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About The skanner. (Portland, Or.) 1975-2014 | View Entire Issue (Oct. 29, 2014)
WWW . THESKANNER . COM O CTOBER 29, 2014 P ORTLAND AND S EATTLE V OLUME XXXVII, N O . 4 For The Skanner website scan this QR code CENTS Pacific NW The Skanner News presents our new regional edition, featuring more news and local information. C HALLENGING P EOPLE TO S HAPE A B ETTER F UTURE N OW Ferguson Leader in PDX 25 WALKOUT! Rev. Robert White headlines police accountability forum By Lisa Loving Of The Skanner News PHOTO BY SUSAN FRIED L ocal residents will have a chance to hear and speak with a leader in the police accountability movement from Ferguson, Mo., when Rev. Robert White speaks Nov. 1 at 3 p.m. at the Maranatha Church, 4222 NE 12th in Portland. White is the president of Clergy United for Peace in Ferguson, Mo., where riots and protests have rocked the city over the Aug. 9 fatal police shooting of Michael Brown, an unarmed teenager walking down the street with a friend. The event is a Race and Police Accounta- bility Forum, sponsored by the Albina Min- isterial Alliance Coalition for Justice and Police Reform. The event includes an update on the new twist in the City of Portland’s settlement with the US Department of Justice, which in 2012 filed a lawsuit, U.S. vs City of Port- land, charging that the Portland Police Bureau has engaged in improper uses of force against mentally ill people or those who the police thought were mentally ill. The federal government declined to charge the bureau with disproportionate uses of force against people of color despite a large volume of complaints from the African American community about police shootings, Tasings and arrests that many see as unfair and unjustified. After two years of negotiations, hearings and forums – which this summer culminated in an order by US District Court Judge Michael H. Simon requiring judicial review of how police reforms progress — Portland City Commissioners voted Oct. 23 to appeal the judge’s accountability requirement. Mayor Charlie Hales and Commissioner Amanda Fritz pushed for the appeal, both suggesting that the City itself should pro- vide oversight – a position that community members have savaged. “The settlement emphasized community engagement,” Fritz said in a statement Last Thursday hundreds of Garfield supporters thronged outside the red-brick school in a rainstorm to protest a proposed teacher cut which – if carried out in mid-semester -- would have left an estimated 150 students suddenly without one class per day and could keep as many from graduating on time. Walkout at Seattle’s Garfield High District stands firm in transferring teacher, but makes concessions By Lisa Loving Of The Skanner News T he dramatic walk-out of Garfield High School students and staff last Thursday – led out the door by its signature student drum line to protest the late transfer of a core teacher weeks after the year had already started – has failed to sway district adminis- trators. Interim Seattle Public Schools Superintendent Larry Nyland on Monday announced that he is going ahead with the Garfield transfer, but will wait until next semester and won’t See FERGUSON on page 7 INDEX News ...................4,5,8 Opinion .....................2 Calendars ..............3,6 A & E .........................8 Bids/Classifieds ..........7 eliminate an instructor in a core subject, as had been feared. The district’s announcement on Oct. 17 that because of a drop in “projected enroll- ment,” they would be transfer- ring a core teacher at Garfield to an “overenrolled” school provoked outrage and head- lines around the country. For its part the district has denied that it issued an “ulti- matum” on the teacher trans- fer, and that several other schools received the same message; however one school, Gatewood Elementary in West Seattle, reportedly did raise an estimated $90,000 within one week to avoid loss of a teacher. The district says that every October they look at enroll- ment to rebalance teacher assignments, so that schools it deems are too crowded receive teachers transferred from schools where the student pop- ulation has gone down. Hagopian and school sup- porters argued that enrollment was up for this year, and School Board District 4 repre- sentative Sue Peters, a Garfield parent, reportedly asked the superintendent per- sonally to take a second look at the enrolment statistics. But the district says those numbers don’t count. “The district initiated a review after Garfield reported that 49 additional students appeared to have not been counted toward the official October enrollment,” Nyland wrote in his statement Mon- day. “The review of each of those individual students indicated that 29 of them attend the Run- ning Start program, which allows 11th and 12th graders to take higher education class- es. That means they do not See GARFIELD on page 5 ‘Old Houses’ Event Recalls 1989 Protests Campaign offers lessons from history amid Portland infill boom By Arashi Young Special To The Skanner News O n the corner of 16th and NE Going Street lies a vacant lot surrounded by a chain link fence and bright orange construction netting. A concrete stairway leads up to yard of 2-foot-tall bleached yellow grass with an excavated pit outlining where a house once stood. A year ago, a 104-year-old house stood on the lot. It was painted yellow and featured a distinctive porch that wrapped from the front door to the side yard. Porch columns and a chimney were built from brown, grey, and golden yellow river rocks. On Feb. 28, the house had been sold to the Portland Development Group for $380,000. By April 4, they received a demolition per- mit and by April 7, the house had been demolished. Permits have since been filed to divide the lot into two and to build two townhouses on the property. This story of infill development is playing out in neighborhoods across the town, from Eastmoreland to Laurelhurst to Alberta, where old houses are being demolished to make way for high-price, higher density See HOUSES on page 5
