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About The skanner. (Portland, Or.) 1975-2014 | View Entire Issue (Jan. 11, 2017)
Page 10 The Skanner January 11, 2017 ety in a way we’ve never fit in. Just knowing that opportunity is not ev- erybody else’s, it’s OURS, too. ... The sky is the lim- it. And it was never that feeling before.” Perhaps nowhere are those sentiments stron- ger than at Altgeld Gar- dens, where a 20-some- thing Obama honed his political skills as a com- munity organizer. It was there, in the shadow of rusted steel mills, where Obama had his first up-close expo- sure to a Black commu- nity mired in poverty. In his memoir, “Dreams from My Father,” Obama describes the sprawling housing project in “a per- petual state of disrepair” with crumbling ceilings, backed-up toilets and burst pipes. He helped residents agitate, rally and fight City Hall to im- prove their lives. Three decades later, Altgeld is in the middle of a massive renovation. Crime and poverty per- sist, but there’s also a sense of hope, especially for kids who, for the first time, see a president who looks like them when they walk by Obama’s photo on their school- room walls. Cheryl Johnson is among the few remain- ing residents who re- member Obama’s orga- nizing days. He plotted strategies with her moth- er, Hazel, a well-known environmental activist. Johnson, who followed in her footsteps, sees Obama as an inspiration. His presidency, she ex- plains, allowed people to say: “If he can do it, I can do it, too.” “It’s the influence, the motivation that he has given to people who may have been hopeless in their life, like, ‘I can’t get this far,’” Johnson says. “Now you hear young people, young as 5 and 6, saying, ‘I’m going to be the next president of the United States.’” Obama changed per- ceptions of Black people, says Ellen Singletary, a youth specialist at Alt- geld. “The media depicts AP PHOTO/MANUEL BALCE CENETA Honoring Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Obama cont’d from pg 8 In this Friday, June 26, 2009 file photo, President Barack Obama speaks about the passage of the Clean Energy Act by the House of Representatives in the Diplomatic Room of the White House in Washington. As Obama took office, race became a focal point in a way that was unprecedented in American history. us ... in such an unfair and defaming way,” she says, “and to see the pride of who we really are demonstrated on the world stage means the world to me.” That attitude is part of what Michael Eric Dys- on, a Georgetown pro- fessor and prominent African American com- mentator, described in a New York Times op-ed as Black America’s “un- repentant love affair” with the president. That pride, he wrote, over- looks Obama’s failings, including skimping on black cabinet appointees until his second term, forgoing the nomination of a Black woman to the U.S. Supreme Court and a “reluctance to highlight black suffering.” Still, Obama main- tained an 80-90 percent approval rating in the Gallup Poll among Afri- can Americans for virtu- ally his entire presiden- cy. “One of the sayings we have down in Alabama is when you wrestle with a pig, the pig enjoys it and you’re the one that gets muddy,” says Glennon Threatt, an assistant fed- eral public defender in Birmingham, Alabama. “The president has not gotten in the mud. “What he has done is shown that a Black man can be a successful pres- ident and a successful husband and a successful father,” he adds. “I think that’s an extraordinary thing.” “The fact that he got anything done is impres- sive in hindsight.” Senate cont’d from pg 7 staff diversity has been raised several times be- fore in the press and in reports issued by the Congressional Hispanic Staff Association in 2010. Their 2010 report “Un- represented: A Blueprint for Solving the Diversity Crisis on Capitol Hill,” re- ceived media attention, but no measurable hir- ing changes. The Joint Center’s recent study, “Racial Diversity Among Top Senate Staff,” was re- leased in December. Ten years ago, in 2007, Politico reported that, when it came to senior staff positions, “the num- ber approached zero” re- garding African Ameri- cans. Blacks account for roughly 13 percent of the U.S. population, but only 0.7 percent of the senior staff members in the U.S. Senate — three people of 300 senior staff jobs. Currently Latinos are 17 percent of the U.S. popu- lation, but only 2.3 per- cent of top staff. One reason that there has been no change in the numbers over decades is that members of Con- gress are exempt from labor laws that would prompt a lawsuit in any other sector. Congress is not required to adhere to the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the Equal Employ- ment Act of 1972. There’s no legal requirement for Senators to answer to anyone on hiring issues and no requirement to post job vacancies in Congress. Since Con- gress is also exempt from freedom of information requests, there’s also no requirement to report data on hiring. Ironically, federal of- ficials that must be con- firmed by the U.S. Sen- ate must adhere to such guidelines.
