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About The skanner. (Portland, Or.) 1975-2014 | View Entire Issue (Aug. 31, 2011)
www . THEskANNEr . COM A ugusT 31, 2011 P OrTLAND , O rEgON V OLuME XXXIII, N O . 44 25 CENTs I NSIDE Labor Day=Jobs Day page 4 Child Poverty page 5 Zendaya C hallenging P eoPle to S haPe a B etter F uture n ow County official says Kyeron Fair ‘not beaten by jailers’ lisa loving of The Skanner News A teenager hospitalized in the Oregon Health and Sciences University car- diac intensive care unit last year while in Multnomah County Sheriffs cus- tody, has suffered a mental breakdown dur- ing plea bargaining on Measure 11 charges against him. Kyeron Fair, 18, was taken by his family to Providence Behavioral Health in Portland Tuesday and admitted for treatment. Fair’s court-appointed attorney, Gary Bertoni, had been negotiating with the Multnomah County District Attorney’s office, discussing a possible plea deal. The attorney was pushing for an 8-month jail sentence for charges that Fair was present during the armed robbery of an alleged pot dealer, Fair’s mother told The Skanner News. In his original Measure 11 charges, Fair was not suspected of holding a gun or driv- ing a getaway car, but rather accompanying others who did. Since his release on bail last February, Fair – who has no prior legal record — has followed through with counseling, parole hearings, court dates and drug tests, in addi- tion to enrolling at Grant High School for Fall, 2011. His arrest and subsequent physi- cal and mental health problems caused him to miss what would have been his senior year at Parkrose High School. Throughout, he has maintained that he did not participate in the alleged robbery, and that he could not remember exactly how he ended up in the ICU. “The pressure of these plea negotiations was just too much,” his mother, Kelli Jarrell, told The Skanner News. “Eight months? For what? He never hurt anybody. They are nickel-and-diming him. “Now he doesn’t know what day it is, you wouldn’t recognize him if you saw him,” Jarrell said. Summer League The Jamal Crawford Foundation summer ProAm featured an incredible line up of professional and college all stars like Nate robinson, Jamal Crawford, Isaiah Thomas, and Tony wroten Jr., Aug. 27 and 28 at the rainier Vista Boys and girls Club. On saturday the summer league Hawks played the Mavericks followed by a close game between the Bulls and the sonics. sundays festivities included a three point shootout and slam dunk contest, followed by an all- star game. Muslims Feel Targeted by Terror Policies Report details harassment, targeting by law enforcement, others By Hope Yen the associated Press WaSHINGtoN (aP) — More than half of Muslim Americans in a new poll say government anti-terrorism poli- cies single them out for increased surveillance and mon- itoring, and many report increased cases of name-calling, threats and harassment by air- port security, law enforcement officers and others. Still, most Muslim Americans say they are satisfied with the See tEEN on page 3 INDEX News ......................2,3 Opinion ..................4,5 A & E ......................6,8 Bids/Classifieds ..........7 PHoto BY SuSaN FrIED Teen Back in Hospital page 6 way things are going in the U.S. and rate their communities highly as places to live. The survey by the Pew Research Center, one of the most exhaustive ever of the country’s Muslims, finds no signs of rising alienation or anger among Muslim- Americans despite recent U.S. government concerns about homegrown Islamic terrorism and controversy over the build- ing of mosques. “This confirms what we’ve said all along: American Muslims are well integrated and happy, but with a kind of linger- ing sense of being besieged by growing anti-Muslim sentiment in our society,” said Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Washington, D.C.- based Muslim civil rights group. “People contact us every day about concerns they’ve had, particularly with law enforce- ment authorities in this post- 9/11 era,” he said. Muslim extremists hijacked four passenger planes on Sept. 11, 2001, crashing them into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field in Shanksville, Pa. In all, 52 percent of Muslim Americans surveyed said their group is singled out by govern- ment for terrorist surveillance. Almost as many - 43 percent - reported they had personally experienced harassment in the past year, according to the poll released Tuesday. That 43 percent share of peo- ple reporting harassment is up See tError on page 3 PCC Offers Black Literature Courses Professors join to examine African Diaspora within the classics J ust about everyone knows that African American musicians have put their stamp on music everywhere. That’s true in America, where Gospel, blues, jazz, rock and Hip Hop were born, but it’s also true around the globe. What’s less well known is that Black writers also have exert- ed a powerful influence on world literature. That’s the territory Portland Community College instructor Consuelo Romanski will explore in a class on offer this fall. Romanski will teach English 256, which studies early African American literature, from 1p.m. to 2:50 p.m. Mondays and Wednesdays on the Sylvania campus. She says she will focus on both the African American experience and the international influence of Black writers. “A lot of people have read ‘The Three Musketeers,’ but very few know that its author Alexander Dumas had African ances- try,” Romanski said. “That’s just one exam- ple of the international reach of the writers we will be discussing.” PCC’s Christopher Rose will teach anoth- er class, English 258, which looks at African American literature from the Harlem Renaissance to the present day. That class is See lItEraturE on page 3
