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About The skanner. (Portland, Or.) 1975-2014 | View Entire Issue (April 11, 2018)
April 11, 2018 The Skanner Page 3 News cont’d from pg 1 In the hours leading up to his death Elifritz suf- fered an apparent mental health crisis, and a video of the shooting shows him more than 20 feet away from the officers in the building. He entered CityTeam Ministries homeless shelter as an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting was about to start; friends of Elifritz’s say he had graduated six months before from an addiction recovery pro- gram at Central City Con- cern. Police and witness accounts say Elifritz held a knife to his own throat during an earlier police encounter in Southeast Portland after calling 911, and later crashed a stolen car near the shelter. Tuesday local media reported on a resurfaced Portland Monthly arti- cle from 2007 that said Elifritz was at one time involved with the White Mapping supremacist gang Euro- pean Kindred. Local activists orga- nized a vigil Sunday af- ternoon and planned to demonstrate a Portland City Hall Wednesday af- ternoon after The Skan- ner’s press time. They’ve said they’re aware of Eli- fritz’s prior affiliations but also his struggle with mental health and addic- tion, and will organize around the underlying issue of police brutality. “We are going to con- tinue to organize around this but not based on the individual. Instead, we will be focusing on the impact on the houseless community, the ways the mayor plans to further criminalize the poor and our police union contract which discourages ac- countability,” Portland’s Resistance leader Greg- ory McKelvey wrote on Twitter Monday. Remembering Dr. King Pastors and members of the clergy join hands and sing “We Shall Overcome” at the end of “A Day of Remembrance -Commemorating the Life and Legacy of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.” on the 50th Anniversary of his assassination April 4 at Mount Zion Baptist Church in Seattle. The evening featured many distinguished speakers and performers like the Rev. Paul Benz with faith Action Network, State Representative Sharon Tomiko Santos, Radio Host and longtime Civil Rights activist Eddie Rye, King County Council member Larry Gossett, Spoken word artists Louie Tan Vital and Tia Yarbrough and Pastor Wright and the Total Experience Choir celebrating Martin Luther King Jr.’s contributions to the fight for equality and social justice. cont’d from pg 1 ated. “They’re still coming in. I get emails all the time,” Smith told The Skanner. The map shows neighborhoods in southwest Portland, Laurelhurst and the section of northeast Portland currently known as Sabin. Clicking on map entries re- veals text from residents’ hous- ing deeds restricting purchase of the property to Whites, or excluding specific races (typ- ically African Americans and Chinese and Japanese immi- grants). Smith started collecting the covenants as an intern with the Bureau of Planning and Sustainability, and has contin- ued her work as an intern with the Portland Housing Bureau. Ryan Curren, a project man- ager with the Bureau of Plan- ning and Sustainability, said he got the idea for the project while working on planning for the city’s southwest corridor. He wanted to know the history of the affected neighborhoods before making recommenda- tions, and was aware of a data- base in Seattle that mapped re- strictive covenants and helped shape housing policy in the future. “ into moving into or out of cer- tain neighborhoods, as well as policy in the Portland Real- tors’ code of ethics that threat- ened real estate agents with blackballing if they integrated neighborhoods. Barber is also placing Port- land’s exclusionary housing practices in the context of the We knew [segregated neighbor- hoods] weren’t natural “We knew [segregated neigh- borhoods] weren’t natural. They were a result of choices made in private action and public policy, an understand- ing which helped us in terms of land use planning,” Curren said. PSU history professor Katy Barber said her students are also researching artifacts like real estate ads, which in the first half of the century used overtly racist language to ma- nipulate White homebuyers Donation Land Act — which of- fered free land to some White settlers, but excluded Native Americans and immigrants — and the creation of reserva- tions for Native Americans. According to Curren, the most concrete outcome of the creation of the Seattle database was the passage of a subse- quent law making them easier to remove from housing deeds. This year Oregon’s legislature passed a similar law intended to remove the bureaucratic headache of striking the lan- guage from deeds. Historians say racially restrictive cove- nants were typically enforced by neighborhood associations that could — and sometimes did — file lawsuits if a home in their neighborhood was sold to a person of color. Melissa Lang, a graduate student in public history at PSU and the secretary of the Portland NAACP Branch, said it’s also important to note that Portland’s labyrinth of racist housing policies was also met with heavy resistance. She studies the ways in which res- idents, both Black and White, resisted policy by forming financial institutions that would offer loans to African Americans when most banks would not, and by working with White businessmen and lawyers to act as legal repre- sentatives for loans to African Americans. Starting in the 1910s and 1920s, she said, the Black press played a key role in encouraging and promoting Black homeownership. “African Americans have owned property all across the city. It was not just a way to throw roots down; it was a form of defiance,” Lang said. Smith is still searching for covenants, and she, Barber and Lang spoke at Oregon Histori- cal Society April 8 as part of a series of events honoring the 50th anniversary of the Fair Housing Act, which was signed into law April 10, 1968. Next week’s edition of The Skanner News will include a four-page insert on Fair Housing with more information on local events celebrating the law. Barber’s students will also present their research at the Vanport Mosaic Festival in May on the long-term effects of housing discrimination. “The long reach of that his- tory is still playing out today. Just as important, or maybe more important, is the tools of resistance,” Barber said. cont’d from pg 1 project, he wanted to do something big- ger, so he called in the partners. “We’re very lucky to be in the posi- tion we’re in, and we know some people aren’t as lucky. And because they aren’t, we know we need to assist them,” said Goodwin, who grow up volunteering alongside his mother for Habitat for Humanity in North Carolina. “I work with a lot of millennials and younger people, so this is an opportunity for them to see that there’s another side to the way people live in our community, and it gives them an opportunity to as- sist with that.” Beginning in July 2017, the four tiny houses were constructed on site with the help of trade trainers Portland Youth Builders, Constructing Hope and Oregon Tradeswomen, which togeth- er provided a chance for women, low income communities, marginalized youth, people of color and justice-in- volved individuals to accrue hands-on building skills in the creation of safe shelters. Students of Portland Youth Builders were also onsite at the tiny house un- veiling last week to build a number of garden beds for residents of Dignity Village. “The problems we’re all interested in solving are systemic problems that “ We’re very lucky to be in the position we’re in, and we know some people aren’t as lucky are deeply inter-related,” said ReBuild- ing Center executive director Alison Dennis. “It’s the connection between environmental sustainability and an alternative to a disposable economy – and putting back into use both the ma- terials that are salvageable as well as the people, who society maybe thinks aren’t part of the solu- tion, they’re just seen and stereotyped as the problem.” Since Dignity Village opened, the ReBuilding Center has been donat- ing and replacing its ma- terials as they reach their life expectancy, mainly due to mold and leaks. “I’m so stoked about this,” said village res- ident Scott Layman. “When we first got here, Left to right: Josh Kopczynski of DPI Solar, Portland Youth Builders we used whatever we student, Alison Dennis of the ReBuilding Center, John Goodwin of could, however we could. the Portland Trail Blazers, architect Yianni Doulis, James Rice of But it wasn’t all up to Constructing Hope, and Tom Patzkowski of the ReBuilding Center. code. We started out with our tents on palettes. an additional four tiny houses, which And when it rained here, we were in a will also be outfitted with solar panels puddle. And then we slowly started re- that will tie into the village’s electrical placing the old structures with livable grid. structures.” Read the full story at TheSkanner.com The project partners are working on PHOTO BY MELANIE SEVCENKO Dignity PHOTO BY SUSAN FRIED Shooting
