JUNE 15, 2016
Portland and Seattle Volume XXXVIII No. 37
25
CENTS
News ..........................3,9,10,12 A & E .....................................6-7
Opinion ...................................2 Sickle Cell Studies ..........9
Calendars ........................... 4-5 Bids/Classiieds ...............10-11
CHALLENGING PEOPLE TO SHAPE A BETTER FUTURE NOW
AP PHOTO/J. SCOTT APPLEWHITE
PEACE FESTIVAL
House Speaker Paul Ryan of Wis., and the House
GOP leadership, talks to reporters at the Republican
National Committee headquarter on Capitol Hill in
Washington Tuesday.
Ryan’s
Poverty
Plan
L
ast week House Speaker Paul Ryan
(R-WI) introduced an antipover-
ty agenda — as part of a broader
Republican election year agenda
called “A Better Way” — that makes
broad recommendations in favor of en-
couraging work and changing the way
beneit programs are funded.
While Ryan’s Republican colleagues
have presented concerns that the plan
is overly vague, lawmakers on the other
side of the aisle have more fundamen-
tal concerns – as do local groups advo-
cating for an end to poverty in Oregon.
See POVERTY on page 3
Family members and friends take a moment to remember Tariq Jackson, a young man who passed away due to cancer earlier this year but helped inspire
his cousin Charles Cortez (center) and several other young people to create the First Annual Peace Festival, which was held June 11 at Rainier Beach
Community Center. In order to help stop violence in their neighborhood, a group of youth approached Seattle Police Detective Denise “Cookie” Bouldin
with the idea of playing a basketball game against the SPD. The event, which they called the Peace Festival, included performances by local singers and
dancers, spoken word, a resource fair, free haircuts, a rale and free hamburgers and hot dogs. The festival culminated with a basketball game between
members of the Seattle Police department and local kids. The kids won the game 65 to 56.
After Massacre, Portland Prepares for Pride
LGBT groups say they will forge ahead with plans to celebrate this year
By Arashi Young
Of The Skanner News
P
 PHOTO BY JOE BURBANK /ORLANDO SENTINEL VIA AP
ortland Pride, the
week-long
celebra-
tion of lesbian, gay,
bisexual, trans and
queer people and a call
for civil rights, begins this
week.
Most years Pride is a pos-
itive celebration for queer
communities and their
allies — but this year the
celebration is shadowed by
the tragic massacre at an
Orlando nightclub.
In the early morning
World News
Briefs page 10
Kam Williams
Previews Movies
Opening This Week
page 6
hours of June 12, Omar
Mateen opened ire inside
Pulse, an LGBTQ nightclub
celebrating a Latin night.
That morning, Mateen
murdered 49 people and
injured 53 others before
being shot and killed by
Orlando police oicers.
The Orlando nightclub
shooting is the deadliest
mass shooting by a single
gunman in United States
history as well as the dead-
liest incident of violence
against the LGBT commu-
nity in the United States.
Hours later in Los Ange-
les, James Wesley Howell
was stopped by police, who
found an arsenal of weap-
ons and bomb-making
chemicals in his car. How-
ell said he was heading to
the Los Angeles Pride cel-
ebration.
Authorities do not know
if there was a plan to attack
the festival and believe
there is no connection be-
tween the two incidents.
The California celebration
continued as planned with
enhanced security.
Debra Porta, the former
board president of Pride
Northwest and current
board advisor, said the lo-
cal queer community is
reeling from the news of
the Pulse Nightclub mas-
sacre.
“We are not necessarily
always surprised when
the community is attacked
or when violence happens
because there is such a
history of it to begin with,
but nobody was expecting
something on this scale,”
Porta said.
In response to the Orlan-
See PRIDE on page 3
Juneteenth Event Carries on Peoples’ Legacy
The granddaughter of Clara Peoples organized
the local celebration of the end of slavery
By Arashi Young
Of The Skanner News
W
hen Clara Peoples irst
mentioned Juneteenth to
workers in the shipyards
around Portland, no one
knew about the celebration of the
end of slavery. From that moment
on, she made it her mission to bring
awareness of Juneteenth to Oregon.
Juneteenth commemorates the
events of June 19, 1865 in Galveston,
Texas, when Union General Gordon
Granger read a proclamation an-
nouncing the freedom of all slaves.
Every year ater, the 19th was cele-
brated as Juneteenth Independence
Day or Freedom Day.
Peoples, the mother of Juneteenth
in Oregon, passed away last year af-
ter witnessing the 150th Juneteenth
anniversary celebration. Her grand-
See JUNETEENTH on page 3
PHOTO BY JERRY FOSTER
By Christen McCurdy
Of The Skanner News
PHOTO BY SUSAN FRIED
Anti-poverty groups
raise concerns about
proposed changes
Pictured here at last year’s celebration are
Clara Peoples (center), committee member Ora
Green (second from right) and historical igures
Sojourner Truth (Tameka Walker), Beatrice
Cannady Morrow (Skeeter Green), Abraham
Lincoln (David Lichtenstein) and Harriett
Tubman (Shalanda Sims).