JANUARY 18, 2017
Portland and Seattle Volume XXXIX No. 16
25
CENTS
News ..................................3,10 MLK PHOTOS .................6-7
Opinion ...................................2 A & E .................................... 8-9
Calendars ........................... 4-5 Bids/Classifieds ....................11
CHALLENGING PEOPLE TO SHAPE A BETTER FUTURE NOW
PHOTO COURTESY OF CONSULT HARDESTY
MLK MARCH
The NAACP Portland Branch is holding firm on its
decision not to endorse this weekend’s Women’s
March on Portland. Branch president Jo Ann
Hardesty said she is not personally discouraging
anyone from going, but she is throwing her energy
into helping organize a Peace and Justice March
through Northeast Portland Jan. 28.
Marching
Forward
By Christen McCurdy
Of The Skanner News
T
he Women’s March on Portland
is moving forward this Saturday
with new leadership and a com-
mitment to inclusive feminism,
though the NAACP Portland Branch is
still not endorsing the event.
Margaret Jacobsen, a 29-year-old
Black Portland writer, whose previous
organizing experience includes a series
of conversations about race called Let’s
Talk, took the reins of the event early
last week — just days before the NAACP
Portland chapter put out a press release
See MARCH on page 3
PHOTO BY SUSAN FRIED
Women’s March on
Portland presses ahead
with new leadership
Thousands of people participated in the 35th Annual Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration in Seattle Jan. 16. The event started at 9:30 a.m. with 26
workshops on a variety of social justice topics including single payer health care, Black Lives Matter and labor and civil rights in the Trump era, followed
at 11 a.m. with a rally in the Garfield High School gym and ending with a march from Garfield to the Federal Building for another rally. People could then
return to Garfield for a free lunch. The annual tradition drew an even larger crowd as many people in Seattle prepare for a week of activism leading up
to Donald Trump’s inauguration and the Women’s March on Jan. 21 which is being held in conjunction with marches all over the world.
Donald Trump Inspires OSU Course on Modern Racism
Course to focus on how African Americans have resisted racism through
By Melanie Sevcenko
Of The Skanner News
W
hile
Donald
Trump is only
days away from
becoming
the
45th President of the Unit-
ed States, some college
campuses are educating
students on his deplorable
campaign tactics, in what
might be the first wave of
university-level courses
that link modern racism to
the incoming president.
Oregon State University
Gov. Kate Brown
opened a new winter quar-
ter last week with African
American Resistance in
the Era of Donald Trump,
a special topics seminar
course offered through the
sociology department.
The class aims to give
students an understand-
ing of how racism is deeply
embedded in social media
and popular culture, by
covering history from the
post-emancipation period
to its progression through
the recent election of Don-
ald Trump.
The curriculum will
place a special focus on
how African Americans
have continued to resist
white supremacy.
“Unfortunately, in the
high school and universi-
ty education systems, a lot
of students don’t get much
exposure to what that
resistance has been like
historically,” said sociolo-
gy professor Dr. Dwaine
Plaza, who was motivated
to create the course after
Trump’s victory. “So what
we’re trying to do in this
PHOTOS:
‘There Have Been Times of Peril Before’
The Skanner
Howard Moore’s speech at MLK Breakfast
Foundation MLK
focused on staying hopeful in difficult times
Breakfast pages 6-7
By Christen McCurdy
Of The Skanner News
Obama’s Farewell
Speech
page 10
C
ivil rights attorney Howard
Moore, whose clients have in-
cluded activists Julian Bond
and Angela Davis, addressed
a crowd of about 1,000 people, who
traveled through ice and snow Jan.
16 for The Skanner Foundation’s
31st Annual Martin Luther King, Jr.
Breakfast.
Moore’s speech focused on the elec-
tion and impending inauguration
of business tycoon Donald Trump.
Trump’s lack of regard for civil cam-
paigning, his comments about Mus-
lims, African Americans, Latinos
and people with disabilities — and
his conduct with women should be of
grave concern to Americans, Moore
said. But, in the spirit of remember-
ing King’s legacy, he told the audi-
See BREAKFAST on page 3
course is give a histori-
cal narrative of African
American resistance up to
this point, and then what
it might be like in the next
four to eight years.”
The professor is asking
his students to reflect on
how Black Americans will
resist institutionalized dis-
crimination which, he said,
is going to be part of their
day-to-day lives during the
new presidency.
Plaza, who is African
American himself, believes
See TRUMP on page 3
Civil rights attorney Howard Moore spoke at The
Skanner Foundation’s MLK Breakfast Monday.