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About The skanner. (Portland, Or.) 1975-2014 | View Entire Issue (Sept. 21, 2011)
www . ThESkAnnEr . CoM S EpTEMbEr 21, 2011 S EATTlE , w AShingTon V oluME XXXiii, n o . 47 25 CEnTS I NSIDE ‘bridesmaids’ page 2 ‘Sister Citizen’ page 5 Toure page 6 C hallenging P eoPle to S haPe a B etter F uture n ow Troy Davis Execution Helping Vets Worldwide protests held over Georgia inmate’s fate By Greg Bluestein The associated Press PHOTO BY SuSaN FrIED Volunteer Michelle Echols cuts the hair of Ann Merwin at the 1st Annual Seattle Stand Down Sept. 15 at Seattle Central Community College. The event provided a “hand up” to veterans and their families with a variety of services including eye exams, health screenings, education and employment information provided by more than 50 organizations and agencies. Tacoma Teacher Strike Continues Gov. Gregoire commands both sides to hammer out agreement OLYMPIa, Wash. (AP) — Washington Gov. Chris Gregoire has told both sides in the Tacoma teachers strike she wants an agreement by 3 p.m. Wednesday or she wants to see them in her office. The governor has no direct control of schools in Washington, which has a sepa- rate superintendent of public instruction, but Gregoire wants kids back in the classrooms, her spokesman Cory Curtis said. “There is no question that the Tacoma teacher strike has con- tinued for far too long - disrupt- ing the lives of families and the 28,000 students who need to be in school,” Gregoire said in a written statement. Wednesday is the seventh day classes have been canceled in the state’s third-largest school district. Seattle’s and Spokane’s school systems are larger. Talks broke down Tuesday night. Issues include pay and class size, but the major sticking point is how the district handles teacher transfers. The district wants to consider some factors INDEX news ........................2,4 Calendar ....................2 opinion .......................3 bids/Classifieds............3 in addition to seniority. Last week a judge ordered teachers to go back to work. The decision came following arguments by the Tacoma School District that 19 different state courts have ruled teacher strikes illegal since 1976. Pierce County Superior Court Judge Bryan Chushcoff said he would issue a temporary restraining order against the picketing teachers, but the lan- guage of the order wasn’t expected to be decided until later Wednesday. Hundreds of teachers began picketing in front of Tacoma’s major high schools Tuesday after contract negotiations broke down over the weekend. The strike has kept 28,000 students home. The school district said it would wait until it sees the lan- guage of the order before decid- ing whether classes would resume on Thursday. Gregoire said she wanted dis- trict and union negotiators to stay in her office “until their dif- See STrIkE on page 3 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. As The Skanner News webnt to press a temporary injunction had been issued by the US Supreme Court, but the final fate of Davis remained up in the air. 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 See DavIS on page 3 black longshore workers hold help Event A boisterous crowd fills Portland cafe in bid to counter racist history 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 employees of the PMA held the event on their own time, staffing the help table on their lunch hour, then trad- ing 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 opportunity for Blacks to have free access to the economic development of Oregon,” said Portland City Council candidate 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 fam- ily members who were also longshoremen See wOrkErS on page 3
