Page 2 The Skanner Portland & Seattle July 31, 2019
®
Challenging People to Shape
a Better Future Now
Bernie Foster
Founder/Publisher
Bobbie Dore Foster
Executive Editor
Jerry Foster
Advertising Manager
Christen McCurdy
News Editor
Patricia Irvin
Graphic Designer
R. Dallon Adams
Reporter
Monica J. Foster
Seattle Office Coordinator
Susan Fried
Photographer
2019
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
SAVE THE DATE!
The Skanner
Foundation
MLK
Breakfast
January 20
2020
at the
Oregon n
o
Conventi !
Center
Opinion
An Open Letter to Portland’s Black Community
I
grew up in a house of strong
Black women. My grand-
mother, Phyllis, was the
center of our family. She
taught me how to cook, the
importance of compassion,
what it means to be a part of
a family, and perhaps most
significantly the importance
of showing up to the table. In
our home, that meant not just
showing up to the dinner ta-
ble on time, but truly being
present, celebrating our suc-
cesses, but also humbly ac-
knowledging and owning our
failures.
I’m writing this open letter
to our community on behalf
of Cascade AIDS Project (CAP)
to acknowledge that our work
with the Black community in
Portland has been lacking.
Our time for showing up at
the table is far overdue, and I
am deeply sorry that CAP has
not been historically more
responsive to the Black com-
munity.
To that end, I am reaching
out to you today with humil-
ity and respect to take re-
sponsibility for our missteps
of the past, to validate the
experiences you may have
had with our organization
over time, and to humbly ask
for your help in rebuilding a
relationship of mutual trust
and respect so that those in
the Black community who
are living with or impacted
Tyler
TerMeer
Exec. Dir.
Cascade
AIDS
Project
by HIV can more easily learn
about and access the services
they need in the culturally
responsive manner that they
deserve.
“
I am deeply
sorry that
CAP has not
been histor-
ically more
responsive
to the Black
community
After extensive conversa-
tions with community stake-
holders, CAP hired an exter-
nal consultant, Sirius Bonner,
to bring expertise and a crit-
ical eye from outside of the
organization to help us im-
plement and improve racial-
ly affirming organizational
practices, particularly as
they apply to employing and
serving the black communi-
ty. This decision was made as
part of understanding feed-
back from those we serve and
from the experiences of past
and current employees that
taught us that we cannot rely
solely on our Black staff to
bear the workload of making
CAP more welcoming place
for Black people.
As a part of this process
and our organizations on-
going and deeply held com-
mitment to racial equity and
to improving our ability to
affect health equity across
communities, we closed our
doors and engaged in critical
but difficult conversations
about privilege and power
in healthcare and the racism,
discrimination and historical
trauma faced by the black and
brown communities of Ore-
gon throughout time. We pro-
vided training on microag-
gressions, implicit bias, and
established a new Diversity,
Equity, and Inclusion (DEI)
committee which has recently
begun to conduct our annual
equity audit and the drafting
of an equity plan to guide our
organizations work through a
racial justice framework.
For some, this will be a lot
of new information, histo-
ry, experiences, and context
that undoubtedly challenges
some core beliefs about the
fundamental fairness of our
nation. For others, it will be
an opportunity to build on a
foundation of knowledge and
lived experience in a new en-
vironment with a different
set of people. For all of us,
there have and will continue
to be varying moments of dis-
comfort... and that’s okay. In
fact, I personally believe that
growth and strength come
only through continuous ef-
fort and learning to sit and
work through that discomfort
in our own time and way. This
is emotional, difficult, but
critically important work--es-
pecially for an agency that
prides itself on social justice.
This is a moment in histo-
ry where we cannot afford to
be silent or complacent. We
have an opportunity to be-
gin to articulate a collective
vision for addressing HIV
in our communities that is
grounded in racial and so-
cial justice; and builds on the
inherent strengths in our
communities. It is an oppor-
tunity to uplift a new genera-
tion of leaders and highlight
innovative
programming
that is community-born and
driven. It serves to remind
decision-makers at all levels
that a community lens is para-
mount. As the founders of the
AIDS movement knew there
should be nothing about us,
without us. CAP has a respon-
sibility and a newly held com-
mitment to leading with race.
