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About The skanner. (Portland, Or.) 1975-2014 | View Entire Issue (Oct. 18, 2017)
OCTOBER 18, 2017 Portland and Seattle Volume XL No. 3 News ...............................3,9,10 A & E .....................................6-7 Opinion ...................................2 ICE in Oregon ...................9 Calendars ........................... 4-5 Bids/Classifieds ....................11 CHALLENGING PEOPLE TO SHAPE A BETTER FUTURE NOW PHOTO COURTESY OF OREGON UNITED FOR ROHINGYAS 25 CENTS MICHAEL ERIC DYSON SPEAKS On Sept. 24 about 700 people rallied in downtown Portland to protest the ethnic cleansing of Rohingyas in Burma. Portland’s small Rohingya community raising voices for US intervention PHOTO BY SUSAN FRIED Oregon Rohingyas Speak Out on Genocide By Christen McCurdy Of The Skanner News Michael Eric Dyson, sociology professor at Georgetown and prolific author delivered the A. Scott Bullitt Lecture in American History, titled “Martin Luther King Jr. and (African) American Leadership in the 21st Century” Oct. 13 at Mount Zion Baptist Church. I PCC Gears Up for November Bond Measure COURTESY OF ACLU OF OREGON See ROHINGYAS on page 3 Mat dos Santos, legal director at the ACLU of Oregon. ACLU Files FOIA Request Over ICE Records page 9 If passed, funds would go toward updating job training centers and more By Melanie Sevcenko Of The Skanner News P ortland Community College is asking that voters think to the future of workforce training when they hit the polls in November. As the largest post-sec- ondary institution in Ore- gon, serving nearly 78,000 students, PCC has put for- ward a bond measure that, if passed, will provide $185 million towards revamp- ing job training centers and updating facilities to be more modern, safe, and cost and energy-efficient. “It’s important for our students to be trained and study on equipment that’s going to be used in the workplace. It gives our students an economic and workforce advantage that they might not have oth- erwise,” said Sylvia Kelley, executive vice president of PCC, who called the some of the college’s buildings “ancient.” The bond, called Mea- sure 26-196, is a renewal of an expiring $144 mil- lion bond passed in 2000. At that time internet use accelerating in homes and businesses, which meant technologies in educa- tional institutions had to evolve. Seventy-two per- cent of Multnomah County residents voted to pass it back then. Moreover, says PCC, every $1 invested in PCC returns $12.50 to Oregon’s econo- my in the form of state rev- enue and social savings. The college passed an- other bond in 2008 — sep- arate from Measure 26-196 — which, at $374 million, was the largest in the state at that time. Multnomah County voted 63.2 percent in favor of it. In spite of the recession, PCC was experiencing tre- mendous growth, with a 40 percent increase in enroll- ment. The 2008 capital con- struction bond thus fun- neled money into building classrooms and expanding State Settles With Erious Johnson, Nkenge Harmon Johnson Former top civil rights attorney cannot work for the state again for five more years The Skanner News Staff Georgia Could Get America’s First Black Female Governor page 9 Today’s bond, at $41 mil- lion more, is estimated to maintain the tax rate of 40 cents per $1,000 of assessed property value. And that’s good for the next 16 years. “One thing that was im- portant for us is recog- nizing the increased cost in housing in this region and the growth that’s oc- curred,” Kelley told The Skanner. “And the afford- ability for our students and our communities matter to us. We decided it would be important for us to maintain the same estimated tax rate moving forward.” Simply put, passing the bond measure will not cost taxpayers anything extra. T he state of Oregon has settled with the former head of the De- partment of Justice’s civil rights division, and with the current president and CEO of the Urban League of Portland. Erious Johnson and Nkenge Harmon Johnson, who are married, filed legal claims with the state agencies that employed them in 2015 and 2016 respectively. The results of both claims were an- nounced last week. Erious Johnson sued the state in 2016 after the 2015 revelation that the DOJ had run surveillance on Twitter users using the #BlackLives- See SETTLEMENT on page 3 PHOTO BY n Malta, Mohammed Husson Ali taught school and later worked as a food monitor for the state welfare program. Then he was expelled from his community, first leaving for Bangla- desh and then for Malaysia. In 2012, he came to Portland and became a U.S. cit- izen. Ali is in constant contact with his fam- ily members, who live in refugee camps in Burma. And he’s part of a small, growing movement to raise awareness about the ethnic and religious persecu- tion of Rohingyas in Myanmar. According to Yusuf Iqbal, whose Erious Johnson See BOND on page 3