Image provided by: University of Oregon Libraries; Eugene, OR
About The skanner. (Portland, Or.) 1975-2014 | View Entire Issue (Feb. 3, 2016)
Page 2 The Skanner February 3, 2016 Challenging People to Shape a Better Future Now Bernie Foster Founder/Publisher Bobbie Dore Foster Executive Editor Jerry Foster Advertising Manager Christen McCurdy News Editor Patricia Irvin Graphic Designer Arashi Young Donovan M. Smith Reporters Monica J. Foster Seattle Office Coordinator Susan Fried Photographer 2015 MERIT AWARDS WINNER The Skanner has received 20 NNPA awards since 1998 The Skanner Newspaper, es- tablished in October 1975, is a weekly publication, published every Wednesday by IMM Publi- cations Inc. 415 N. Killingsworth St. P.O. Box 5455 Portland, OR 97228 Telephone (503) 285-5555 Fax: (503) 285-2900 info@theskanner.com www.TheSkanner.com The Skanner is a member of the National Newspaper Pub lishers Association and West Coast Black Pub lishers Association. All photos submitted become the property of The Skanner. We are not re spon sible for lost or damaged photos either solicited or unsolicited. ©2016 The Skanner. All rights re served. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission prohibited. Opinion Flint Residents Mistreated Due to Race and Class L et’s face it: Contaminat- ed water would not have flowed through the pipes of Flint, Mich. — certainly not for as long as it did — if the residents of the city of nearly 100,000 had been White and affluent instead of Black and largely poor. In fact, if two-term Repub- lican Gov. Rick Snyder had dreamed of that happening in Bloomfield Hills, he would have called a press conference the next morning to apologize for having such a nightmare. But Flint is not Bloomfield Hills. According to 2014 Census Bureau figures, Flint is pre- dominantly Black (56.6 per- cent), has a poverty rate of 41.5 percent, which is nearly three times the national fig- ure, and a median family in- come of $24,834. On the other hand, Bloom- field Hills, which is 90 percent White and only 3.2 percent African American, has a pov- erty rate of only 2 percent, an estimated median family income of $151,596, and the medium house or condo is valued at $670,823 - about 23 times the value of the average home ($29,000) in Flint, ac- cording to city-data.com. Whether a family drinks or bathes in lead-contami- nated water should not be determined by their race or income. Black and poor lives should matter as much as White and rich ones. Because that wasn’t the case in Flint, children were exposed to un- acceptably high levels of lead poisoning, which could lead to brain damage, learning dis- abilities and behavioral prob- lems. Everyone responsible for this fiasco should lose their job, be criminally prosecuted George E. Curry NNPA Columnist and if found guilty, serve time in prison and pay restitution. Fortunately, the eyes of the nation are fixed on Michigan to see if justice will prevail. The National Bar Association, under the leadership of Presi- dent Benjamin L. Crump, was “ Flint’s water supply from Lake Huron to the Flint Riv- er. Shortly, after the change, residents began to complain about the water’s taste, col- or and odor. Stories were written about it in Flint and Detroit newspapers, but res- idents were repeatedly told they had nothing to fear. The city issued a press release saying, “Flint water is safe to drink.” While city residents were being targeted with that mes- sage, state employees were quietly getting another one. to hear that GM property was being damaged, so he jumped through a number of hoops and quietly spent $440,000 to hook GM back up to the Lake Huron water, while keeping the rest of Flint on the Flint River water. Which means that while the children in Flint were drinking lead- filled water, there was one - and only one - address in Flint that got clean water: the GM factory.” Last February, Miguel Del Toral, an Environmental Pro- tection Agency (EPA) expert, wrote to one city official, “Given the very high lead levels found at one home and the preflushing happening in Flint, I’m worried that the whole town may have much higher lead levels than the compliance results indicat- ed.” But no one in a position to change this was worried enough to step in. Remember, all of this hap- pened while Flint was oper- ating under state-appointed emergency managers. Like he had done in Detroit, Gov. Snyder appointed emergen- cy managers supposedly be- cause local officials were too inept to handle their own business. But they couldn’t have done any worse than his appointees in this instance. A year ago, Detroit water officials offered to reconnect Flint to Lake Huron and waive the $4 million