The skanner. (Portland, Or.) 1975-2014, September 05, 2018, Page Page 2, Image 2

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    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.
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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
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