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March 7, 2018 The Skanner Page 3 News cont’d from pg 1 said David Dobransky, 67, who owns Dobransky Firearms, a small gun shop in North Canton, Ohio. Since then, sales there have been cut in half, and nothing the president or Congress has done or said follow- ing the Florida shooting has improved business. Gun owners apparent- ly have faith that Trump “ elected. Demand dropped in December and January, before the Florida shoot- ing and the debates on gun laws that followed, he said. The company doesn’t expect sales to improve much over the next year. Sturm Ruger and American Outdoor Brands have both seen The day after the election, it’s just like somebody turned a faucet off won’t impose more re- strictions, gun show owners say. That’s even with the confusing mes- sages Trump has sent in the past week. He has cast himself as a strong supporter of the National Rifle Associa- tion but on Wednesday criticized lawmakers for being too fearful of the NRA to take action. He also reaffirmed positions opposed by the NRA, such as banning gun sales to those under 21. Then the next day, Trump met with NRA of- ficials and tweeted they’d had a “Good (Great) meet- ing.” The NRA’s executive director, tweeting about the same meeting, said Trump and Vice Presi- dent Mike Pence “don’t want gun control.” At Rapid-Fire Firearms in Rapid City, South Da- kota, business is “just like normal,” owner Rob- ert Akers said Thursday, contrasting business with the panic buying under President Barack Obama. In an earnings con- ference call last week, American Outdoor Brands, which owns Smith & Wesson, said revenue fell by one- third over the past three months, consistent with a drop since Trump was Pioneer their stocks plunge since Trump was elected, as they have mostly report- ed disappointing sales in recent months. Ameri- can Outdoor Brands has plunged 67 percent since the presidential election and Sturm Ruger is down 28 percent. Potentially dampening sales further, four ma- jor retailers last week — Kroger, Dick’s Sport- ing Goods, L.L. Bean and Walmart — announced they will no longer sell guns to anyone under 21. In addition, outdoor re- tailer REI says it’s halting future orders of some popular brands — in- cluding CamelBak water carriers, Giro helmets and Camp Chef stoves — whose parent company also makes ammunition and assault-style rifles. Over the past 30 years, U.S. gun production has tripled. Nine million were produced in 2015, compared with 3 million in 1986, according to the Bureau of Alcohol, To- bacco, Firearms and Ex- plosives. Those figures don’t reflect sales since Trump took office, bring- ing with him the percep- tion he was friendlier to gun owners. Read the rest of this story at TheSkanner.com Portland Parks & Recreation Celebrates Refugees & Immigrants March 16 Portland Parks & Recreation (PP&R) presents the Portlanders Stand with Refugees and Immigrants celebration from 6 to 9 p.m. March 16 at PP&R’s East Portland Community Center, 740 SE 106th Ave. All are welcome to the free, multicultural community gathering to celebrate people new to Portland – and to the United States - and to help them feel welcomed. For more information visit www.facebook.com/ events/538289163221516. Manning PHOTO COURTESY OF PORTLAND PARKS & RECREATION Guns cont’d from pg 1 ager at Weyerhaeuser, a wood- working supply company. But as someone who never felt content with just getting the job done, Manning looked to his com- munity as the next frontier. He volunteered for Eugene’s Home- owners Association and became its president for six years; and as a certified mediator — a credit he earned through the department of defense — he started offering volunteer mediation for the Lane County Circuit Court, where he mediated over 300 sessions. Before joining the military in 1983, Manning’s professional ca- reer began as a state corrections officer and eventually a police of- ficer. Decades later, after settling in Eugene, he noticed an opening on the city’s police commission. He applied and served for six years, where he chaired its Out- reach Resources Committee and co-chaired the Gang Awareness Planning Committee. It was around this time that Manning was appointed to the Oregon Commission on Black Af- fairs by then-Gov. John Kitzhaber; he was later re-appointed by Gov. Kate Brown. In 2016, during his last term with the commission, he ran for the House seat in District 14, but lost the race to Julie Fahey in the May primary. The defeat didn’t ruffle Man- ning’s feathers, however. Months later, he