Portland’s communities of color, including leaders from
the Latino Network, the Portland African American Lead-
C ontinued on p age 4