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About The skanner. (Portland, Or.) 1975-2014 | View Entire Issue (April 27, 2016)
APRIL 27, 2016 Portland and Seattle Volume XXXVIII No. 30 25 CENTS News ...............................3,9,10 A & E .....................................6-7 Opinion ...................................2 Portland Black Panthers 7 Calendars ........................... 4-5 Bids/Classifieds ....................11 CHALLENGING PEOPLE TO SHAPE A BETTER FUTURE NOW UNITY ON UNION Pictured here is Del Antonio, a visual artist featured in the documentary ‘Holler if You Hear Me’. Holler if You Hear Me Documentary screening, discussion to focus on the intersection of Black, LGBTQ and Christian identities T onyka wants her mother to come to her wedding, but she knows her mother won’t arrive. They love each other, but Sharolyn says she can’t support her daughter’s union. Both are driven to tears over this rift in the family. Tonyka is a lesbian who is marrying her partner, a woman named Jonita, and Sharolyn is a Christian woman who believes homosexuality is wrong. Tonyka’s story and others are told in the Black Entertainment Television documentary “Holler if You Hear Me,” which explores the sometimes diffi- cult relationship that exists for Black queer folk and their faith communities. See HOLLER on page 3 PHOTO BY SUSAN FRIED By Arashi Young Of The Skanner News Mount Calvary Christian Center Pastor Reggie Witherspoon, whose church unsuccessfully sued Uncle Ike’s, joined protestors at the corner of 23rd and Union in Seattle. Uncle Ike’s, one of Washington state’s most profitable marijuana retailers, is located on a corner that exemplifies for many the unfortunate history of the “war on drugs” in the Black community. The protestors chose 4/20, a significant day in marijuana culture, to show their concern about gentrification and the irony of a successful marijuana store owned by a White man being located in place where Black men were arrested for doing the same thing only a few years ago. All the Flowers That He Planted in Boise Neighbors remember Prince’s donation to greening projects in the 1990s By Christen McCurdy Of The Skanner News BY GALLERY 2 IMAGES - FLICKR: CHARLES BARKLEY ‘08, CC BY-SA 2.0 W Pictured here in 2008, Charles Barkley said at The Final Four this year, “We need more black coaches, period.” Minority Coaches College sports have the lowest grade for racial hiring practices page 9 Muslim Cemetery Plans Met with Opposition page 10 hen pop super- star Prince died last week, fans all over the world remembered his enormous creative output, his will- ingness to challenge cul- tural norms and his battles with the music industry. But they also recall a side of Prince rarely discussed while he was alive — his generosity. Throughout his career, the artist quiet- ly gave to a wide variety of causes, and during the pe- riod when he was common- ly referred to as The Artist, he sent the Boise Neighbor- hood Association $10,000 to help start a community garden. In the mid-1990s — around 1995 or 1996 — neighbors say Prince do- nated $10,000 to the Boise Neighborhood Association to help create a community garden in the area. The garden — situat- ed on the south side of North Fargo at Kerby, and spearheaded in conjunc- tion with the now-defunct non-profit Housing Our Families — only lasted about a year, said longtime Boise Neighborhood Asso- ciation member Kay New- ell, who owns Mississippi Avenue’s Sunlan Lighting. Initial funds went toward the construction of raised beds and purchase of soil for the garden, but there was no water to the area and hauling buckets of wa- ter during Portland’s hot, dry summers “got to be too much.” “He was a very private person but he touched this community in a way, and at a time, when we had so lit- tle,” Newell said. Remaining funds were set aside specifically for neighborhood “greening” projects and ultimately used for small projects like potted plants and paint- ed garbage cans along the Mississippi Avenue corri- dor. “We very carefully con- trolled that money to make things better and greener,” See PRINCE on page 3 Student Media Project Seeks Neighbors to Talk About Air Pollution By The Skanner News Staff T wo graduate students at the University of Oregon’s Portland campus are working on a mul- timedia project about air pol- lution in Portland, and want to talk to members of the North/Northeast Portland community. While their whole multimedia journalism cohort has focused on re- cent revelations about air pollution in the area, Noor Alomran and Som- mer Martin are specifically covering the discovery of cancer-causing pol- lutants near Boise-Eliot School and Jefferson High School. They want to talk to parents and others in the area about their thoughts and feelings re- garding the problem. “We want to interview people from the African American community, from the Latino community, from diverse communities,” Alomran told The Skanner News. “We want to ask See AIR on page 3 Cancer-causing air pollutants were recently discovered near Boise-Eliot School and Jefferson High School.
