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About The skanner. (Portland, Or.) 1975-2014 | View Entire Issue (Feb. 22, 2012)
WWW . THESKANNER . COM F EBRUARY 22, 2012 P ORTLAND , O REGON V OLUME XXXIV, N O .8 25 CENTS INSIDE: Black History Special Edition C HALLENGING P EOPLE TO S HAPE A B ETTER F UTURE N OW Is Portland's bi-weekly garbage pickup a health hazard? By Helen Silvis Of The Skanner News P ortland’s move to every other week garbage pickup remains controversial. Critics say the city hasn’t answered their concerns over health and safety; feath- ered and furry scavengers, and how we’ll cope as soiled diapers and pet poop simmer for an extra week in the July sun. So, this spring, the city’s waste experts are sending an army of 500 volunteers and mas- ter recyclers into neighborhoods to visit 40,000 households – and help solve any stubborn garbage problems. But will they be able to prevent a summer of discontent? Take Dee L. Baker, who moved to East County because she wanted to live in a green and tree-filled neighborhood. She’d like it to stay that way, she says. “I love coming home and smelling the fresh air,” she says. “I love the green. I love the clean air. Now they’ve taken the garbage out of the dump and they’ve landed it in our community. People are not prepared for this. They should have given us a choice.” Baker, who is President of the Oregon Society of Tax Consultants, works from home. Her family consists of three adults and two children. After hosting guests for Thanksgiving, Baker said she was drowning in uncollected garbage. What’s more, her garbage collectors kept leaving bags by the road because her bin was over the weight limit. Then the holiday season brought extra packaging that could not be recycled. Baker got mad. So mad, that she fired off an email to 3,000 of her closest friends, urg- ing them to take their rotting garbage to City Hall. Return emails supported her call to action. Nevertheless, she quickly retracted, fearing such action would spell trouble. But that doesn’t mean she’s changed her mind about the policy. “It’s ridiculous,’ she says. “Back in the day, they would come to your house, get your garbage and take it away. Now they See TRASH on page 3 INDEX ‘KIDDIE RACIAL PROFILING’ Mom Tamberlee Tarver has spent months advocating for her son, Camron, at his North Portland school. She is working with other parents to educate the educators about the long-term impacts of excessive suspension and expulsion of Black students. PHOTO BY LISA LOVING Taking Out the Trash The ‘Schools to Prisons’ Pipeline Excessive suspensions, expulsions feed achievement gap, jails By Lisa Loving Of The Skanner News Part 1: Defining the Problem T amberlee Tarver’s son Camron has been sus- pended from his North Portland school nine times since last October. He’s run away from teach- ers, tried to run away from school, spit on a teacher and thrown papers on the floor. Camron has a short list of disabilities impacting his coor- dination and his ability to focus – and now has been diagnosed with an anxiety dis- order. A kindergartner, Cameron is five years old. “I’m currently looking for a therapist to undo some of the damage that’s been done so far – because my son’s turned into a whole different person,” Tarver says. Who knew that little kids could be kicked out of school? But a 2005 study by Yale Uni- versity found that in Oregon, preschoolers are expelled at twice the rate of school-aged kids, and that black toddlers are expelled at about twice the rate of their white counterparts – even higher than the national average Not only are the littlest African American students banished from classes at high- er rates than their teenaged counterparts, but nationwide, Black students are punished with classroom dismissals at a far higher rate than any other group throughout the K-12 system – especially if they’re in special ed programs. Yet, many researchers say, there is no evidence that Black kids act out more than any oth- ers. The dynamic has been known and recognized for generations, but many educa- tional policymakers have been slow to move on the evidence See KIDS on page 8 Celebrity Journalism Bad for Women News .............2,3,6,8,9 ‘The corporately defined standards of beauty remain very narrow’ Opinion ..................4,5 By Sean Duncan Special To The Skanner News A & E .........................7 Food........................10 Bids/Classifieds ........11 A journey to the grocery-store cashier often involves a trip down the celebrity magazine hall of shame. Whether you enjoy it or can’t believe the hype, you are showered with sensational headlines about the most intimate details of celebrities’ lives. Susan Douglas, author and professor at University of Michigan, discussed this at the University of Washington in Seattle on Feb. 15 in a special lecture entitled, “Starstruck: The explosion of celebrity jour- nalism and corrosion of the nightly news since 9/11.” “Beginning in the 1990s and accelerating wildly in the first decade of the 21st centu- ry, celebrity culture has moved from the margins of the mass media, into its oracles and ventricles,” Douglas said, contrasting it with the decline in international news con- tent. Douglas said one reason celebrity culture became popular is because, after 9/11, women were not celebrated in the world of politics, but their opinions and presence See CELEBS on page 3
