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