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.