JANUARY 11, 2017
Portland and Seattle Volume XXXIX No. 15
CHALLENGING PEOPLE TO SHAPE A BETTER FUTURE NOW
Opinion ..........................2
Calendars .................. 4-5
A & E ............................6-7
Bids/Classifieds ...........11
25
CENTS
INSIDE:
Martin Luther King, Jr.
SPECIAL EDITION
PHOTO COURTESY OF JANELLE BYNUM
SPORTS AND RACE
Janelle Bynum, shown here at a Jan. 9 swearing-
in, is the first African American representative to
serve District 51 in the Oregon legislature.
Bynum
Breaks
Barriers
By Melanie Sevcenko
Of The Skanner News
L
ast November, Democrat candidate
Janelle Bynum made history when
she took a seat in the Oregon House
of Representatives as the first Afri-
can American to represent House Dis-
trict 51.
In a narrow race that broke records
as Oregon’s most expensive House
campaign, Bynum defeated Happy
Valley mayor, Republican Lori Chavez-
DeRemer.
Originally from Washington D.C.,
Bynum attended the historically Black
Florida A&M University, where she
See BYNUM on page 3
PHOTO BY SUSAN FRIED
District 51’s first Black
representative talks
about her plans
Sportswriter and social commentator Dave Zirin talks with Seahawk defensive end Michael Bennett about San Francisco Quarterback Colin Kaepernick’s
decision to protest the treatment of Black people in America by refusing to stand for the national anthem and the Seahawks’ decision to link arms
together as a team instead of taking a knee. Michael Bennett described how the Seahawks discussed the issue for hours and decided as a team to join
arms so everyone could be included. At one point in the conversation, Michael Bennett said that the meeting he had with his teammate to discuss how
to fight racism was better than winning the Super Bowl.
Jobs, Automation to Highlight Breakfast Talk
Howard Moore will speak at The Skanner Foundation’s Monday event
By Christen McCurdy
For The Skanner News
C
AP PHOTO/AZEEZ AKUNLEYAN, FILE
ivil rights attorney
Howard Moore will
speak at The Skanner
Foundation’s 31st an-
nual Martin Luther King,
Jr. Breakfast Jan. 16.
He told The Skanner he
intends to talk about the as-
pects of like Martin Luther
King, Jr. predicted in his
writings that have become
relevant in recent years.
For instance, he said,
King wrote about the rise
of automation and the
threat it imposed on regu-
lar jobs. Moore noted the
hollowing of the middle
class has been enabled by
automation, and the ad-
vent of self-driving trucks
and cars could make it
worse: 3.5 million people
drive trucks for a living,
and Uber — which already
relied on a freelance driv-
ers rather than a tradition-
al employment contract
with a guaranteed wage
-- is experimenting with a
fleet of self-driving cars.
The future could be very
grim if nothing replaces
the current economic mod-
el, which is quickly being
eroded, he said.
“Dr. King talked about
having a guaranteed an-
nual wage. No one has dis-
cussed that in recent mem-
ory. Jobs, as we know jobs,
don’t exist in the way they
once did,” he said.
Moore was born in Atlan-
ta in 1932, and as a young
man worked as a sports-
writer for the Atlanta Dai-
ly World. When he attend-
ed Morehouse College,
an interest in journalism
evolved into an interest in
politics. He earned a bach-
elor’s degree in political
science in 1954 and an LL.B
degree (bachelor’s degree
See BREAKFAST on page 3
Everybody Reads 2017 Highlights ‘Evicted’
‘Freed’ Boko
Sociologist Matthew Desmond’s book focuses on the
Haram Girls Held consequences of eviction, poverty in Milwaukee
by Intelligence
Agency page 10
M
The ‘La La Land’
Interview
page 7
ultnomah County Library’s 15th
annual community reading proj-
ect, Everybody Reads 2017, kicked
off a new year with the distribu-
tion of thousands of free copies of “Evict-
ed: Poverty and Profit in the American
City” by Harvard associate professor and
MacArthur “Genius” Matthew Desmond.
“Evicted” was included in the Ten Best
Books of 2016 by both The New York
Times and The Washington Post. The
non-fiction work examines low-income
households and the consequences of evic-
tion through the personal stories of eight
struggling families in Milwaukee, Wisc.
“What the reader takes away from
this book is the complexity of eviction,
through the eyes of not just the tenants,
but also the landlords, and the whole
range of pressures and conditions in-
volved with evictions,” Shawn Cunning-
ham, director of communications at Mult-
nomah County Library, told The Skanner.
While Portland’s housing crisis – culmi-
nating in a lack of affording housing, rent
increases, no-cause lease terminations
and homelessness — persists, Everybody
Reads 2017 is using “Evicted” to initiate a
community dialogue in addressing these
See EVICTION on page 3
“Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the
American City” by Harvard associate
professor Matthew Desmond