The skanner., May 13, 2015, Page 3, Image 3

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There’s an App for That
homicides last year in her North Portland neighborhood,
Taylor says she was ready to move head first into the idea
— one she says she’d been sitting on for close to three
years.
She began reaching out to the women she felt could trans-
late their tales of street life into inspiration for the kids of
today, putting any remnants of animosity to the side.
How? They were all friends at one point.
“We basically went back to that. Like, what [were] we
tripping off of, really? I done slept at your house. Been at
your mama’s house. We done broke bread together. We lit-
erally went back to the basics,” says Selmene Rodriguez.
Since forming, the women have been doing presentations
and small-scale community events throughout the city
using as an entry piece Taylor’s autobiographical book
penned in 1998, “Ask Nicky…A Young Person’s Work-
book for Building Dreams.”
The book works more or less as the group’s “Bible” right
now, detailing real-life scenes from Taylor’s life. The goal
is for kids to use it as critical thinking to debate how she
could best have handled her adversities, growing up as a
youth influenced by gang culture.
Taylor’s initiative comes during a time when gang vio-
lence is on a noticeable uptick, after nearly a decade of
record lows. City officials say the violence peaked in 1997,
when 15 died in gang violence citywide.
Many others who did not lose their lives were hurt in
other ways, with lengthy prison sentences or criminal
records that prevent job opportunities, leaving the long-
neglected and impoverished residents of the city’s North
and Northeast an even more unstable community.
Nonetheless, the women say they are taking responsibility
for their pasts and trying to plant positivity and opportunity
into today’s generation with community organizations,
schools and churches alike.
PHOTO COURTESY TECHNOLOGY ALLIANCE
continued from page 1
Fourteen teams of middle and high school students from around Western Washington communities
were announced on Saturday, May 9 as the winners of the second annual Youth Apps Challenge.
Launched by the Technology Alliance and sponsored by Amazon, the Youth Apps Challenge is a
statewide competition designed to build student interest in computer science education and
careers. Student teams won prizes for entries that included an app that helps you test water
quality, an app that teaches young kids the concept of genetics and an app that shows you what
kind of extra-curricular clubs are at you school. From left, Darla Van Corbach of Harrison Middle
School with winning team Black Thunder - Jake Gray, Eduardo Bejar and Diego Benitez, from YVTC
MESA in Sunnyside. The teens created an app to help students learn their math tables. (Not
pictured is their teacher Soo Park).
Neighbors Against Violence will be delivering home-
made goods this week, Friday and Saturday, May 15-16, as
part of a fundraiser to start their own summer camps. Plates
are $8 apiece. To place an order, call 503-960-9297.
Read the rest of this story online at www.theskanner.com
Demolitions
continued from page 1
asbestos audits.
Who do you call?
Reporting an unsafe demolition is not a
user-friendly process. While government
enforcement bureaus offer complaint lines,
it can be a trial to determine which agency
regulates what hazard.
Michael Liefeld with the enforcement
program of the Portland Bureau of Develop-
ment Services said there is no
“one-stop-shop” for citizen complaints. The
department enforces state and city building
codes through building permits.
Dangers such as the church wall falling
down would involve multiple agencies,
OSHA requires the demolition crews that work
around lead paint and asbestos be protected
from harm, but those protections do not carry
over to neighbors
according to Liefeld. It is “not necessarily”
a building code violation according to BDS,
but it could be a work safety violation –
which would then involve the Oregon
Occupational Safety and Health Adminis-
tration.
Since the wall fell outside of the perimeter
and posed a public safety danger, it would
be appropriate to call 9-1-1, according to
Pete Simpson, Portland Police Bureau pub-
lic information officer.
Liefeld said even more agencies could be
involved. If the roadway was blocked, the
Portland Bureau of Transportation would be
responsible. Since the wall balanced on the
utility lines, the utility company would be
Incarceration
Care Act (a.k.a. “Obamacare”) and Ore-
gon’s switch from a state-based market to
the federally-ran Healthcare.gov things
have proven confusing for Oregonians at
large, and put an increased urgency on
advocates like North by Northeast, Urban
League and others to get Black communi-
ties into a healthcare plan.
involved as well, he said.
