MAY 17, 2017
Portland and Seattle Volume XXXIX No. 33
25
CENTS
News .............................. 3,8-10 A & E .....................................6-7
Opinion ...................................2 El Daily Stormer ..............9
Calendars ........................... 4-5 Bids/Classifieds ....................11
CHALLENGING PEOPLE TO SHAPE A BETTER FUTURE NOW
PHOTO COURTESY OF PROSPER PORTLAND
SPIRIT OF AFRICA FESTIVAL
Prosper Portland offers business finance programs.
PDC Becomes
‘Prosper
Portland’
By Melanie Sevcenko
Of The Skanner News
G
earing up for its 60th anniversary
next year, the Portland Develop-
ment Commission has revamped
its image with a new name and
website.
Now known as Prosper Portland, the
$200,000 rebranding effort is, accord-
ing to agency spokespeople, to more
clearly convey the agency’s trajectory.
The change follows another public
agency that ditched its traditional title
for a more approachable one: in 2011,
the Housing Authority of Portland be-
came Home Forward and launched a
fresher, more progressive identity.
“The word ‘prosperity’ really stuck as
being aspirational,” Prosper Portland’s
See PROSPER on page 3
In this 1950s photo a black man included in a syphilis
study has blood drawn by a doctor in Tuskegee, Ala.
For 40 years medical workers in the segregated
South withheld treatment for unsuspecting men so
doctors could track the ravages of the horrid illness
and dissect their bodies afterward.
The Tuskegee
Study page 8
Neo-Nazi Website is Now
Available in Spanish
page 9
PHOTO BY SUSAN FRIED
Portland Development
Commission rebrands
to promote equity and
inclusiveness
A Somali Dance Group performs during the the 2017 Spirit of Africa Festival. The festival celebrated Africa and African culture, and featured music and
dance from all over the continent including traditional music from Morocco, Zimbabwe and balafon music from Guinea, West Africa, dance from Ghana,
Somalia and Ethiopia, an African Print Fashion Show and an African Market Place.
Vice Chair Rachelle Dixon on County Democrats
Dixon is vying for diverse political voices and an educated voting public
By Melanie Sevcenko
Of The Skanner News
A
native of the Pacific
Northwest, Rachelle
Dixon became fas-
cinated by politics
when she moved to Wash-
ington, D.C. in 1993. As a
life-long Democrat, she
got her first taste of ma-
jor-league politics while
working on a campaign for
John Kerry’s political ac-
tion committee. That ener-
gy carried her through two
Barack Obama campaigns.
When Dixon came back
to Portland in 2009, she
settled down into moth-
erhood. But after her son
graduated from
high
school, she caught the polit-
ical bug again. In 2016 she
ran to be a Bernie Sanders
delegate, before launching
her own campaign for vice
chair of the Multnomah
County Democrats.
In January, Dixon took
her elected seat as vice
chair 1, of Dist. 50, and is
one of only two African
American women that
have ever held an executive
or administrative title for
her party in Multnomah
County. She sat down with
The Skanner to discuss
her role and how her par-
ty is working to resist the
Trump agenda. This inter-
view has been edited for
space and clarity.
The Skanner News: How
have your expectations
about your seat and your
party changed since you
were elected last autumn?
Rachelle Dixon: The
original expectation may
have been that things
would be more like they
are on a national level.
Nothing could be further
from the truth (laughs). On
a national level, when you
enter a room on a political
action campaign, there are
priorities — and the top
three priorities are what
everyone is focusing on.
The other things are dis-
tant wishes.
Multnomah County has
such diverse views among
See DIXON on page 3
Voters Approve Record-Setting School Bond,
Expansion of Auditor’s Role
Landmark $790 million school bond passes with
66 percent of the vote.
The Skanner News Staff
S
lightly more than 30 percent
of Multnomah County’s regis-
tered voters cast ballots in this
spring’s special election. Port-
land voters cast votes on three bal-
lot measures: a $790 million bond to
improve facilities in Portland Public
Schools, a measure authorizing the
Portland City Council to change the
scope of transient lodgings and an
initiative to increase the city audi-
tor’s independence from the bodies
it audits.
Voters throughout the county also
selected new board members to over-
see school boards and the board of
Portland Community College. The
Skanner has compiled the results of
the city ballot measures, Portland
Public Schools, the Multnomah Edu-
cation Service District and Portland
Community College director posi-
tions. For a full list of results, visit
http://www.results.oregonvotes.gov.
Measure 26-189 Amends Charter to
Increase Auditor’s Independence
From Audited Agencies
Yes, 86.42% (106,750 votes)
No, 13.58% (16,772 votes)
123,522 total votes
Measure 26-194 Amends Charter
Authorizing Council to Change
Scope of Transient Lodgings Tax
See ELECTION on page 3