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About The skanner. (Portland, Or.) 1975-2014 | View Entire Issue (Sept. 7, 2011)
WWW . THESkANNEr . COM S EPTEMBEr 7, 2011 P OrTLAND , O rEgON V OLuME XXXIII, N O . 45 25 CENTS I NSIDE Community News page 2 Infant Mortality page 5 Black Power Mixtape C hallenging P eoPle to S haPe a B etter F uture n ow Weekend Shooting Injures 6 page 7 BumBershoot Advocates agree youth need more services, resources By helen Silvis of The Skanner News photo BY SuSaN FrIED S ix teens were shot and wounded on the porch of a house near the intersection of N. Albina and N. Jessup late Friday, and the victims were treated for non-life threatening injuries. Police called the mass shooting, with the largest number of victims this year, “noth- ing short of an ambush.” “It’s pretty amazing that nobody was killed,” said Portland Police spokesman Sgt. Pete Simpson. Investigators are seeking two shooters, both reported to be young Black men, who fled the scene on foot. The shots were fired at around 11:20 p.m. The injured teens are: 13-year-old Earnest Henderson, 16-year-old Deontray Henderson, 17-year-old Damarcus Stuart, 16-year-old Deshawn Crawford, 16-year- old Deaundre Willis and 16-year-old Howard Williams. The boys had recently left where they had been at the first football game of the season. Deontray, better known as B.J. Henderson, a junior, is a starting defensive end, and linebacker on ’s varsity football team. He was released from the hospital Tuesday, but won’t be playing football for some time, since he was shot in the leg and foot. Another shooting victim, D’Aundre Willis, told The Skanner he was doing well. “They released me out the hospital Saturday afternoon with a lot of meds,” he said. “I have off and on pains, but recovering fast.” Investigators and outreach workers believe the shooting is gang-related, part of an increase in youth violence during the last two years. Yet the victims were not involved with gangs. That’s according to Clayborn Collins, Ph.D., CEO of Emanuel Temple Community Services, who leads one of sev- eral community-driven efforts aimed at pre- Music Legend Mavis Staples and her band joined hundreds of other musicians, performers, dancers, comedians and artists over the Labor Day weekend at Bumbershoot, North America’s largest urban arts festival. The beautiful weather drew thousands of people to the Seattle Center to hear music and see performances by national and local artists. Back-to-School Shoppers, Higher Prices Retailers say rising cotton prices are largely to blame for cost hikes By chris Levister Special to the NNpa from the Blackvoicenews.com S chool aged kids have made their post Labor Day return to the classroom and the tell-tale signs of rising cotton prices and a sluggish economy are everywhere. “The prices are sky high, and the quality stinks,” says Lisbeth Rose-Scott, a mother of three school children. Tis’ the season of the back-to- school sale, second most impor- See ShootINg on page 3 INDEX News .....................2,3, Opinion ..................4,5 Food..........................6 A & E .........................7 Bids/Classifieds .......6,7 tant time on the retailer’s calen- dar after Christmas. Early indi- cations are consumers aren’t buying this year’s bevy of high- er priced merchandise from jeans to pencils. With costs for consumer goods and services from apparel to food and gas on the rise par- ents like Rose-Scott are back- to-school shopping at thrift stores and dusting off hand-me- downs. “I buy nice clothes for the kids at the beginning of the school year and halfway through they’re already worn out. Even their corduroy’s have holes in the knees. I can’t afford to keep throwing money down the drain.” Retail experts say manufactur- ers are “quietly” making clothes that are thinner and made with cheaper quality. Parents know this season bet- ter than anyone. Back to school shopping occurs from July through Labor Day, around the start of fall semester. Adver - tising for this heavy shopping time started earlier, with some stores cranking out ads in mid- June, when some schools were still in session for the spring semester. In August 2010, prime school shopping season, consumers spent a combined $7.4 billion at family clothing stores, accord- ing to the U.S. Census Bureau. Apparel, the season’s top-sell- ing category for school-aged children, is bracing for cotton cost inflation of as much as 20 percent, the first in at least a decade. The recent weeks’ price declines in the commodity don’t See prIcES on page 3 Johnell Bell: New Trimet Equity Chief Advisory boards, attention to minority contracting on agenda By Lisa Loving of The Skanner News T riMet’s new Director of Equity and Diversity Johnell Bell has worked his way up from the grassroots: as a Benson High School student he served on the Portland Public Schools Board; from there he became a coordinator of Multnomah County’s federally-subsidized summer food program; then a policy intern for former Gov. Ted Kulongoski; next, a community engagement project manager for former Mayor Tom Potter; a community liaison for Multnomah County Chair Ted Wheeler’s office; a policy analyst for the Multnomah County Health Department Health Equity Initiative; and most recently, a field representative for U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley. Now at TriMet, Bell takes the reins from former equity chief Bruce Watts. Bell is a member of the Black Executives Network and the Urban League of Portland. Along with Charles McGee Jr., he co- founded the Black Parent Initiative. Here Bell talks about his vision for a transporta- tion equity advisory group at TriMet, as well as hot-button issues including public See trImEt on page 3
