Local News
Assault
Honored at St. Andrew
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her life and we just need to find the person
who did this, so he can be brought to jus-
tice,” Guinn said.
As Krystal’s father, a local real estate
agent with deep roots in North and North-
east Portland, describes what happened to
her at Black Book that night, his voice
“They were all filtering out of the club,
he’s grabbing on her butt, trying to keep it
going. She turned around, had enough of
that, pushed him off of her – get-the-you-
know-what away from me. I guess a drink
spilled on him, something happened, and he
punches her in the eye.”
Krystal’s family took her to the
hospital, where she received
stitches to her badly swollen eye.
“He detached her retina, shat-
tered her contact lens that she
wears because when she was a
baby she was born with congenital
cataracts,” Guinn says. “He dis-
lodged one of the cataracts in her
eye as well, so this is turning into
a situation where she may or may
not gain full sight in that eye
again, even though she already
needed a lens there just to see.”
Guinn says Krystal remains
father home.
“She really can’t do anything on
her own right now, she’s mentally
scarred, fragile right now,” he said.
Guinn says Krystal’s doctor gives her
about a 20 percent chance to regain full
sight in her eye. “With her contacts she was
20/20, they said the best she could probably
get is 20/200, which is no quality of sight in
that eye.
— Chris Guinn III, Krystal’s
shakes with emotion.
“There was this guy in there who was
harassing her, sexually at first, putting his
hands on her and grabbing her trying to get
her to dance. She wasn’t responding to him
in that fashion and told him to go away. He
kept on; basically she got tired of it.
PHOTO COURTESY ST ANDREW’S CHURCH
She’s afraid, she can’t work,
she had to quit school, she
couldn’t start her last term in
college because this
happened right before she
was about to go back –
which caused her to lose
her health insurance as well
St Andrew’s Church last week honored beloved parishioner Edna Hicks
with its Martin Luther King Jr. Award. A retired teacher, Hicks co-founded
the African American Catholic Community-sponsored vacation Bible
college 30 years ago at Immaculate Heart Parish, helping hundreds of
local youth remain focused during the summer break. She is also an
original member of St. Andrew’s Gospel Choir, which started in the 1980s.
Together with her husband, Oscar, who passed away in 2011 after more
than 50 years of marriage, Hicks joined St. Andrew’s in 1972.
Pimps
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arrested but are accused of sex trafficking a
minor, as well as transporting the minor for
prostitution. The DOJ says it is not naming
them until they are in custody.
“Until now, successful pimps reaped all
the rewards with none of the risk, while the
girls and young women they manipulated
faced a life of violence and abuse,” said
Sex trafficking is much more than just a law
enforcement problem. This is an issue that our
shared community must both acknowledge
and address
— Kevin Rickett, FBI
Kevin Rickett, Acting Special Agent in
Charge of the FBI in Oregon. “Operations
such as this one show the FBI can make a
difference, but sex trafficking is much more
than just a law enforcement problem. This is
an issue that our shared community must
both acknowledge and address.”
Ture
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Mississippi and Alabama. In 1966 he was
elected SNCC’s national chairperson and
soon afterward he became internationally
known for his articulation of “Black
Power.”
The Skanner News spoke with Umi last
week on the life and legacy of Ture (1941-
1998) and why the respected Civil Rights
figure’s work resonates today.
TSN: I bet a lot of young people today
have never heard of Kwame Ture. What
made you decide to celebrate him?
Umi: The important thing about Kwame’s
life is that he was always dedicated to
organized struggle. He understood, and he
constantly preached the message, that
change comes about through mass partici-
pation. So if a law is passed that represents
forward progress – if something gets done
— there’s always a movement behind that.
Kwame was in the Student Nonviolent
Coordinating Committee, when he left that
one he was in the Black Panther Party, when
he left that — when he moved to Africa —
he was a member for the rest of his life of
the All African Peoples’ Revolutionary
Party, so he constantly promoted that.
The other thing that’s important about
Kwame’s life is he was totally committed to
integrity and principal. Here’s a man who
was internationally renowned for his partic-
ipation in the Civil Rights Movement. He
could have become a mayor of any big city,
he could have become a chancellor of any
large university like the political contempo-
raries that he had at the time – people like
John Lewis, Jesse Jackson, etc – but instead
he chose to move to Guinea, which is one of
the poorest countries in the world, no elec-
tricity, no running water. He chose to live
the last 30 years of his life dedicated to the
revolutionary principals in organizing work
that he was committed to.
the United States, he went to Temple Uni-
versity in Philadelphia. Nkrumah, who was
a member of Phi Beta Sigma fraternity,
returned to Ghana and led the independence
movement there and became president of
that country. Nkrumah talked all the time
about how we have differences wherever
we’re born, but our similarities outweigh
our differences.
Kwame ... was always dedicated to organized
struggle. He understood, and he constantly
preached the message, that change comes
about through mass participation. So if a law is
passed that represents forward progress – if
something gets done — there’s always a
movement behind that.
TSN: There’s another piece that comes
into play, and that is the African and African
American divide. Can you talk about that?
Umi: I think that’s at the core of what
Kwame’s life represents – that African peo-
ple are the same no matter where we are in
the world. He often quoted Kwame
Nkrumah, who he took part of his name
from. Nkrumah was a great Pan-Africanist
who was the first president of Ghana, actu-
ally, and Nkrumah went to school here in
The reason that makes sense is because, if
you look at it, the reality of why African
people are scattered all over the world –
there are political reasons for that. It’s not as
if we were all in the same place and decid-
ed individually that we wanted to live here
and we wanted to live there. It’s colonialism
and slavery that for the most part are
responsible for the fact that we live today in
113 countries around the world.
And it’s also a major reason why we have
such distrust among each other, because of
the colonial system that trained us to be dis-
trustful of each other and to have a lack of
appreciation for who we are, where we’re
from and what we’ve contributed to the
world. Even understanding that we’ve con-
tributed anything.
So this is the message in the work that
Kwame was involved in, eradicating those
negatives and bringing out the positive that
no matter where we are we are still part of
the same nation and our future is tied to one
another.
TSN: For people who are motivated by
these issues, is there a group or an effort that
they can plug into to participate and learn
more?
Umi: Yes absolutely. Like I said earlier,
Kwame was a member of the All African
People’s Revolutionary Party, an organiza-
tion that I belong to that I am initiating a
chapter here in Oregon. It’s a pan-African,
independent, revolutionary political party
that’s based in Africa, our base is in Guinea
Bissau. We are an organization that has
chapters all over the world, we’re working
for this pan Africanism that I’m talking
about. We also work and support other peo-
ples’ struggles, that are not of African
descent who are also struggling for justice.
So it’s something that everybody needs to
get involved in. People can learn more
about us, they can contact us at aaprpore-
gon@gmal.com.
January 29, 2014 The Portland Skanner Page 3