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Speaking on
the Black
Experience
Turiya Autry, a local artist, author
and educator who brings a strong wom-
an’s perspective to the Black experience
in America will be the featured speaker
during a creative writers series event at
the Washington State University cam-
pus in Vancouver.
Autry encourages social change and
creativity by incorporating the arts, pop
culture and history within the context
February 26, 2020
of personal, community and political
struggles. She is a positive motiva-
tional force who has been inspiring
audiences of all ages for two decades
as a teaching artist, creative writer and
performer.
The free and open to the public
event is sponsored by the WSU-Van-
couver council on equity, diversity and
inclusion. It starts at 7 p.m. on Tues-
day, March 3 in the Library building
on campus, 14204 N.E. Salmon Creek
Ave. A reception will follow the talk.
Turiya Autry brings
a strong woman’s
perspective to the Black
experience in America.
Guilty on All Counts
C ontinued froM f ront
unintended consequences of a new law in
Oregon lowering the threshold for cases el-
igible for the charge of aggravated murder.
He also could be eligible for parole after 30
years because of the new law instead of no
possibility of parole.
Christian killed Taliesin Namkai-Meche
and Ricky Best by stabbing them in the
neck. He also was convicted of attempt-
ed murder for stabbing survivor Micah
Fletcher in the neck. The jury also found
him guilty of assault and menacing for
shouting slurs and throwing a bottle at a
black woman on another light rail train the
day before the May 26, 2017, stabbings.
The stabbings’ racial undertones shook
Portland, which prides itself on its liberal
and progressive reputation but also grap-
ples with a racist past that included limits
on where black families could live and a
neo-Nazi community so entrenched that
the city was once nicknamed “Skinhead
City.” The deaths also came weeks after
a black teen was run down and killed by
a white supremacist in a Gresham conve-
nience store parking lot — a case that also
grabbed headlines.
In the days after the stabbing, photos
and video surfaced showing that Christian
had recently attended — and spoken at —
a rally hosted by a far-right group called
Patriot Prayer, whose periodic political
events were already causing tension in the
city. He was captured on camera making
the Nazi salute while wearing an Amer-
ican flag around his neck and holding a
baseball bat.
On Facebook, his prolific posts slammed
Portland as a place so politically correct
that his right to free speech was constantly
under assault. Those beliefs were front and
center in the courtroom, too, when Chris-
tian told the judge on the first day of trial
that he would wear his jail-issued blue uni-
form instead of a suit because to do other-
wise would be like lying.
“I don’t care how much time I spend in
prison,” he said. “All I care about is the
public gets to see and hear what happened
on the train.”
According to prosecutors, Christian
boarded the train during the evening com-
mute on May 26, 2017, and began shouting
racist, anti-Muslim and xenophobic slurs at
the two young black women. One was an
immigrant from Somalia and wore a Mus-
lim headscarf. Some witnesses said Chris-
tian in his outburst made a slicing motion
across his neck and mentioned decapitat-
ing people.
As his tirade continued, Christian
grabbed Namkai-Meche’s cellphone and
threw it to the ground. Defense attorneys
argued that Namkai-Meche had first ap-
proached Christian and was trying to film
the tirade, which made him feel cornered.
Authorities say another passenger, Fletch-
er, stood up to intervene and got into a shov-
ing match with Christian, who was taunting
the men to “do something” to stop him.
Christian stabbed the men 11 times in
11 seconds. He would later tell a court-ap-
pointed psychologist during mental health
evaluation that he felt like he was on “au-
to-pilot,” according to court records.
He was arrested a few blocks away.
--Associated Press contributed to this
story.