got wind of another opportunity: Oregon State Sen. Chris Edwards would be resign- ing from his position in District 7 “ I really enjoy myself here because I stay grounded and focused on the mission — Manning’s district. The county needed someone to fill his shoes. Winning by a three-to-two vote, Manning was appointed in De- cember 2016 by the Lane County Board of Commissioners as the new Democrat state senator for Northwest Eugene and Junction City. Though Manning admits “it never crossed my mind” to be- come a state senator, he told The Skanner, “I really enjoy myself here because I stay grounded and focused on the mission. And that is to make sure I’m looking out for my constituents and veterans. It’s an amazing place to work.” Oregon State Sen. Lew Freder- ick said he’s not surprised by his colleague’s turn into politics. As he sees it, Manning’s military and law enforcement background – coupled by his leadership within various nonprofits and commit- tees — has groomed him for the state legislature. “The key is how he brings all those things together while knowing when to insert himself,” said Frederick. “He also knows when to ask questions. I’m enjoy- ing having him here.” Manning, too, said his approach to the state legislature has indeed been informed by his army days. “Through my military career, I’ve learned you don’t come in and try to inject changes,” he said. “You sit back and then you develop your own strategies.” With healthcare pegged as his top priority, Manning recently got the opportunity to share his vision – a single-payer healthcare system that covers Washington, Oregon, California and Hawaii – during the Western Legislative Academy, which he attended in Colorado Springs last year along- side lawmakers from 13 western states. Read more at TheSkanner.com cont’d from pg 1 with Coleman about research- ing Saules’ life and the ongoing legacy of Oregon’s exclusion laws. This interview has been edited for space and clarity. The Skanner News: How did you first hear about James Saules? Kenneth Coleman: I first encountered him not in an Or- egon history class, but a meth- odology class. It was actually before I started studying Or- egon history. The instructor gave us a section of the book “A Peculiar Paradise,” which is one of the few books written about the history of Black peo- ple in Oregon. She just wanted us to look at the book with the critical eye of a historian. One of the stories in it was about James Saules, and talked about his involvement in the Cock- stock incident, so already, I just got interested in this sort of pre-statehood Oregon that I really knew nothing about. “ I really want- ed to know why Oregon was the way it was, why it was so segre- gated TSN: What led you to decide to write about him? KC: I’m from Oregon. It took me a long time to start looking into the history of where I was from, but I knew somewhere in the back of my mind that we were living in a colonized space, that we’re living on in- digenous land. And not only is it a colonized space but also, growing up, I saw White supremacy up close. I came of age during the era of skinheads, police brutal- ity, segregation -- these were all things that I saw, kind of, growing up. And then, once I started studying history, I re- ally wanted to know why Ore- gon was the way it was, why it was so segregated, why there was such a lack of diversity in many spaces. I really thought these two things were related: that the reason why there were so few Black people living in Oregon was actually related to Indian removal. These kind of came from the same historical period and a similar ideology. Saules came in when I went back and looked at when the Or- egon Trail immigrants arrived and wanted to create their own homeland, you know, an An- glo-American homeland in Or- egon; they passed legislation banning the immigration of Black people. The rhetoric that they often used was they want- ed to prevent Black people and Native people from collaborat- ing, from intermingling and forming a bloc that would then destroy the sort of nascent White settlement. Saules was actually arrested for inciting Indians to violence against a White settler. Soon after that, they passed the first, the provi- sional government passed the first Black exclusion law – the so-called lash law in 1844. All these things started to connect in my mind. Read more at TheSkanner.com ‘Dangerous Subjects,’ a 2017 book about the life of Portland pioneer James D. Saules, examines the relationship between Saules’ story and the rise of Black exclusion laws in Oregon.
