Page 2 The Skanner September 7, 2016
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Challenging People to Shape
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Opinion
We Say No to Wapato Jail as a Homeless Shelter
T
he Mental Health As-
sociation of Portland
opposes
Multnomah
County commissioners
siting any shelter for people
who are homeless, for people
who have mental illness, or
for people with addictions, at
Wapato Jail.
For decades Multnomah
County evaded addressing
chronic homelessness, men-
tal illness and addiction.
Evasion let good programs
unfunded or crippled, dis-
couraging participation, and
undermining eforts of the
state, city and outside advo-
cates to support and fund oth-
er solutions.
The result is the public
health disaster we see on our
streets today.
Commissioners
ignored
best practices; let primary
care disconnected from men-
tal and addiction health care;
maintained contracts to agen-
cies which failed to provide
worthwhile services; disre-
garded advice of expensive
experts; and frittered away
time with costly causes which
The Mental Health
Association of
Multnomah County
Guest Column
delayed and denied attention
to people who are homeless.
Instead of inding solutions,
Multnomah County commis-
sioners smoothed the path
for sellers of tobacco, alcohol
and marijuana to proliferate
throughout the community
“
wouldn’t be killed by cops.
The legacy of Multnomah
County is damage and despair
for people who are homeless
as a result of untreated ad-
diction and mental illness.
Tens of thousands have been
harmed, and in many cases
the harm is probably unix-
able. The decay has crept into
their families, their children,
even friends and neighbors.
And now they bring us
Wapato Jail. Commissioners,
our friends relied on you to
Wapato Jail is just an excuse
to say you provide suicient
shelter and therefore can en-
force a no-sleeping-in-public-
places ordinance.
The answer to homeless-
ness is not emergency shel-
ters in abandoned jails at the
edge of town. The answer is
supportive housing — small
apartments attached to sup-
portive services. Yes, it’s
more expensive and compli-
cated than a cold hard cell
with steel bars for a door, but
it’s not inhumane. It’s
not a dismissive “let
them eat cake.” And
supportive housing
actually solves home-
lessness.
Recovery
from
homelessness begins
with hope. Hope is a
promise things can get bet-
ter. Getting better is efective
drug treatment. Getting bet-
ter is sanctuary where we can
get real help. Getting better is
peer support.
What burns trust and extin-
guishes hope is the message
you belong in jail.
Instead of providing help, Multnomah
County commissioners made it impos-
sible for people in mental health crisis
to navigate the service system
which expanded the public
health crisis of addiction.
Instead of providing help,
Multnomah County commis-
sioners made it impossible
for people in mental health
crisis to navigate the service
system, get efective help, re-
duce their symptoms so they
protect them by providing ba-
sic services — and you failed.
Wapato Jail continues your
legacy of failure.
To claim, in the midst of a
so-called “emergency,” you’ll
allow homeless people to
stay in Wapato Jail is nothing
short of disgusting. Ofering
To Be Equal: Hillary Clinton Stands on the
Shoulders of ‘Unbossed’ Shirley Chisholm
“Women in this country must
become revolutionaries. We
must refuse to accept the old,
the traditional roles and ste-
reotypes…We must replace the
old, negative thoughts about
our femininity with positive
thoughts and positive action
airming it, and more. But we
must also remember that we
will be breaking with tradi-
tion, and so we must prepare
ourselves educationally, eco-
nomically, and psychologically
in order that we will be able to
accept and bear with the sanc-
tions that society will immedi-
ately impose upon us.”
— Shirley Chisholm
T
he nation has marked the
historic occasion of the
irst woman in American
history to win the Presi-
dential nomination for a ma-
jor political party.
While Hillary Clinton has
come further than any wom-
an Presidential candidate, she
is not the irst. Victoria Wood-
hull ran as the candidate for
the Equal Rights Party in 1872.
Margaret Chase Smith chal-
lenged Barry Goldwater for
the Republican nomination
in 1964. More recently, Pat
Schroeder in 1988 and Carol
Moseley Braun in 2004 vied
for the Democratic nomina-
tion.
But the most historically
signiicant forerunner to
Hillary Clinton was Shirley
Chisholm, the Brooklyn-born
trailblazer who was also the
nation’s irst African Ameri-
Marc H.
Morial
National
Urban
League
can Congresswoman.
The daughter of work-
ing-class immigrants from
the Caribbean, Chisholm be-
came interested in politics
while serving as the director
of a child day care center and
an educational consultant
for the New York City Divi-
“
Black,” she said.
She announced her candi-
dacy for President at a Bap-
tist church in Brooklyn. In an
article about her candidacy,
the Associated Press wrote,
“Ironically, her major head-
ache seems to come from
Black politicians.”
“They think that I am try-
ing to take power away from
them,” she said. “The Black
man must step forward. But
that doesn’t mean the Black
woman must step back. While
they’re rapping and snap-
ping, I’m mapping.”
She competed in 14 states,
‘As there were no Black Founding
Fathers, there were no founding
mothers — a great pity, on both
counts’ —Shirley Chisholm
sion of Day Care. She served
three years as a New York
State Assemblywoman before
running for Congress in 1968
with the slogan: “Unbought
and Unbossed.”
“My greatest political asset,
which professional politi-
cians fear, is my mouth, out of
which come all kinds of things
one shouldn’t always discuss
for reasons of political expe-
diency,” Chisholm said.
Chisholm hired only wom-
en for her staf, half of whom
were African Americans.
“Of my two handicaps, being
female put many more ob-
stacles in my path than being
winning 28 delegates to the
convention. As a symbolic
gesture, candidate Hubert
Humphrey released his 83
Black delegates to cast their
votes for Chisholm. With the
votes of several other dele-
gates at that contentious con-
vention, Chisholm inished
fourth in a ield of 13, with 152
delegates.
It is hard to imagine, in this
era of sharp division in poli-
tics, the remarkable moment
during that campaign when
she visited her segregation-
ist rival, Alabama Governor
George Wallace, in his hos-
pital room ater he was shot
and wounded. “What are
your people going to say?” he
asked her. “I know what they
are going to say,” she said.
“But I wouldn’t want what
happened to you to happen to
anyone.” She recalled that her
words moved him to tears.
Chisholm retired from Con-
gress in 1982 and remained
an outspoken activist for civil
rights until her death in 2005.
It would be diicult to
overestimate the impact and
inluence of Chisholm’s Con-
gressional service and Pres-
idential candidacy. While
Congress remains dispropor-
tionately White and male,
one-in-ive members of the
current House and Senate
are a racial or ethnic minori-
ty, making the 114th Congress
the most diverse in history.
The nation’s irst African
American President is wind-
ing up his second term, and
a woman — a former senator
and Secretary of State — has
just won the Democratic nom-
ination for President.
In her acclaimed speech on
the Equal Rights Amendment
in 1970, Chisholm said, “The
Constitution they wrote was
designed to protect the rights
of White, male citizens. As
there were no Black Founding
Fathers, there were no found-
ing mothers — a great pity, on
both counts. It is not too late
to complete the work they
let undone. Today, here, we
should start to do so.”
Marc Morial is the president
and CEO of the National Urban
League.