Local News
Foreclosure
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frame the conversation. He said people facing foreclosure
are conditioned to feel like losers but challenged the group
to examine how banks got control of their land in the first
place. Particularly, Umi notes that many major banks prof-
ited from slavery.
“Banking systems started by selling insurance premiums
There were gasps, groans and
plenty of head shaking after
Frederick’s anecdote
on my ancestors,” he says. “How did they get in the moral
position to tell you that you have to pay them to live there,
and if you can’t do it because something happened in your
life that you didn’t plan on, that there is somehow some-
thing wrong with you?”
Representative Lew Frederick of House District 43
echoed these sentiments and explained the legislative side
of the foreclosure discussion.
Last week, Governor John Kitzhaber signed SB 1552,
which requires banks to meet with homeowners facing fore-
closure or who are underwater on their mortgages in
mandatory mediation. It also allows homeowners to meet
with housing counselors before mediation. Lastly, it out-
laws dual track foreclosures, where banks negotiate the
terms of a loan with homeowners while simultaneously
beginning the foreclosure process.
Frederick also took aim at Mortgage Electronic Registra-
tion Systems (MERS).
“You need to know about MERS,” he says. “If you don’t
then you don’t understand the package of things that are
taking place.”
Frederick says MERS is a black box. If you buy a house
for $200,000, he says you could end up spending $300,000
over the course of the sale. The sale is listed as $200,000,
so the bank sees the extra $100,000 as profit. Portions of
this profit are sold off, betting you’ll pay the mortgage.
Meanwhile, the bank also puts insurance derivatives against
you paying your mortgage and sells them to hedge funds. In
the end you could have 200 people owning a portion of the
sale and the electronic system will list the property at $2
million.
There were gasps, groans and plenty of head shaking after
Frederick’s anecdote.
Both Umi and Mahaffy expressed the need for foreclosure
victims to stay in their houses. They pledged to give assis-
tance with filing legal complaints and providing rapid
response teams to stay with foreclosure victims in the event
the Sheriff shows up.
Mahaffy noted that there are a number of steps that can be
taken before resistance. One of the more unconventional
efforts he shared was when his group went to the Sheriff’s
Attendees at the foreclosure forum talked about
finding help ‘you can trust.’
Department in December and sang fake Christmas Carols
(“We wish you won’t evict us” instead of “We wish you a
merry Christmas”). He says the effort contributed to a short
term moratorium on foreclosures during the holiday season.
Mahaffy also suggested house meetings, making foreclo-
sure stories viral and canvassing around neighborhoods.
“It’s knocking on your neighbor’s door,” he says. “Their
issue may not be foreclosure. It may be about hunger. Or it
may be about jobs. It’s all interconnected and we want to
involve everyone to make a change in the community.”
We Are Oregon and ONE gather for joint canvassing 5
pm every Thursday at Reflections. ONE holds meetings
every Saturday at 1 pm and Frederick holds town hall meet-
ings every second Saturday at 9 am at Reflections.
Tubman
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discourage them from fighting to keep the
school open – as they have twice before.
Jyothi Pulla, a Tubman mom and power-
house behind the effort to save the school,
said this week that parents had contacted
Gov. John Kitzhaber’s office to file a com-
plaint but that they didn’t learn about that
option until days before Monday’s vote.
“Yes, some of us have filed complaints,
but it was hard to get a whole lot of parents
on one day,” she said. “We did not know
until Saturday night, that that was what we
were supposed to do.”
Repeated calls from The Skanner News
for comment from Gov. John Kitzhaber’s
office on the school closure went unre-
turned. Kitzhaber last month rolled out a
new education plan requiring districts to
sign achievement contracts with the state
specifying the student achievement they are
striving for, but critics say the plan offers no
guaranteed state funding to meet those
goals.
Pulla posted frequently about Tubman’s
organizing effort on the Oregon Assembly
for Black Affairs listserv, asking for support
and advice from the community that has
watched school closure fights play out for
decades.
“We did everything they asked us to do in
the short amount of time, found staffing
alternatives to take the cuts, offered to help
with enrollment, raised $110,000, but they
are rolling ahead,” she wrote Monday. “I
know many of you have fought these fights
over the years and know a whole lot more
than an outsider like me would know, but it
doesn’t make any sense to me, any which
way I look at it.”
While several candidates for office
have spoken this season on the need for
STEM education (science, technology,
education and math), of the top three
mayoral candidates, only one returned
The Skanner News’ request for com-
ment on the closure: Jefferson Smith.
