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About The skanner. (Portland, Or.) 1975-2014 | View Entire Issue (Nov. 7, 2018)
NOVEMBER 7, 2018 Portland and Seattle Volume XLI No. 6 25 CENTS News .............................. 3,8-10 A & E .....................................6-7 Opinion ...................................2 World News Briefs ........10 Calendars ........................... 4-5 Bids/Classifieds ....................11 CHALLENGING PEOPLE TO SHAPE A BETTER FUTURE NOW PHOTO: JEFFREY HAYES VIA THE SKANNER NEWS ARCHIVE. HARDESTY ELECTED IN HISTORIC WIN Demonstrators marching in response to Mulugeta Seraw’s murder by neo-Nazi skinheads in November 1992. 30 Years After Seraw to be honored with conference, plaque I See SERAW on page 3 Jo Ann Hardesty speaks at a rally at Portland City Hall in April. On Tuesday Hardesty was decisively elected to the Portland City Commission, making her the first-ever African American woman to serve on the council. Hardesty Elected in Historic Win Local and state races saw big wins for progressive candidates, causes The Skanner News Staff o Ann Hardesty, for- mer state legislator and NAACP Portland branch president, was elected Tuesday as the first-ever woman of color on Portland’s city council. The race was bound to be historic regardless of the victor; in the end Hardesty won with 62 percent of the vote to Multnomah Coun- ty Commissioner Loretta Smith’s 37 percent. Hardes- AP PHOTO/JENNY KANE J A message on the site Gab is displayed on an iPhone in New York Oct. 29. The social media site popular with far-right extremists and apparently used by the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting suspect, advertises as a haven for free-speech fans. Online Threats Prove Difficult for Law Enforsement page 8 Prince Documentary is in the Works page 7 ty’s 25-percent lead echoed the outcome of the spring primary, when Hardesty got 46 percent of the vote to Smith’s 21 percent. Last week The Oregonian reported on the partial re- lease of poll results from the Smith campaign say- ing the race was too close to call. That poll was not the only one projecting a close race that turned out to be a landslide. As re- cently as last week some polls said Democratic Gov. Kate Brown had only a slight lead over Republi- can Knute Buehler, lead- ing to raised eyebrows and scratched heads in a state that hasn’t elected a Repub- lican governor since 1978. But Brown won with a six- point lead (as of Wednes- day morning, Brown had 50 percent of counted votes and Buehler had 44 percent). In the state legislature, Democrats won a super- majority, with 38 of 60 seats in the House of Rep- resentatives, giving them the power to raise taxes and reform Oregon’s tax system. Portland-area vot- ers ousted Rep. Julie Par- rish in favor of Rep. Rachel Prusack; at press time Rep. Janelle Bynum was up 2 points in a race against Re- publican challenger Lori Chavez-DeRemer, current- ly the mayor of Happy Val- ley. See ELECTION on page 3 Tracking Hate, Then and Now By Christen McCurdy Of The Skanner News t’s difficult to read archived news stories about Mulugeta Seraw’s death without drawing parallels to 2018, where the Portland metro area is once again receiving nation- al scrutiny for far-right activity, in- cluding last year’s stabbing death of two White men who stepped up to defend two Black teenage girls from a man who verbally accosted them with racist and anti-Muslim slurs. Jeremy Christian, who is still await- ing trial for the murders but who I confessed to them immediately after, had been in frequent attendance at Portland-area rallies organized by the Vancouver, Washington-based far-right group Patriot Prayer, which — among other things — organized a “March Against Sharia” in Seattle in 2017 and just this week came under police investigation after a member of its Facebook group posted a com- ment about burning down the offices of the Council of American-Islamic Relations, a Muslim advocacy group. But when it comes to certain details, it’s difficult to draw perfect parallels See HATE on page 3 PHOTO: THE SKANNER ARCHIVES, JEFFREY HAYES, 11/19/1992 n 1980, Mulugeta Seraw came to the United States to pursue his educa- tion and to escape a nation gripped by a bloody, multifactional civil war. He hoped to return to Ethiopia eventu- ally. He didn’t expect to encounter vio- lence in his adopted country. Both of those expectations were de- stroyed in the early hours of Nov. 13, 1988. Seraw and two friends, Tilahula Autueh and Wondswon Tesfaye, who were also Ethiopian, were accosted outside Seraw’s Southeast Portland apartment by a group of skinheads. One of them, Ken Mieske, took a bat to Seraw and crushed his head; he died of his injuries later that night. PHOTO MARK GRAVES/THE OREGONIAN VIA AP By Christen McCurdy Of The Skanner News Unidentified woman holding sign that reads, “We must stop White Supremacy” at anti-racist rally held in November 1992 in response to the murder of Mulugeta Seraw.
