JANUARY 17, 2018 Portland and Seattle Volume XL No. 16 25 CENTS News ..................................3,10 A & E .................................... 8-9 Opinion ...................................2 MLK Breakfast Photos .6-7 Calendars ........................... 4-5 Bids/Classifieds ....................11 CHALLENGING PEOPLE TO SHAPE A BETTER FUTURE NOW PHOTO COURTESY OF THE STATE OF OREGON MLK BREAKFAST Justice Adrienne Nelson Adrienne Nelson, the first Black Supreme Court Justice, talks about her record and new role By Christen McCurdy Of The Skanner News O regon’s first Black Supreme Court Justice went to work last week. Adrienne Nelson is the African American to serve on the Oregon Su- preme Court. She was appointed to the position by Gov. Kate Brown on Jan. 2 to fill a vacancy left by retiring justice Jack L. Landau. Prior to this appointment, Nelson served as a Multnomah County Circuit Court judge starting in 2006. Before that, she worked at Portland State Uni- versity as a senior attorney and coordi- nator of student legal and medication services, and in private practice for the Portland firm Bennett, Hartman, Morris and Kaplan, LLP, from 1999 to 2004. She began her legal career as a public defender at Multnomah De- fenders, Inc., and served from 1996 to 1999. Judge Nelson grew up in Arkan- sas, and earned her undergraduate de- gree from the University of Arkansas and her law degree from the Universi- ty of Texas. See NELSON on page 3 Cheryl Grace addressed an audience of about 1,000 people at the Red Lion Hotel on the River on Hayden Island for The Skanner Foundation’s 32nd Annual Martin Luther King Jr. Day Breakfast. Twenty-two Oregon students received scholarships at the event. ‘Use Your Power,’ Grace Tells Breakfast Attendees At MLK Breakfast, Nielsen VP urged audience to move past fear By Christen McCurdy Of The Skanner News T wenty-two Oregon students received scholarships Monday morning at The Skan- ner Foundation’s 32nd Annual Martin Luther King Jr. Day Breakfast — the highest number in the foundation’s history. About 1,000 people gath- ered Monday at the as- sembled crowd of 1,000 at the Red Lion Hotel on the River on Hayden Island for the breakfast, which was keynoted by Cheryl Grace, the senior vice president of U.S. strategic communi- ty alliances and consumer engagement at Nielsen. Mayor Ted Wheeler, Gov. Kate Brown and Daisy Santos, corporate trainer at Northwest Natural all shared brief remarks at the beginning of the event, as did representatives from several sponsoring organi- zations. “I cannot recall a time in our history more ur- gent than right now. Our nation is at a crossroads,” Wheeler said. “Now more than ever, we must take Dr. King’s words to heart.” Grace started her key- note address with a five-question survey about Black culture. After asking the audience to fill in the blanks on the aphorism “Black don’t crack” and asking where Black people go for therapy (church), Grace remarked her adult son knew the answer to every single one of the questions on the list, even though she didn’t recall ex- plicitly teaching him any of them. “Black culture is bigger than all of us,” Grace said. “Being Black is kind of cool.” At Nielsen Grace has spearheaded several years of research on Black con- sumers and their influence on consumers of other rac- es. At the same time Afri- can Americans are regard- ed as tastemakers, Grace said, conversations about the Black experience are increasingly about some- thing else: fear. “Lately when any con- versation about African Americans is had, it’s about fear. It’s about what we are afraid of or who is afraid,” she said. She went on to recite a quote from King: “People don’t get along because they fear each other. Peo- ple fear each other because they don’t know each other. They don’t know each oth- er because they don’t com- municate.” Grace shared a personal See BREAKFAST on page 3 Minority Business Owners Talk Capital at Feb. 2 Event Public event on securing funds for minority and women entrepreneurs page 9 Leaders React to Trump’s ‘Sh–hole Countries’ Remarks page 10 By Melanie Sevcenko Of The Skanner News A sk any small business owner and they’ll likely tell you se- curing a loan is no easy feat. And if the proprietor is a mi- nority or a woman, the barriers to capital are often tougher to break. According to 2015 figures by the U.S. Small Business Association, mi- nority-owned businesses make up 30.9 percent of all small businesses in Oregon. But while that number is a slight increase from previous years, the financial challenges facing these groups far outpace non-minority en- trepreneurs. It’s the reason Ascent Funding formed back in 2008. Originally called Albina Opportunities Corpo- ration and headed by Terry Brandt, See BUSINESS on page 3 PHOTO COURTESY OF ASCENT FUNDING NAACP Image Awards PHOTO BY ANTONIO HARRIS Justice Nelson Sworn In If a proprietor is a woman or person of color, the barriers to capital are often tougher to break