Local News
Cycling
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Major Taylor Bike Club – named for the
“fastest man on Earth,” Marshall Walter
Taylor (1878-1932) who was the second
known African American athlete to win a
world championship in any sport (the 1-
mile track cycling championship of 1899).
Stephens is a successful corporate entre-
preneur and finance officer who grew up
riding bikes. Attending the East County
Transforming bikes from a symbol of
gentrification to a tool for community
empowerment for families that have been
pushed out of the city center
resonates across communities.
“What’s beautiful about the bicycle is that
it’s a vehicle without walls. It is a vehicle
that doesn’t have barriers, and doesn’t keep
people out,” Stephens says.
“I see the challenges that we face in our
society are complex — I don’t think they
allow for a siloed or specialized approach in
the way that we seek to address them,” Tet-
teh — the former manager of Village
Produce in New Columbia — says.
“We want to find ways of growing pros-
perous communities.”
Tetteh is the former shop manager at the
Cycling Center, and founded Portland’s
PHOTO CREDIT MELINDA MUSSER
his newborn son Andrew, Stephens and
other staff in the group’s new office space in
the Lloyd Center, the activists were modest
about their achievement.
But their vision is big enough to include
putting East County children on bikes, talk-
ing a stand against gang violence, and
bringing leadership of color to a predomi-
nantly-white nonprofit group in a way that
Bikes for Kids event this month rocked his
world.
The December Holiday Bike Drive is tra-
ditionally one of the splashiest projects the
Cycling Center puts on every year. The
event brings hundreds of children and their
families to the Emanuel Hospital Atrium for
a giant party including bikes, helmets, gear
and safety training.
The East County bike event at the Rock-
wood Boys and Girls Club itself marked a
sea change in the scope of what the Center
does, or at least, where.
The Cycling Center gave away almost
100 bikes and helmets – with safety training
and social services — to kids whose fami-
lies couldn’t otherwise afford it during the
best time of the year to ride.
“I was there, and I saw the first kid get his
first bike that he ever had,” Stephens says.
“And that smile– that joy just meant so
much.”
The new “Take Back the Streets” move-
ment that has emerged under the Cycling
Center’s umbrella has really captured Port-
land’s imagination – it is a development that
most could only have dreamed of.
“Folks that have been exposed to violence
in their communities decided to take a stand
and work within an anti-violence frame-
work to address some of the needs that they
saw out there, and that they knew really
well because they had experienced,” Tetteh
says.
“One of the things that we often forget
when we talk about bicycles is that you get
a whole host of co-benefits whenever you
decide to choose bicycling as the tool or
conveyance for any kind of engagement
with others,” Tetteh says.
Find out how to connect and get involved
at www.communitycyclingcenter.org.
son High School he was charged with a gun
offense and spent four years in detention.
At the time, he says, he had stopped speak-
ing to one of his aunts over a minor
disagreement. And while he was locked up,
Dead by Sunset.
Osteoarthritis has slowed him down, but
he still loves acting, he says, and at Hal-
loween he always dresses up as The Joker.
The LOVE Challenge is no joke, howev-
prospects for Black men and boys.
Mayor Hales has supported the initiative
through earmarking city internships for
Black boys, and assigning staffer Chad
Stover to bring together a group of Black
youth and adults to work on the issues.
Joe McFerrin, president of Portland
Opportunities Industrialization Center, said
disparities in educational and life outcomes
can be eliminated if everyone works togeth-
er toward that goal.
“My hope is that through the Black Male
Achievement initiative we can bring light to
some of the disparities in employment, edu-
cation and the justice system, so we can
bring a community-wide focus across all of
our systems and make changes that are sus-
tainable.”
Love
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Make amends with that family member.”
You don’t have to be best friends with
your former opponent, he says. But letting
go of the hate is good for everyone.
Crittenden knows about pain as well as
forgiveness. He first hit the news in 1979 as
a crime victim, when he was just nine years
old. His mother, Marla Betty Jean Moore
was shot five times by a violent boyfriend,
who then turned on James. Fortunately the
gun was now empty, but the attack sent his
mother to hospital for six months, he says,
and left him traumatized. To this day, he
carries around the newspaper article about
the shooting and his mothers ID card.
