Barbecue Chef
Gets Much
Needed Help
Walking with
a Panther
Portland activist
Ken Ford is
portrayed in
new play
Neighbors rally to
keep operator in
business, housed
See Metro, page 6
See story, page 4
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Volume LII • Number 11
‘City
of
Roses’
www.portlandobserver.com
Wednesday • June 08, 2022
Committed to Cultural Diversity
‘Put Gun Control on the Ballot’
Leaders urge people
to sign petition
By Beverly Corbell
The Portland Observer
Passions are running high with shared
outrage as massacres involving high-pow-
ered guns continue to roil America and
deadly gun violence at home and across
the county reach record levels.
Gun control activists rooted in the
black community have joined Lift Every
Voice Oregon, a statewide group of inter-
faith leaders, to encourage others to join
them by adding their name to a petition to
put gun control on the November ballot.
A news conference to rally the cause
took place at Augustana Lutheran
Church in northeast Portland followed
the recent killings of 19 children and
two of their teachers at a Texas elemen-
tary school and the deaths of 10 Black
grocery store shoppers killed by an al-
leged white teenage racist.
Speaker after speaker at the church
shared their outrage at the massacres, and
they all had one goal: to get signatures on
their gun control petition.
Lift Every Voice Oregon has received
approval of titles for two ballot measures,
Initiative Petitions 17 and 18. They are
Photo by Beverly Corbell/The Portland Observer
Gun control activists rooted in the black community, including Rev. Mark Knudson
of Augustana Lutheran Church, are leading the effort by Lift Every Voice Oregon, a
statewide group of interfaith leaders, to encourage voters to sign a petition to put
gun control on the November ballot.
pushing for signatures on IP 17 for this
year, while they plan to bring IP 18 to the
state legislature in its next session.
Black activist and musician Marilyn
Keller, one of the three chief petitioners of
IP 17, shared her disgust with gun deaths,
saying she was “sick and tired of being
sick and tired, and we who believe in free-
dom cannot wait.”
If this petition doesn’t make it on the
ballot, Keller said, it would be another two
years before it can be attempted again.
“Can you imagine how many thousands
of lives could be lost in two years? I can.
I don’t want to see it,” she said. “Until the
killing of children, the killing of Black
people, of Jews, of Muslims, Ukrainians,
until the killing of other people is as abhor-
rent as us stepping into a pool of sewage.
We need to move. We need to move now.”
Keller said that Oregon is the only West
Coast state that doesn’t have “common
sense” gun laws.
“Washington has passed them, Califor-
nia has them at the legislative level,” she
said. “Will we stand still and allow this op-
portunity to pass without doing anything?”
Keller is urging everyone to visit liftev-
eryvoiceoregon.com to add their names to
the petition. People can print the signature
sheet, sign it and mail it back to the Life
Every Voice address on the website. They
are also asking for volunteers and dona-
tions to support the effort.
If the measure passes, according to the
website, it will require background checks
before a gun purchase, safety training, a
permit to acquire firearms, photo ID and
fingerprint for a state police firearm per-
Continued on Page 5
Historic Pick for US Attorney
Biden nominates first
Black, woman of color
President Joe Biden has nominated Na-
talie K. Wight to serve as U.S. Attorney for
Oregon. She would become the first Black
person and second Asian American to serve
as Oregon’s top federal prosecutor if con-
firmed by the U.S. Senate.
Wight is a 1992 graduate of Cleveland
High School where she was a Hall of
Fame athlete.
“It is an honor to be nominated and I
look forward to the confirmation process,”
she said in a statement.
Wight has served as an Assistant U.S. At-
torney for Oregon since 2012.
She previously worked as an Assistant
U.S. Attorney in Northern California and as
an attorney at the Federal Bureau of Prisons
from 2003 to 2008. She received her law
degree from the University of Notre Dame
Law School in 2003 and a master’s degree
in science from California State University
in 2000 and a bachelor’s degree in science
from the College of Idaho in 1996.
Wight was inducted into the Portland In-
terscholastic League Hall of Fame for her
accomplishments in soccer, basketball and
track while a student at Cleveland. In recent
years, she brought her expertise in the law to
the southeast Portland school to voluntarily
serve as a mock trial coach.
“We strongly support President
Biden’s nomination of Natalie Wight to
be the next U.S. Attorney for Oregon,”
Oregon Sens. Ron Wyden and Jeff Merk-
ley said in a joint statement. “She brings
an outstanding combination of leadership,
integrity, independence and community
connections to this crucial post. We look
forward to advancing her through the Sen-
ate confirmation process.”
Natalie K. Wight would become the first woman of color to become U.S. Attorney for
Oregon if confirmed by the U.S. Senate.