Liefeld acknowledges that it can be con-
fusing to know who is responsible and says
that part of his work at the enforcement pro-
gram is to steer people to the right agency.
“We get all kinds of inquiries, so if it’s
something outside our jurisdiction we can
refer people to other city agencies or outside
agencies to have their concerns addressed
and figure out how to get help on things,”
Liefeld said.
Carcinogenic loopholes
Lead paint and asbestos are often consid-
ered as similar construction dangers, but the
See DEMOLITIONS on page 12
Report
continued from page 1
tics, case studies, and expert essays to out-
line solutions, paired with specific policy
call-to-actions to improve conditions.
Here are some of the core findings from
the nearly 200-page State of Black Oregon
report:
Unemployment, Economics, and
Poverty, and Entrepreneurship
The wealth gap between Blacks and
whites has widened in the five years since
the last report was penned.
Black unemployment is nearly triple that
of whites, a staggering 20.7 percent.
Consequently, Black poverty rates are
nearly triple the 11.7 percent for whites, and
when it comes to food insecurity the rate is
nearly doubled for Blacks, a staggering 44.4
percent the report says.
It should be noted that today nearly 1 in 5
of Oregon’s near 4 million residents are liv-
ing in poverty—a problem rampant in the
state’s rural counties.
Entrepreneurship, report essayist Mike
Green, co-founder of ScaleUp Partners
notes, is the “driving force” of wealth cre-
ation and the global economy—thus a
critical element of jobs and economic vital-
ity for Black Oregonians.
Black people are locked up at a rate that is
six times that of their white counterparts who
stand as the state’s majority making up more
than three-quarters of its total population.
In 2010, Blacks accounted for nearly a
fifth of all police stops in the state despite
making up two percent of the population.
Black unemployment is nearly triple that of
whites, a staggering 20.7 percent
The report calls for an end to both the
Measure 11 law which automatically trans-
fers youths to adult court, an end to
mandatory minimum sentencing, and pro-
grams
that
better
sustain
life
post-incarceration.
Health
Homicide remains the leading cause of
death for Black youths 10 to 24 in Oregon
which is noted as a symptom of compound-
ed stresses, multiple traumas including
personal ones, and environments that over-
stimulate the “fight or flight” responses.
With the introduction of the Affordable
Schools
Oregon has the worst graduation rate for
whites in the nation, and the third worst for
Blacks.
People of color makeup a growing num-
ber of the pupils in Oregon schools and
increasingly account for the number of its
graduates from public schools rising from
26 percent in 2011 and 2012 to an expected
31 percent for the next two years.
Like the state’s total Black population,
Black students account for just over 2 per-
cent of the student body—while African
descent teachers are less than a percent of
educators in the state.
Black students are also disciplined and
suspended at higher rates than their white
counterparts for exhibiting similar behavior,
further perpetuating the school to-prison
pipeline, the report notes.
Housing
The greatest concentration of Oregon’s
Black population lives in the Portland metro
area. In the half decade since the last Cen-
sus in 2010, more than 10,000 Black people
have moved out of the city’s core neighbor-
hoods, as Urban Renewal plans continue to
gentrify the poor out to the fringes and sub-
urbs of Portland.
One of the featured essays in the report
comes from housing expert and Portland
State University professor Lisa Bates titled,
“This is Gentrification;’’ in it, she details
City policies that perpetuated these stark
changes while making an appeal to re-build.
“Gentrification and displacement aren’t
inevitable. Black Oregonians have voiced a
vision for thriving neighborhoods. That
vision for community development can be
made real with a clear focus on racial justice
and empowerment.”
Read the report at www.ulpdx.org.
May 13, 2015 The Portland and Seattle Skanner Page 3