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.