Like many children who experience vio-
lence, Crittenden tried to be too tough to get
hurt again. In his sophomore year at Madi-
Letting go of the hate is good for everyone
she died, leaving him sad that he had never
made it up with her.
That was more than 20 years ago, and
since then, Crittenden has lived a storied
life. He worked at Intel for four years before
being discovered by the modeling agent
John Casablancas. He’s also had acting
roles in movies, such as Honeydripper and
er. Crittenden has a list of people who have
accepted and plan to bury the hatchet. And
he’d like to take it into schools, possibly as
part of the Black Male Achievement initia-
tive, which is currently underway in
Portland. Portland is one of 11 cities, which
received support from The National League
of Cities to focus on improving life
Wage
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The Oregon numbers are not far off the
Washington statistics, with average student
debt at $26,639 and credit card debt at
$4,773; the report pegs the underwater
mortgage rate in Oregon the same as Wash-
ington’s at nearly 20 percent.
The report concludes that a higher mini-
mum wage is not enough, and that officials
also need to take steps to:
• Abolish the federal tipped minimum wage
(currently at $2.13 per hour)
• Reinvest in higher education
• Address medical debt acquired before the
Affordable Care Act
• Expand Medicaid eligibility
• Regulate payday lending
“I think families are dealing with student
loan debt, with medical debt. Families are
having some very painful kitchen table con-
versations,” Mulady says. “This is one way
to level the playing field and it’s a basic
value that we all cherish – if you work full
time you should be able to meet your basic
needs and cover your expenses.”
The Job Gap Report appeared to contra-
dict the Oregon Office of Economic
Analysis’ quarterly Oregon Economic and
Revenue Forecast, which was released on
‘It’s a basic value that we all cherish – if you
work full time you should be able to meet your
basic needs and cover your expenses’
—Kathy Mulady
the same day and was somewhat upbeat
even if it seemed to contradict itself.
“In the past nine months, Oregon’s labor
force has increased and added back nearly a
quarter of the labor force losses it suffered
following the financial crisis,” says the
Executive Summary. “Even with the
stronger job gains, the state’s unemployment
rate has remained unchanged in 2014.”
“Along with recent jobs reports showing
the strength of Oregon’s manufacturing sec-
tor, this forecast provides further evidence
that our economy is moving in the right direc-
tion,” Gov. John Kitzhaber said Wednesday.
“Even as the recovery gains steam, we must
continue our focus on family-wage jobs - the
types of jobs that are supported through our
work with Daimler, Nike, Intel, Boise Cas-
cade and hundreds of businesses large and
small throughout the state.”
The most recent revenue forecast from the
Washington State Economic and Revenue
Forecast Council, which came out in June,
said, “The Washington economy continues
to grow slowly, with employment rising in
most sectors except aerospace and federal
government.”
The community activists say the most
pressing need is to cut back the cost of liv-
ing in the Northwest.
“I think if there are any differences at all
from past Job Gap Reports, it’s that the cost
of living has obviously gone up,” Huntress
says. “Health care costs have gone up, stu-
dent debt has gone up — wages have gone
down as the cost of living has gone up.
“I mean $15 an hour is much better than
$9.10, which is the minimum wage in Ore-
gon– but I think we have to look at long-term
solutions that not only lift up minimum
wages but bring the cost of living down.
“ I think that $9.10 an hour – no one can
survive on that, and that’s not even half of
what a single parent with a child needs to
make a living,” Huntress says.
While the report’s to-do list did not
include the price of housing, Huntress adds
that the number of underwater homes across
the region is also having a fundamental
impact on working families.
“We should give banks an incentive to
actually reset the underwater mortgages so
that people are not one missed payment
away from foreclosure,” she says.
But the most important thing for local
communities to do is provide support for
low-income families, Huntress says.
“Really the big one is making sure that we
invest in state and federal safety net pro-
grams like SNAP (the Supplemental
Nutritional Assistance Program), which
should be strengthened and not cut.
“Earned income tax credit, childcare
assistance, all of these things could help
bring down the cost of living,” Huntress
says.
“Fifteen dollars as it turns out is actually
very modest,” Mulady says, “ but it’s a
place to begin.”
Read the full reports at www.thejobgap.org.
August 27, 2014 The Portland and Seattle Skanner Page 3