local news
Mayor
continued from page 1
and a diverse citizenry of 589,000 people.
And while Portland has countless strengths,
our city also faces serious challenges as we
weather the storm of what’s become known
as the “Great Recession”.
Portland’s official unemployment rate
stands at 10 percent overall. And as the
Urban league’s State of Black Oregon
report and Portland State’s Communities of
Color report documented, those rates are far
higher for Portland’s African American
community.
The Skanner News asked Brady, Hales
and Max Brumm to identify the major chal-
lenges facing the next mayor of Portland.
Both Brady and Hales identified jobs as
their number one priority.
“My number one focus is the economic
vibrancy and jobs for the city,” Brady said.
“Without that underlying prosperity we
won’t be able to pay for the good school
system that we need and all of the social
services that support our city. That’s the fire
in my belly.”
“Maybe our city is in good shape, but our
people are not,” Hales told The Skanner.
“We have a lot of people out of work and we
are not building jobs fast enough.”
Brady said parents she met at the Black
Mayoral Candidates
Max Brumm
Charlie Hales
Eileen Brody
Parent Initiative spoke to her about the
need for stable family-wage jobs. “They
said, ‘If you as mayor go out to recruit
companies to Portland, can you please
recruit companies that actually have jobs for
people here – as opposed to recruiting com-
panies that then have to turn around and
recruit people to come and work for them,’”
she
said.
“So I will be aware of the skill base that this
city has to offer and be mindful of helping
the people here develop a meaningful career
and a stable income through family wage
jobs.”
Hales said creating jobs means supporting
existing small businesses as well as new
businesses. “Ninety percent of job growth is
generated by small businesses,” he said. “So
we need to create a climate where small
bBrady and Hales both identified increasing
support for small business as a vital strate-
gy.
Hales says, if he becomes mayor, he will
concentrate on improving the climate for
existing small businesses, specifically,
“Everything from working on the permit-
area. The area contains a high percentage of
substandard housing and a high rate of
unemployment.”
Portland won the grant, and demolition of
buildings began in the late 1960s. Within a
few years the federal money ran out for
Emanuel Hospital expansion – after the
demolition was complete.
ghettoized and, finally, scattered.
And the same thing happened all over the
country.
“In cities across the nation, urban power
brokers, with the help of the federal govern-
ment, eagerly engaged in central-city revi-
talization after World War II,” Gibson wrote
in “Bleeding Albina.” “Luxury apartments,
convention centers, sports arenas, hospitals,
universities, and freeways were the land
uses that reclaimed space occupied by rela-
tively powerless residents in central cities,
whether in immigrant White ethnic, Black,
or skid row neighborhoods.”
ting process and streamlining it, to making
sure the transportation system works for
everyone, to building incentives for people
to grow businesses here. If the city does its
job well and focuses on core services then I
think businesses notice.”
Brady said many people want to start their
own businesses and the city should do more
to help. “We have a wonderful entrepre-
neurial spirit here in Portland. Being an
entrepreneur takes a certain kind of person,
but if you’re that kind of person it’s well
worth it,” Brady said. “But it’s hard to fig-
ure out how to get started: How do you get
a bank loan? How do you negotiate the per-
mitting process at the City? How do you set
up your board of directors?
Brumm said he wants to see better com-
munication and coordination between city
bureaus, which he says is the basis for a
more efficient use of city funds. “City
bureaus need to be able to talk to each other
and work together as a whole,” he said.
Brumm identified mismanagement of
funds at city hall as his number one priority.
He pointed to the recent controversy over
the water and sewer budget.
Read the rest of this story online at
www.theskanner.com
Avenue
continued from page 1
tear-down of more than 450 homes and
businesses.
It was also the year federal officials
approved highway construction funds that
would pave Interstates 5 and 99 right
through hundreds of homes and storefronts,
destroying more than 1,100 housing units in
South Albina.
By 1962, the PDC’s “Central Albina
Study” earmarked the area as “beyond reha-
bilitation.” The city document “History of
Portland’s African American Community
(1805-to the Present).”
“Clearly, urban renewal, largely clear-
ance, appears to be the only solution to, not
only blight that presently exists in central
Albina, but also to avoid the spread of that
blight to other surrounding areas.”
The Polk’s Guide for that year shows
scores of vacant properties along North
Williams.
