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About The skanner. (Portland, Or.) 1975-2014 | View Entire Issue (April 18, 2018)
Page 2 The Skanner April 18, 2018 Challenging People to Shape a Better Future Now Waiting While Black in Philadelphia Can Get You Arrested Bernie Foster Founder/Publisher L Bobbie Dore Foster Executive Editor Jerry Foster Advertising Manager Christen McCurdy News Editor Patricia Irvin Graphic Designer Monica J. Foster Seattle Office Coordinator Susan Fried Photographer 2017 MERIT AWARD WINNER The Skanner Newspaper, es- tablished in October 1975, is a weekly publication, published every Wednesday by IMM Publi- cations Inc. 415 N. Killingsworth St. P.O. Box 5455 Portland, OR 97228 Telephone (503) 285-5555 Fax: (503) 285-2900 info@theskanner.com www.TheSkanner.com The Skanner is a member of the National Newspaper Pub lishers Association and West Coast Black Pub lishers Association. All photos submitted become the property of The Skanner. We are not re spon sible for lost or damaged photos either solicited or unsolicited. ©2018 The Skanner. All rights re served. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission prohibited. Local News Pacific NW News World News Opinions Jobs, Bids Entertainment Community Calendar INTRODUCING: n F ebo m me • nts TheSkannerNews o k • learn • co in y o u r c o m m u n d ay ! • L i ke u s o ac it Your One-Stop Hub for Community Newspapers Throughout the U.S. TheSkannerReport.com to y • Opinion ate last week, two Black men in Philadelphia were doing what people do ev- ery day in this city — they waited in a coffee shop to meet an associate. While they were engaged in this mundane activity, they were removed from the Starbucks cafe at 18th and Spruce Streets in handcuffs by Philadelphia po- lice officers. This is another example of the kind of daily indignities that African-Americans face every day in Philadelphia and around the country. We can’t even wait in a coffee shop for a friend without the possi- bility that someone will call the police. Two days after the news broke of the incident, I’m angrier now than I was when I first heard about it. The neighborhood where this incident occurred is known as Rittenhouse Square. For those not famil- iar with Philadelphia, it’s a tony neighborhood of beauti- ful townhouses and high-end apartment buildings. It’s also the neighborhood with the highest rates of ra- cial disparities in stops and frisks by police in all of Phil- adelphia. In 2010, the ACLU of Pennsylvania sued the city because the Philadelphia Police Department’s use of stop-and-frisk was discrimi- natory. Our data showed that Reggie Shuford Exec. Dir., ACLU of Pennsylvania African-Americans were far more likely to be stopped and frisked than their white coun- terparts. Making matters worse, those stops were often without any justifiable cause. A year later, the city agreed to a consent decree to settle the case. That agreement re- quires the city to collect data on the PPD’s use of stop-and- frisk — including the demo- graphic information of people who are stopped and the rea- sons why they were stopped — as well as to train officers to eliminate bias-based policing. The police service area where the Starbucks is locat- ed has a Black population of just 3 percent. But 67 percent of the stops that occurred there in the first half of 2017 were of African-Americans. The two other police service areas in this district — known as District 9 — show similar lopsided disparities. In one of the bordering police service areas, a whopping 84 per- cent of pedestrians stopped were African-Americans in a neighborhood with a Black population of 16 percent. Seven years after the city agreed to do better, we still see consistent racial dispari- ties in stops and frisks. Yet, in a video statement in response to the incident, Philadelphia Police Commissioner Richard Ross had the nerve to say that his officers “did absolutely nothing wrong.” “ Black people, men in par- ticular, are not allowed the full range of emotional expression in public spaces His statement, the data the city has collected on stops, and this incident all lead me to wonder if Ross and his de- partment leaders in this dis- trict and this police service area, Capt. Danielle Vales and Lt. Jeffrey Rabinovitch, are se- rious about ending racial pro- filing in this neighborhood and throughout the city. There was no need for a Starbucks employee to call 911 because two men were waiting for an associate in their store. And even after the police were called, the police did not have to end the situa- tion by arresting these men. If Commissioner Ross is right that these officers followed policy, then the policy needs to change. Starbucks may be able to decide who sits in its store, but only the police could decide to arrest these men. Racial bias and discrimina- tion are so steeped in Amer- ican culture that those of us who experience it on a regu- lar basis have learned to live as second-class citizens in the country of our birth. Many folks have expressed pride or