Page 2 The Skanner September 5, 2018 ® Challenging People to Shape a Better Future Now EPA Rollbacks Will Hurt People of Color Bernie Foster Founder/Publisher P 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 LOCAL NEWS BRIEFS 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 Updated daily. to y • Opinion resident Trump visit- ing West Virginia to an- nounce a major rollback in regulations limiting coal fired power plant emis- sions feels like being lost in a dark coal mine, reaching a fork in the tunnel with one direction pitch black and a bright light at the end of the other. The choice seems so ob- vious and yet the President of the United States of America intentionally heads into the darkness. At the turn of the millenni- um we knew for a fact that the planet is warming and that greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide accelerate warming. We were aware of the human contribution and that limit- ing carbon emissions is the best way for humans to try to avoid catastrophic upheaval. It took much time and work to get the Clean Power Plan in place that eliminating it is just short of insane. The presi- dent’s announcement sent me back to our 2002 report “Air of Injustice: African Americans & Power Plant Pollution.” The collaboration brought Dr. Jo- seph Lowery and Dr. Yvonne Scruggs-Lefwich of the Geor- gia Coalition for the Peoples’ Agenda and Black Leadership Forum, respectively, together with Martha Keating and An- gela Ledford Anderson for- merly with the Clean Air Task Felicia M. Davis Director, HBCU Green Fund Force and Clear the Air to mo- bilize and educate the African American community about the impact of power plant pol- lution on air quality, climate change and public health. We reported that coal-fired power plants are the largest industrial emitters of a list “ At the turn of the millenni- um we knew for a fact that the planet is warming of pollutants with negative health impacts such as in- creased asthma, lung disease, premature deaths and even increases in infectious dis- ease. Long before Hurricane Katrina we tried to sound the alarm connecting pover- ty, race, geography and even insurance status to climate impacts. Scientists tried to explain that while we can’t point to any single weather event as evidence of climate change, by the time the pat- tern is proven it will be too late. We’re like slowly boiling frogs unable to grasp the up- heaval that climate change is already causing. We did a poor job of ex- plaining what a global degree Celsius actually means, our hockey stick graphs and bath- tub analogies only worked for people who understand climate science. People can’t seem to connect floods, drought, fires, hurricanes and extreme weather to cli- mate change. We should have stressed the fact that there are only ten global degrees of dif- ference between today’s cli- mate and the ice age. We need to break things down in terms everyday people can appre- ciate. Perhaps we should re- mind Americans about the days of the Dust Bowl or the water wars between ranchers and farmers in westerns. Looking back the 10 Prin- ciples of Just Climate Policy developed by the Environ- mental Justice and Climate Change Initiative (a diverse group of 28 US environmen- tal justice, religious, policy and advocacy groups) in- cluded in the Air of Injustice appendix should have been featured more prominently. Principle number one: Stop Cooking the Planet and states plainly that, “Global warm- ing will accelerate unless we can slow the release of green- house gases into the atmo- sphere. To protect vulnerable Americans, alternatives must be found for human activities that cause global warming.” If we started there and ele- vated these principles, there would have been a focus on workers and communities. We were adamant that “no group should have to shoul- der the burden alone of tran- sition from a fossil fuel-based economy to a renewable ener- gy-based economy. We had in mind training and economic development for miners and other displaced workers. While caring about the needs of local communities down to the individual, it is important to recognized that, “Global Problems Need Glob- al Solutions” and as one of the largest contributors the US should be out front. The Paris Agreement was a major accomplishment. After de- cades of negotiations finally the whole world was on one accord when it came to the ur- gent need to collectively work to reduce emissions and adapt to changes that are inevitable. Resilience emerged as a pri- ority given the magnitude of change underway. Read the rest of this commentary at TheSkanner.com The Abuse Won’t Stop Until We Change Police Culture A nother day, another week, another month, another viral video of police gone wild. This time it’s Baltimore, a city al- ready under a federal consent decree  to reform its police department after a Justice De- partment investigation into the 2015 death of Freddie Gray at the hands of police found rampant, systemic abuse of black residents by cops. Contrary to the usual re- sponse to such recordings, police and city officials acted quickly after Officer Arthur Williams was caught on cam- era Saturday, Aug. 11, sav- agely beating a defenseless DaShawn McGrier. McGri- er, a 26-year-old warehouse worker, suffered fractured ribs, a broken jaw, various cuts and bruises and spent two nights in a local hospital. After a witness posted the attack on Facebook and Ins- tagram that day, Williams re- signed. By Wednesday, he had been charged with first and second-degree assault.   The Baltimore incident mir- rors images from so many other cities – Fort Worth, Tex- as; Philadelphia, Tulsa, Okla- homa; New York City, Mesa, Arizona; Baton Rouge, Louisi- ana; Grand Rapids, Michigan; Cleveland, Chicago, Beaver- creek, Ohio, Gwinnett County, Georgia; Bloomfield, New Jer- sey, Grandbury, Texas; North when Gray died of a crushed spinal cord following a ride in the back of a police van, as were six other Baltimore police commissioners in a city where police have been under the control of Afri- can-American political lead- ership for nearly 40 years. Race is a significant part of the problem. For police and much of society, black men are the boogeyman, a threat or suspicious just by their mere presence. But it’s just a part of the issue.   As we discovered through nearly 100 interviews with police, city officials and citi- zens across dozens of Amer- ican cities, these incidents continue at a steady, perni- cious pace because of a mind- set and a pattern within most police departments that over- rides nearly every significant effort to change them. Until we, the citizenry, ad- dress that culture as well as our own attitudes about what police should and should not do, the shootings, the beat- ings, the harassment and the abuse of police power will continue. In large part, our police de- partments are defined by a law enforcement culture that perpetuates an us-against- Ron Harris Howard University Matthew Horace CNN and Headline News Charleston, South Carolina; Falcon Heights, Minnesota.  It’s “déjà vu all over again.” In most cases, the officers are white, and the victims are black.  Consequently, there is an inclination to define po- “ There is an inclination to define police misconduct largely as an issue of race lice misconduct largely as an issue of race. The Baltimore cop caught on camera beating the hell out of a black man,  T, however, was not white. He was African American. So was his partner, who stood by and watched without trying to halt the assault. So are 42 percent of the of- ficers within the Baltimore Police Department. So is the current Baltimore police commissioner, as was the pre- vious police commissioner, as was the police commissioner the citizens attitude in which defending fellow cops – no matter how inept, how ma- levolent or corrupt – is para- mount. Consequently, officers act with a sense of impunity, because they know that no matter what they do, their fellow officers will back them up, or at the least, won’t re- port them. We saw this in Chicago four years ago when three officers lied on their police reports to justify the shooting of 17-year- old black juvenile by a fellow officer -- even though they knew there was video of the incident that would contra- dict their statements. So, the incidents continue. Williams did what other Baltimore cops had done, including hiss pre- vious harassment and arrest of McGrier. This time it was caught on camera. Additionally, departments too often do a poor job of screening out applicants, al- lowing in men and women who have already been prov- en to be bad cops in other de- partments. Such was the case of the  officer who shot and killed 12-year-old Tamir Rice in Cleveland and the  former St. Louis cop who without justification ruined the life of Fred Watson in Ferguson un- der the color of law. Read the rest of this commentary at TheSkanner.com nt • lo c a l n e w s • eve