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About The skanner. (Portland, Or.) 1975-2014 | View Entire Issue (Dec. 27, 2017)
December 27, 2017 The Skanner Page 3 A Look Back at 2017 2017 in Review: ‘Disruption, Despair and Dumpster Fires’ NEW YORK — The news alerts gushed in: An attack on a concert, a church, an ice cream par- lor; an assailant wielding a gun or hammer or acid. There’s an earthquake in Mexico, a monsoon in In- dia, a volcanic eruption in Bali, hurricane after hurricane after hurri- cane. Keep up as your phone vibrates with word of your favorite actor accused of miscon- duct. Make that anchor- man. Or politician. Or radio star. “ It’s almost like one of those hor- ror rides at the amuse- ment park where ev- ery time it heads into the next segment it gets worse The volatile year 2017 shook us so much and so often it felt like whip- lash or worse, and that’s without even consider- ing Donald Trump, at the center of so much of the turmoil. “It’s almost like one of those horror rides at the amusement park where every time it heads into the next segment it gets worse,” said noted trend- spotter Marian Salzman. “Every time I turn off a device, I feel like I have anxiety because I’m not tracking the news.” The year, she said, boiled down to “disrup- tion, despair and dump- ster fires.” In retrospect, 2017’s destiny seemed sealed in its opening moments. Just after the new year dawned in Istanbul, a gunman killed 39 peo- ple at a nightclub and wounded scores more. The joy of the holiday dissolved into a scene of heartbreak outside the city morgue, where some cried and fell to the ground as they learned of a loved one’s fate. Around the world this year, vehicles were made into weapons, with trucks, cars and vans plowing down peo- ple on the Westminster and London bridges in Britain; in Times Square and on a Manhattan bike path; on a major shop- ping street in the Swed- ish capital of Stockholm; on the historic La Rambla in Barcelona. Terrorism and other violence struck so regu- larly that many accepted it as a fact of life. “It can happen any- where as long as there is one man willing to die,” said Luis Antonio Bone, 66, of Barcelona, who is retired from a cement factory job. Bone is at once realistic and defi- ant, saying crowded plac- es may make him think about his safety but won’t deter him from outings. “We have to live with it,” he said, “but keep liv- ing as we always have.” That kind of resilience was mustered again and again, even by some of those marked by some of the year’s biggest trage- dies. In Texas, Pastor Frank Pomeroy vowed that good would persevere over evil. Pomeroy leads the rural church where a gunman killed 25 pa- rishioners, his own 14-year-old daughter among them. “Rather than choose darkness as that young man did that day, we choose life,” he said in an emotional ser- vice only a week after the rampage. In Las Vegas, too, where 58 people were fatally shot at a music festival, some searched for opti- mism in the face of sav- agery. Jay Pleggenkuhle, a 52-year-old landscaper, helped create a memori- al garden with a tree for each of the victims. Some 1,000 people volunteered to help with his project, putting aside personal or political differences to work hand in hand. “People have really been bound together fol- lowing this tragedy,” he said. A deadly chemical attack in Syria stirred people around the globe. Missile launches by North Korea brought angst that nuclear war was nearing. Rallies by white supremacists, wearing white hoods and clasping torches, roused uncomfortable memo- ries of the United States’ past. All of it broke with such ferocity, it seemed impossible to focus on any one incident too long. “Even something like a mass shooting that killed 50 people, the story moves on in just a cou- ple weeks,” said Lauren Wright, a lecturer on pol- itics and public affairs at Princeton University. In Egypt, twin Palm Sunday attacks am- “ People have re- ally been bound together following this trage- dy bushed Coptic Christians and a November assault on a crowded mosque killed more than 300. In Britain, 22 people died when a suicide bomber detonated a backpack full of explosives after an People are thrown into the air as a car drives into a group of protesters demonstrating against a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Va., on Aug. 12, 2017. The white nationalists were holding the rally to protest plans by the city of Charlottesville to remove a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee. There were several hundred counterprotesters marching in a long line when the car drove into a group of them. Ariana Grande show. Three major storms — Harvey, Irma and Maria — battered Puerto Rico and much of the Carib- bean, as well as Texas and Florida, as 2017 went down as one of the most active hurricane seasons in recorded history. Fires tore through California and Portugal; earth- quakes rocked Mexico, Iran and Iraq; flooding and an avalanche cov- ered parts of Italy; mud- slides leveled homes in Sierra Leone; and a dead- ly monsoon pummeled India, Nepal, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. In hotspots around the world, people sought escape. Amnesty In- ternational estimated 73,000 refugees took to the Mediterranean in the first half of the year alone, with about 2,000 dying along the way. In Myanmar, the military has been conducting a brutal ethnic cleans- ing of Rohingya people, killing untold num- bers and forcing more than 626,000 to flee into neighboring Bangladesh. Amid the barrage, oth- er big stories struggled for a spotlight. A grind- ing civil war in Yemen pushed millions in the impoverished country to famine. A political cri- sis in Venezuela brought intensifying clashes. In Zimbabwe, Robert Mug- abe was ousted from con- trol after a 37-year reign. In Spain, a push for Cata- lonian independence de- generated at times into ugly scenes of mayhem. In the U.S., Trump See 2017 on page 4 PHOTO BY SUSAN FRIED By MATT SEDENSKY AP National Writer RYAN M. KELLY/THE DAILY PROGRESS VIA AP Volatile year marked by violent attacks, natural disasters and political chaos Women’s March An estimated 500,000 people converged on Washington, D.C. Jan. 21 — the day after President Trump’s inauguration — to show their support for women’s rights, civil rights and the environment. Another 3 to 4 million people are estimated to have attended hundreds of sister marches around the world. Portland’s sister march drew an estimated crowd of 100,000; the Womxn’s March on Seattle drew between 125,000 and 175,000. The march resulted from months of planning and national as well as local marches drew some controversy, especially over racial inclusion. In mid-January the NAACP Portland Branch, an early sponsor of the Portland event, withdrew its support for the event, saying the organizers did not sufficiently address or include the concerns of racial and ethnic minorities, as well as transgender people. At the same time it announced its withdrawal of support, the NAACP announced a March for Safety and Justice Jan. 28. By the time the march actually took place, the event’s original organizer, Dara Glass, had effectively been ousted and replaced by a group of Portland- based activists that included racial and gender justice organizer Margaret Jacobsen and Rebekah Katt Brewis of PDX Trans Pride. In March, the Oregonian reported $22,000 in funds raised for the march by its fiscal sponsor, PDX Trans Pride, was not accounted for. According to a spokesperson for the Oregon Department of Justice, the investigation is still ongoing. A second Womxn’s March on Seattle is scheduled in Jan. 20. Portland organizers have not announced any similar plans.