When it came time for local officials to
win grant funds from the federal govern-
ment to expand Emanuel Hospital, the 1966
grant application read, in part: “There is lit-
tle doubt that the greatest concentration of
Portland’s urban blight can be found in the
Albina area encompassing the Emanuel
Hospital. This area contains the highest
concentration of low-income families and
experiences the highest incidence rate of
crime in the City of Portland.
Approximately 75 percent to 80 percent of
Portland’s Negro population live within the
Cause and Effect
Contrary to popular belief, ghetto neigh-
borhoods are not a chance occurrence, nor
are they the natural evolution of “old hous-
Contrary to popular belief, ghetto
neighborhoods are not a chance
occurrence, nor are they the natural
evolution of ‘old housing stock’
ing stock” that hasn’t been properly main-
tained by its owners.
In her ground-breaking study, “Bleeding
Albina: A History of Community
Disinvestment, 1940-2000,”Portland State
Urban Studies Adjunct Professor Karen J.
Gibson detailed how municipal develop-
ment policies, coupled with racism in the
real estate and banking industries, left
Portland’s Black community segregated,
The study includes quotes from oral histo-
ries gathered decades earlier about the
region’s history.
“Oregon was a Klan state—it was as prej-
udiced as South Carolina, so there was very
little difference other than geographic dif-
ference,” said early civil rights leader Otto
Rutherford, in 1978.
Gibson says her historical research uncov-
ered a memo penned by a PDC official reas-
he plans to leave university life and concen-
trate on his diversity work. Oregon has a
long way to go when it comes to race and
diversity issues, Ross said.
“There’s a reason people of color are leav-
ing Oregon. Oregon hasn’t moved fast
enough – right now in this state diversity is
a tomorrow issue. I want to be somewhere
where it is a today issue.”
People of color also need to rethink some
of their outdated thinking habits, he said.
“We are very easily divided. The Latino
community and the Black community in
Oregon are looking at almost identical edu-
cation statistics. How come the Black and
Latino community don’t lobby together?
They would double their powers.
“And in Oregon, Asian Americans face
the same challenges –that’s a reverse on the
national picture. We know this from the
Communities of Color report. So how come
these three groups don’t advocate together?
“It’s only our fault if you and I don’t work
together. There’s nobody else to blame.”
Ross will weave in knowledge he’s gained
from other sources, such as the Brookings
Institute report on Metropolitan America
and the Human Development report from
suring the federal Housing and Urban
Development department about racial con-
cerns in tearing out the homes and business-
es for Emanuel Hospital expansion in the
early 70s.
“The whole transition has been racial,”
Gibson told The Skanner News this week.
“People paid taxes in Albina – what did they
get for their taxes?”
In 1956 area banks could legally deny
loans to any Black customer who applied,
making the NAACP Credit Union — one of
North Williams’ lost storefronts – a particu-
larly poignant marker.
“Race was used, and the stagnation and
redlining was racially based,” Gibson said.
“The whole thing has to do with race, and
it has to do with real estate.
“White privilege means something – it
means a difference in wealth and the fact
that you could just come in and take over
the boulevard,” Gibson said.
Gibson says anyone weighing in on the
current citizens’ advisory process for North
Williams Avenue transportation safety
should read the 1993 Albina Community
Plan drafted under the leadership of then-
Portland Planning Bureau Commissioner-
in-charge Charlie Hales, who is now run-
ning for mayor.
Read the rest of this story online at
www.theskanner.com
Who
continued from page 1
this, but the problem is that there’s no dia-
logue.
“Our inability to have these dialogues is
killing us.”
He points to the rise of hate groups and
open racism, at the same time the country is
led by its first Black president. “What we
are seeing now is what used to be hidden,”
he says. “It is very blatant. People are not
hiding their ‘isms.’”
The Director of Community and Diversity
at Oregon State University since 2004, Ross
is also the founder of the diversity and
social justice website Mosaic Nation. Now
the Social Services Research Council.
Sponsored by the National Forum of
Black Public Administrators and Diverse
Empowered Employees of Portland, the
presentation is part of a series of discussions
Ross developed through his work on
American diversity. He says he will finish
writing his book, also titled, ‘The Changing
Face of America’ during the next 6 months.
Look to see it in bookstores next year.
Presentation: The Changing Face of
America with Dr. Terryl Ross 11:30 am to
1 pm Aug.16, Pettygrove Room, Portland
City Hall.
august 10, 2011 The Portland Skanner page 3