www . ThESkANNER . COM
A PRiL 13, 2011
P ORTLANd
V OLuME XXXiii, N O . 24
25
CENTS
i nSiDe
Ellis Marsalis
page 6
Palm Sunday Procession
page 7
Tax Scams
C hallenging P eoPle to S haPe a B etter F uture n ow
League
Lobbies
Salem
page 8
Still MiSSing
Urban League annual
event brings citizens
to the state Capital
PHOTO bY JuLie keefe
A
frican Americans from around the
state will gather at the Capitol in
Salem for a Legislative Action Day
April 19.
Co-sponsored by The Urban League of
Portland, Our Voices United, and the
Oregon Commission on Black Affairs, who
together are transporting more than one
hundred participants — including high
school students, community members,
organizations and seniors — to discuss with
legislators the Urban League’s legislative
priorities and concerns of the African
American community.
The overall focus of the event, organizers
says, is to promote access for African
Americans to family wage jobs, greater edu-
cational achievement, health and wellness,
stable homes and income, and culturally
proficient services.
As the Oregon Legislature decides how to
bridge a $3.5 billion budget gap, partici-
pants expect to advocate for retaining pro-
grams and services that benefit the most
vulnerable populations in the State.
“African Americans make significant con-
tributions to Oregon’s economy, culture and
prosperity,” Marcus C. Mundy, Urban
League president and CEO said. “Yet, we
face extraordinary challenges and inequities
in employment, health care, education, eco-
nomic opportunity, housing and in the crim-
inal justice and child welfare systems.
“The Oregon State Legislature is making
policy and budget decisions that impact our
lives, families and communities and its time
our voices were heard.”
The official Urban League of Portland
agenda includes:
—Racial Equity in Health: ensuring that
health care providers are culturally compe-
tent, and that the new Oregon Health
Insurance Exchange has a strong commit-
ment to language access, staff diversity, and
culturally competent health care.
—Racial Justice in Criminal Justice and
Child Welfare: reducing the over-represen-
Mourners held balloons and sported memorial t-shirts with photographs of Yashawnee Vaughn at the candlelight vigil
moment of silence/prayer April 2, before the balloons were set free in her memory.
The Exploiters of Missing Children
Psychics, lawyers, and more take advantage of families in crisis
by Lisa Loving
Of The Skanner News
A
child goes missing and
suddenly the grieving
family is approached by
an array of do-gooders offering
to help: psychics, lawyers,
search dog teams and would-be
spokespeople.
In the case of local teen
Yashawnee Vaughn, this past
week family members found
themselves with not one but two
spokespeople, plus a motorcycle
club, a K9 unit and a rapidly
See League on page 3
inDeX
News .................2,3,12
Opinion ..................4,5
A & E .........................6
Church ......................7
Economics .............8,9
Bids/Classifieds ...10,11
growing crew of Facebook sup-
porters, all offering to help in
the search.
Who can they trust?
“Anybody who inserts them-
selves into a situation like this
can be a rogue element,” says
Marc Klaas, whose daughter
Polly was abducted and mur-
dered in 1993.
Klaas has spent recent years
trying to bring the issue of miss-
ing child exploiters to the atten-
tion of law enforcement, but he
says there are few ways to do it.
“When we were looking for
my daughter the only ones we
had to deal with were the psy-
chics, the ambulance-chasing
attorneys, and the tabloid jour-
nalists — they were the ones
who would try to turn the situa-
tion to their own ends,” he says.
“Now you have a whole
industry that’s grown up and
goes on social media networks
and sets up bogus missing child
pages.
“It’s overblown.”
Online Communities Can
Help, Hurt
If you plug Michelle Bart’s
name into a computer search
engine, it’s as if there are two
women with the same name.
Numerous positive references to
her work with the women’s
advocacy group Soroptimist
International pop up. But so do
countless vicious blogs flaming
her stint as a spokesperson for
the grandparents of a Florida
girl named Caylee Anthony.
Anthony was 2 years old
when she disappeared in 2008,
and as Bart became the family
See miSSing on page 3
New Report Shows Banks Fail Customers
Consumer organization provides tips to shop for a better bank
F
ewer than half of Portland-area bank
branches fully disclosed their fees to
prospective customers, while one in
four provided no fee information at all –
despite the fact that such disclosures are
required by law, according to a survey of
more than 350 bank branches released this
week by the Oregon Student Public Interest
Research Group.
The report, Big Banks, Bigger Fees: A
National
Survey
of
Bank
Fees
(http://www.ospirgstudents.org/report/big-
banks-bigger-fees, includes consumer tips
and a local comparison shopping guide.
“Shopping for banks is harder when they
don’t obey the law and provide upfront
information about the fees they charge,”
said Jon Bartholomew, OSPIRG’s consumer
advocate.
OSPIRG also made a series of recommen-
dations to the Consumer Financial
Protection Bureau, which takes over most
consumer law writing and enforcement on
July 21.
The group called on the CFPB to enforce
the Truth In Savings Act, and to require
banks to post fees on the web in searchable
formats and make fee disclosures in a clear,
See bankS on page 9