WWW . ThESkANNEr . COm
S EPTEmBEr 21, 2011
P OrTLAND , O rEgON
V OLumE XXXIII, N O . 47
25
CENTS
i nSide
Davis Injustice
page 4
‘Sister Citizen’
page 5
Toure
C hallenging P eoPle to S haPe a B etter F uture n ow
Troy
Davis
Execution
Help
witH
Jobs
Worldwide protests
held in advance of
Georgia inmate’s
By Greg Bluestein
The associated Press
The effort by local Black workers to
help others make sure their job bids
are filled out and submitted correctly
comes amidst a long struggle against
discrimination on the waterfront
dating back almost 60 years.
PHOTO BY SuSan Fried
aTLanTa (AP) — Troy Davis support-
ers in the U.S. and Europe were trying just
about anything to spare him from lethal
injection Wednesday evening for killing an
off-duty Georgia policeman, a crime he and
others have insisted for years that he did not
commit.
Supporters planned vigils around the
world. They’ll be outside Georgia’s death
row prison in Jackson and at U.S. embassies
in Europe.
At presstime Wednesday morning, the 42-
year-old’s most realistic, though slim,
chance for reprieve is through the courts,
and his lawyers are trying. His backers have
tried increasingly frenzied measures: offer-
ing for Davis to take a polygraph test, urg-
ing prison workers to strike or call in sick,
posting a judge’s phone number online, urg-
ing people to call and ask him to put a stop
to the 7 p.m. execution. They’ve even con-
sidered a desperate appeal for White House
intervention.
“We’re trying everything we can do,
everything under the law,” said Chester
Dunham, a civil rights activist and talk show
host protesting in Savannah, where in 1989,
prosecutors say Davis fatally shot 27-year-
old Mark MacPhail.
Davis’ supporters include former
President Jimmy Carter, Pope Benedict XVI
and a former FBI director, the NAACP, as
well as conservative figures. The U.S.
Supreme Court even gave him an unusual
opportunity to prove his innocence last year,
but ultimately didn’t hear the merits of the
case.
Several witnesses have recanted their
accounts that it was Davis who pulled the
trigger, and some jurors have said they’ve
changed their minds about his guilt. Still,
prosecutors and MacPhail’s family have
staunchly backed the verdict and state and
federal courts have repeatedly upheld his
page 8
Longshore Workers Job Event
Boisterous crowd fills Reflections to counter history of racism
A
bout 100 prospective
longshore
workers
thronged Reflections
Coffee and Books Tuesday
morning at 11 sharp to make
sure their application cards
were filled in correctly for the
Portland Maritime Association
“casual worker” jobs lottery.
African American employ-
ees of the PMA held the event
on their own time, staffing the
help table on their lunch hour,
then trading off with other
workers scheduled to come
down, in turn, when their
lunch hour arrived.
The effort by local Black
workers to help others make
sure their job bids are filled
out and submitted correctly
comes amidst a long struggle
against discrimination on the
waterfront dating back almost
60 years.
“It’s a big deal because most
of what we’ve been talking
about locally is the opportuni-
ty for Blacks to have free
access to the economic devel-
opment of Oregon,” said
Portland City Council candi-
date Teressa Raiford, who
attended the Tuesday help ses-
sion at Reflections.
“A lot of these guys who are
here now – we’re talking about
past generations of family
members who were also long-
shoremen but this generation
has been kept out of that pool.”
unfair Practices
African Americans have
filed lawsuits and grievances
alleging exclusion and unfair
hiring practices by longshore-
men’s unions down the stretch
of the West Coast, including
the Portland waterfront.
A key legal decision in 1964
forced the first desegregation
of the International Longshore
Workers Union Local 8, allow-
ing 50 African American
workers to be hired.
In Portland, critics charge,
unfair practices continued
until a group of six casual
workers filed an Equal
Employment
Opportunity
See wOrkerS on page 3
See daviS on page 3
indeX
News ................2,3,5,6
Opinion .....................4
A & E ......................5,8
Food..........................6
Bids/Classifieds .......6,7
East Portland Champ Jefferson Smith
Candidate for Mayor of Portland speaks on his priorities if elected
Helen Silvis
Of The Skanner news
I
f East Portland was a city it would rival
Eugene for the title of Oregon’s second
largest. It would likely be the most
diverse city in Oregon, and the youngest.
Almost 40 percent of Portland’s school-age
children live east of 82nd Avenue. And stu-
dents in David Douglas School district
speak 73 different languages.
These are just a few of the facts I learn
from State Rep. Jefferson Smith, the East
Portland champion who has just announced
he is running for Mayor of Portland. Two
days after launching his mayoral campaign,
Smith arrives at Heavenly Donuts on 102nd
Avenue, wearing a black eye patch that
makes him look like a strangely clean-cut
pirate.
The reason for the patch? Skip this if
you’re squeamish. Pulling a late night work
session with his wife Katy, he kept going so
long that his contact lens “fused with” his
eye. At least that’s what he discovered
when he removed the lens, and pulled off
patches of sensitive cells from the surface of
his eye. Ouch! The injury didn’t make him
See SmiTH on page 3