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.