Opinion
Cogen: It’s About Confidence and Trust
“Challenging People to Shape
a Better Future Now”
B ERNIE F OSTER
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Reporter
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Page 4 The Portland Skanner
I
n his role as Multnomah
County Chair Jeff Cogen has
done good work. Despite
shrinking government rev-
enues, Cogen championed the
social welfare safety net and
kept the books balanced.
Under his leadership, the coun-
ty has made a significant com-
mitment
to
equity
in
contracting, hiring, and justice.
It has built one of the best
health departments in the
country.
Much more remains to be
done in all those areas. And
we’ve been disappointed in the
county’s lack of outreach on
disaster preparedness.
It’s true that in most circum-
stances, having an affair is not
a firing offense. If it were, we’d
see a lot more people losing
jobs. But Cogen’s mistakes
were far more than a private
stumble that’s best sorted out
in family therapy or with pas-
toral support. The affair
between county boss Cogen
and his subordinate Sonia
Manhas hurt the county and its
employees.
Cogen has denied pulling
strings to promote Manhas to a
top job in the health depart-
ment. And we’d like to make it
clear that we believe Manhas
deserved her position.
E DITORIAL
The Skanner News
Nevertheless their affair has
created the perception that
power was abused.
been called out by an anony-
mous letter.
Nobody likes being lied to or
taken for a fool. County employ-
ees don’t like it. County com-
missioners don’t like it. And
neither do voters.
So even though law does not
require it, it’s hard to see how
But the crux of the matter is that
Cogen has lost the confidence and
trust of his colleagues and the public
But that’s just part of the
harm done. For more than a
year, Cogen and Manhas main-
tained a secret affair, manipu-
lating their work environment to
carve out time together, blur-
ring the lines between work
and romance, traveling togeth-
er on more than one occasion.
Their colleagues have a right to
feel betrayed.
It’s clear they had passion for
their work. But it’s unclear
where that passion left off and
their passion for one another
started. It’s also unclear if the
affair would have stopped had
their reckless behavior not
Cogen can justify holding tight
to his job when Ms. Manhas
was forced to quit hers. After all,
both are adults and Cogen was
in the more powerful position.
Cogen denies any misuse of
county funds and resources.
But even if the criminal investi-
gation agrees, his ability to lead
has been irreparably damaged.
Unfortunately, Cogen is no
longer the man for the job. Last
week all four of his colleagues
asked him to resign. He
refused. As an elected official
that is his right. He answers to
the citizens of Multnomah
County and no-one else.
But the crux of the matter is
that Cogen has lost the confi-
dence and trust of his col-
leagues and the public. He
simply can’t continue supervis-
ing 4,500 employees under that
cloud. That leaves him no other
alternative. Chair Cogen you
should resign.
What do you think?
Post your comment on articles in The Skan-
ner News at www.theskanner.com
Focus on Poverty, Not the Middle Class
S
everal of us were sharing
our views on radio Sunday
night with Gary Byrd when
my friend and colleague Cash
Michaels urged us to remember
that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
was assassinated while organizing
poor people.
This is a good time to remember
that as President Obama seeks
ways to strengthen the middle
class and civil rights leaders focus
on celebrating the 50th anniver-
sary of the Aug. 28, 1963 March
on Washington.
The idea of organizing a Poor
People’s Campaign was discussed
during a Nov. 27-31, 1967 South-
ern Christian Leadership Confer-
ence (SCLC) planning session in
Frogmore, S.C. With the nation’s
attention focused on the Vietnam
War, Dr. King wanted to redirect
the conversation to what the Bible
calls the least among us by focus-
ing on jobs and income.
Dr. King’s idea was to bring
poor people from all over the
country to Washington, D.C. in
order to put a face on the suffering
of people. While still firmly com-
mitted to nonviolence, his plan
was for a dramatic presence that
would disrupt traffic and shut
down the nation’s capital.
“We ought to come in mule
carts, in old trucks, any kind of
transportation people can get their
hands on. People ought to come to
Washington, sit down if necessary
in the middle of the streets and say,
‘We are here; we are poor; we
don’t have any money; you have
made us this way,’” King said.
“And we’ve come to stay until you
do something about it.”
Just as his close advisers had
urged him not to give his “I Have
a Dream Speech” in 1963, varia-
July 31, 2013
T HE C URRY
R EPORT
George E.
Curry
tions of which they had heard ear-
lier, most of Dr. King’s inner circle
disagreed with his decision to
embark on a Poor People’s Cam-
paign.
Children activists and former
civil rights attorney Marian
Wright Edelman recalled in her
book, Unfinished Business,
dollars necessitated smaller cam-
paigns in the South.”
But Dr. King forged ahead, call-
ing for $30 billion to be spent on
anti-poverty measures, employ-
ment and housing construction.
King was helping organize
garbage workers in Memphis
when he was assassinated. Ralph
D. Abernathy, his successor and
close friend, continued with plans
for the Poor People’s Campaign.
Instead of the militant protest
Dr. King had envisioned, however,
the highlight of the Poor People’s
March to Washington was not
shutting down the capital, but the
erection of Resurrection City, a
collection of tents pitched in D.C.
Various executive agencies were
Most of Dr. King’s inner circle
disagreed with his decision to embark
on a Poor People’s Campaign
“William Rutherford, who had
organized the Friends of SCLC in
Europe in 1966 and was appointed
executive director of SCLC during
the summer of 1967, declared that,
‘basically almost no one on the
staff thought that the next priority,
the next major movement, should
be focused on poor people or the
question of poverty in America.’
At the time James Bevel wanted to
remain focused on combating
slums in northern cities, Hosea
Williams promoted voter registra-
tion campaigns in the South, Jesse
Jackson wanted to continue to
develop Operation Breadbasket,
and Andrew Young worried that
SCLC’s budget of under a million
lobbied on behalf of the poor and
leaders called for an Economic
Bill of Rights. The shantytown
was disbanded after six weeks.
In the view of many observers,
Dr. King posed a greater threat to
the power structure when he began
organizing poor Blacks and
Whites. But there is an even better
opportunity to unite poor people
today because so many Whites
have become impoverished as a
result of a recession and high
unemployment.
Poverty is officially defined as a
family of four living off of
$23,021 or less a year. Today, a
record 46.2 million people –15
percent of the U.S. population –
are considered poor. The Associat-
ed Press reported:
For the first time since 1975, the
number of White single-mother
households living in poverty with
children has surpassed or equaled
Black ones in the past decade.
Since 2000, the poverty rate
among working-class Whites has
grown faster than among working-
class non-Whites, rising 3 percent-
age points to 11 percent.
Still, poverty among working-
class non-Whites remains about
double that of Whites.
Mark Rank, a professor at Wash-
ington University in St. Louis,
believes Dr. King was on to some-
thing when he sought to unite poor
people across racial lines.
“Poverty is no longer an issue of
‘them,’ it’s an issue of ‘us.’ he told
the Associated Press. “Only when
poverty is thought of as a main-
stream event, rather than a fringe
experience that just affects Blacks
and Hispanics, can we really begin
to build broader support for pro-
grams that lift people in need.”
This is no time to keep Dr. King
frozen in the memory of the 1963
March on Washington or his “I
Have a Dream” speech while
neglecting his true calling to erad-
icate poverty five years later. As
he said, “If you can’t fly then run,
if you can’t run then walk, if you
can’t walk then crawl, but whatev-
er you do, you have to keep mov-
ing forward.”
George E. Curry, former editor-
in-chief of Emerge magazine, is
editor-in-chief of the National
Newspaper Publishers Associa-
tion News Service.