connection fee. But the emergency manager, Jerry Ambrose, declined the offer and residents of Flint continue to suffer to this day. Someone needs to pay for the state-sponsored serial inept- ness. Fortunately, the eyes of the nation are fixed on Michigan to see if justice will prevail scheduled to hold a town hall meeting on the water crisis Monday in Flint with its local and state counterparts. Congressional hearings were scheduled for this Wednesday and Rev. Al Sharpton was planning to bring busloads of New York- ers to monitor the proceed- ings. Unfortunately, most of our civil rights leaders are doing little beyond holding press conferences and issuing statements about the crisis in Flint. With February — a.k.a. “Negro Employment Month” — now upon us, they will be- come even more distant. Meanwhile, we continue to learn new, sordid details about this reprehensible trag- edy. From 2011-2015, Flint was in state receivership and went through four emergen- cy managers appointed by the governor. In April 2014, in a move to save money, the state-imposed emergency manager decided to switch As the Detroit Free Press reported, “In January of 2015, when state officials were tell- ing worried Flint residents their water was safe to drink, they also were arranging for coolers of purified water in Flint’s State Office Building so employees wouldn’t have to drink from the taps, ac- cording to state government e-mails released Thursday...” State employees were not the only ones receiving spe- cial treatment. Writing under the head- line, “10 Things They Won’t Tell You about the Flint Water Tragedy,” filmmaker and Flint native Michael Moore stat- ed,”A few months after Gov- ernor Snyder removed Flint from the clean fresh water we had been drinking for de- cades, the brass from General Motors went to him and com- plained that the Flint River water was causing their car parts to corrode when being washed on the assembly line. The Governor was appalled It’s Possible to Have a Bloodless Occupation Local News Pacific NW News World News Opinions Jobs, Bids Entertainment Community Calendar RSS feeds SIGN UP FOR BREAKING NEWS Go to TheSkanner.com V ideo footage of the Ore- gon State Police shoot- ing of armed occupier LaVoy Finicum follow- ing a vehicular chase is so very sad to watch. Finicum may have been quite stupid in his belief that American public lands should belong to private ranchers, but he did not deserve to die. Sadly, he arranged for his own death. Finicum, the spokesperson for the armed militia which took over the Malheur Na- tional Wildlife Refuge on 2 January 2016, was quite open — he carried a gun at all times and was ready to use it. He reached for it, apparently, and was shot dead. Geez. Like Finicum, I’ve opposed U.S. policy enough to risk arrest, to occupy federal fa- cilities, and to stand up to federal law enforcement. Un- like him, I’ve actually done it numerous times and never been shot. I’ve always been Tom H. Hastings Portland State University nonviolent and, to be frank, my method makes victory possible and, in some cases, achieved. Finicum apparently “ tially illimitable powers to in- vade and wage war on Iraq or anyone else. Wyden ended up voting our way. We were non- violent and courteous. I helped occupy his office again in 2006 to convince him to speak out against the war in Iraq. We were quite friend- ly, actually, with Homeland Security, who arrested us. Wyden did as we asked — he posted on his website (final- nonviolence. I’ve done other nonviolent occupations over the decades — even a one-man occupa- tion of the Soviet embassy in nonviolent resistance to their weaponry. I’ve never even had a weapon pulled on me, let alone being shot, and ev- ery single public policy ask I’ve made has ultimately been granted. It is so sad to see Muslim ex t re m i s t s reverting to 12th century brutality and American “patriots” re- gressing to 19th centu- ry behavior. LaVoy Finicum didn’t have to die; he needed to learn about nonviolence. Dr. Tom H. Hastings is core faculty in the Conflict Resolu- tion Department at Portland State University and is Found- ing Director of PeaceVoice. I’ve always been nonviolent and, to be frank, my method makes victory possible and, in some cases, achieved thought that a gun makes you safer. It is the opposite. I helped occupy Oregon Senator Ron Wyden’s office twice — once when he was thinking about how he might vote on the 2002 Senate bill to grant George W. Bush essen- ly!) that he opposed the ongo- ing war and he even rose on the United States of America Senate floor to call for an end to that occupation. As usual, we carried no guns and in fact met with the staff ahead of time to explain