relief because the two men remained calm. I get that. I am glad, too. We have seen far too many incidents that have quickly spiraled out of con- trol. But there is an ugly side to that as well. Black people, men in particular, are not allowed the full range of emotional expression in public spaces. Even when an emotion other than being calm is warranted, we have been taught and have learned to police our emo- tions. No matter how badly we are being treated or how much our dignity is being as- sailed, we have to be the ones maintaining control and be- ing responsible for de-esca- lating these situations. Read the rest of this commentary at TheSkanner.com No Need to Look Farr for Racism in Trump Court Nominees O ur decision to protest President Trump’s vis- it to the opening of the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum wasn’t simply about the insult of his presence to the legacy of civil rights, it was also about his ongoing war to recreate the barriers and protections so many gave their lives to tear down. We began to understand the challenges that the civil rights community would face under the Trump Administration af- ter he nominated U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) to head the Department of Justice. With- in a few weeks of becoming attorney general, Sessions would engage in a strategic undermining of civil rights laws and enforcement, in- cluding backing away from the enforcement of consent decrees as a verifiable means to reign in police brutality and reneging on its previous support in key legal battles against racially-targeted vot- er suppression in Texas. Through his refusal to con- demn white supremacy and his policies to dilute the vot- ing strength and political power of the poor, the middle class and communities of col- or, Trump has frightened civ- il rights communities in ways they have not felt in a long time. It is with this same fear and dread that we look upon his current nominations to Derrick Johnson NNPA Interim President & CEO the federal courts. To our dismay, Thomas Farr, a nominee with ties to segre- gation and voter suppression, eased his way through the Senate Judiciary Committee on a vote along party lines “ ...the cam- paign mailed 125,000 post- cards, mostly to black vot- ers, suggest- ing they were ineligible to vote and now stands a Senate vote away from a lifetime judicial appointment to the U.S. Dis- trict Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina. Despite the Eastern District being composed of numer- ous counties located in what many consider North Caroli- na’s “Black Belt,” this federal court has never once had a black judge. President Obama twice tried to desegregate the court by nominating two Af- rican American women with stellar credentials, but they were not confirmed due in part to the state’s Republican U.S. senators, Thom Tillis and Richard Burr, both of whom backed Farr’s nomination. In a September letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee, Rev. William Barber II, then NAACP’s North Carolina State Conference president, said: “The North Carolina NAACP takes serious excep- tion to this nomination and to the efforts by Senators Tillis and Burr to advance the nom- ination of an individual who has repeatedly demonstrated open hostility to the protec- tion of the constitutional and civil rights of African Ameri- cans, Latinos and the poor in this state.” Rev. Barber’s letter failed to derail Farr, whose long ca- reer has continually found him on the opposite side of the civil rights community. In 1984 and 1990, Farr served as the legal counsel for the U.S. Senate campaigns of Repub- lican Jesse Helms, a staunch segregationist. They ran no- torious political campaigns that sought to suppress black political participation. The Justice Department under President George H.W. Bush filed voting-rights charges when the campaign mailed 125,000 postcards, mostly to black voters, suggesting they were ineligible to vote and threatening jail time. Farr also played a key role in developing and defend- ing what the North Carolina NAACP called a “monster” voter suppression law. Ac- cording to the federal appel- late court which blocked the law after the NAACP chal- lenged it in court, the law had targeted “African Amer- icans with almost surgical precision,” and was “the most restrictive voting law North Carolina has seen since the era of Jim Crow.” We are not alone in our con- demnation of Farr, whom the Congressional Black Caucus places “at the forefront of an extended fight to disenfran- chise African American vot- ers in North Carolina.” In 1930, the NAACP opposed the U.S. Supreme Court nom- ination of John J. Parker, a federal appellate judge from North Carolina, and won. Parker believed black people had no role in our democratic process. NAACP leader Wal- ter White testified against Parker at his hearing, and the organization mobilized its branches and members to urge Senators to vote against the nominee. Read the rest of this commentary at TheSkanner.com nt • lo c a l n e w s • eve