“Tubman is part of Portland,” Smith
said. “The school has shown success
educating our next generation of lead-
ers in STEM fields, and we need to
work with families and community leaders
to develop a solution — instead of coming
in with a decision seemingly already made.
“I am heartened to hear that community
members are stepping in and offering to
help build the school’s enrollment base, and
we need to give Tubman a chance to lever-
age that assistance,” Smith said. “If we’re
going to bring equity to our city, we have to
make sure our budgets match our priori-
ties.”
At a “study session” two weeks ago State
Sen. Chip Shields, Rep. Lew Frederick and
Portland City Commissioner Amanda Fritz
all appealed to members of the school board
not to close Tubman, offering new
resources and warning that closure of
STEM-focused schools will hurt the local
economy.
that you can start something on your own,”
says Martens. “It doesn’t take as much as it
took 20 years ago. With a few people at an
event like this you can assemble a team and
get a minimum viable product out by Sun-
day night.”
Startup Weekend is a global charitable
organization founded in 2007 by Oregonian
Andrew Hyde in Boulder, Colo. Now it’s
headquartered in Seattle, Wash.
It’s had over 450 events in more than 300
cities in 90 plus countries. There are more
than 45,000 alumni and 5,000 plus ventures
that have been started.
On Friday night, participants make open
mic pitches to sell their ideas and recruit
team members. Since there are over 100
attendees, PDXSW lets everyone vote up to
three times to narrow the list down to 15.
Saturday and Sunday are used as work-
days. By Sunday night, the teams
demonstrate prototypes and get feedback
from a panel of experts. Afterwards, the
experts designate four winners.
There are four different categories for
winners.
First, there is an overall winner and then
there are three subcategories for other out-
standing startups.
One subcategory is Customer Validation,
which refers to talking to customers and fig-
uring out how much they would be willing
to pay for the product. Martens says it’s
important so companies build something
“We’re where the rubber meets the road
and because of that, we are seen as the dis-
trict that keeps taking things away.”
Pulla said Tuesday on the OABA listserv
that the Tubman families are organizing a
“Tubman day,” and that the students have
created a Youtube channel called the Tub-
man News Network (TNN) to continue
agitating for the school, and for a more
inclusive district budgeting process.
She shared a letter she said she’d
mailed to school board members after
their vote Monday night.
“From the time of the announcement
to the vote today, we had 20 days,” she
wrote. “The process with which this
whole thing was pushed through, with-
out a dialogue with the stakeholders,
violates the basic principles of democ-
racy.
“You started dismantling Tubman long
before the board vote tonight, and may
move on to the next order of business
tomorrow, but the young women at Harriet
Tubman will continue to speak out,
until they find an answer to the question,
what would it have taken to keep Tubman
alive?”
‘What would it have taken to
keep Tubman alive?’
But it all boils down to money – and the
state and federal governments’ defunding of
public schools in a down economy.
“In short, it rolls down hill,” says Portland
Public Schools spokesman Matt Shelby.
“Inadequate state funding translates into
budget cuts at the district which translates
into staffing cuts at schools,” he said. “For
schools that already have too few staff, that
means closures and/or consolidations.
Business
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tion.
At PDXSW developers, designers, mar-
keters, product managers and startup
enthusiasts are all encouraged to purchase
tickets, which come in three different cate-
gories: for graphic designers, software
developers and non-technical participants
(lawyers, salesman, finance people, etc.).
The main event is Apr. 27-29 at the Port-
land State Business Accelerator. Some of
the main speakers, mentors and judges
include Bill Lynch, co-founder of Jive Soft-
ware; Scott Kveton, co-founder and CEO of
Urban Airship; Jim Huston, manager of
Portland Seed Fund; and Monica Enand, co-
founder and CEO of Zapproved.
“It shows people that are out of the job
customers want instead of developing a
product in a vacuum.
Another category is Business Model.
Martens says PDXSW isn’t interested in
“stereotypical revenue projections.” The
judges for this subcategory are looking for
things like prices, analysis of the competi-
tion and whether you would charge as a
service.
Lastly, participants can win in Execution,
-- developing a tangible product. Martens
says it doesn’t have to be fully functional
but the panel of experts does want to see a
basic prototype.
Read the rest of this story online at
www.theskanner.com
April 25, 2012 The Portland Skanner Page 3