Read the rest of this commentary at
TheSkanner.com
Supreme Court Order No ‘Big Victory’ For Trump’s Border Wall
L
ate Friday evening, the
Supreme Court gave the
Trump administration a
temporary green light to
begin construction of the bor-
der wall using military funds
Congress denied. The order,
while temporary and limited
to specific wall projects where
fencing already exists, threat-
ens to permanently damage
border communities, the en-
vironment, and our Constitu-
tion’s separation of powers.
But it’s not the “big victory”
President Trump quickly de-
clared. The fight continues.
Most importantly, the Su-
preme Court has not yet de-
cided the case. The case —
which we filed on behalf of the
Sierra Club and Southern Bor-
der Communities Coalition
(SBCC) — now goes back to
the Ninth Circuit Court of Ap-
peals. There, we’ll be asking
the court to further expedite
ongoing appeal proceedings.
It’s important to be clear
on what the 5-4 majority of
the Supreme Court actually
said on Friday. The Supreme
Court didn’t give Trump’s
abuse of emergency powers
the stamp of approval, or
say anything about whether
the wall construction was
lawful. Nor did the Supreme
Court say that our clients lack
standing — even the govern-
ment concedes that Sierra
Club and SBCC members face
Dror Ladin
Staff Atty,
ACLU
National
Security
Project
harm from the construction
of a 30-foot wall on the lands
they use and treasure.
Instead, in temporarily
granting the administra-
tion’s request to begin wall
construction, the majority’s
“
The words ‘at
this stage’ are
key
brief, one-paragraph order
stated that “the Government
has made sufficient showing
at this stage that the plaintiffs
have no cause of action to ob-
tain review.” The words “at
this stage” are key. To receive
a temporary stay, which the
government was asking for
here, the bar is lower than for
normal review. The govern-
ment has to show only a “fair
possibility” in prevailing on
the cause of action issue.
At the next stage, when our
case is given full consider-
ation, the government would
have to actually establish that
our clients, who are indis-
putably harmed by Trump’s
abuse of powers, still can’t
call on the courts to stop the
president’s illegal power
grab. That’s a much higher
bar, and one the government
has failed to meet in lower
courts. Moreover, there are
centuries-old
precedents
empowering courts to halt
lawless executive action, and
the Supreme Court has long
recognized those precedents.
There is a strong reason to
believe it will do so again in a
case where the illegality is as
blatant as the president tak-
ing funds Congress deliber-
ately and expressly denied.
That said, the government
has been pushing the courts
to adopt the extreme view that
no injured party — not our
clients, or impacted states, or
even the House of Represen-
tatives — can go to court to
block the president’s blatant
abuse of power. It’s arguing
the president’s actions are un-
reviewable by the courts.
That is a dangerous propo-
sition, and it would be a huge
setback for our democratic
system if the Supreme Court
adopts it. But Trump hasn’t
succeeded in convincing five
justices to give him that pow-
er yet — and for good reason.
A basic rule of our democ-
racy is that when the govern-
ment acts without legal au-
thority, the courts are open
to injured parties who seek
to block that unlawful action.
If the courts start washing
their hands of that responsi-
bility by not allowing people
in court — as the government
is encouraging they do — bla-
tant abuses of power will go
unchecked, and the rule of
law will be forever damaged.
This should concern ev-
eryone, regardless of one’s
political affiliation. No mat-
ter which party is in power,
the courts have a critical role
to play in making sure that
the executive branch doesn’t
have unreviewable authority
to ignore the law. Otherwise,
everyone from bureaucrats
to FBI agents to cabinet secre-
taries to the president would
be empowered to disregard
the basic principles of our de-
mocracy.
We can’t let that happen.
As our lawsuit proceeds, we
will continue to make the case
that our clients, who will be
harmed because of Trump’s
xenophobic wall, deserve
their day in court to prevent
and undo that harm. The gov-
ernment told the Supreme
Court that if our clients ulti-
mately win, courts can order
that the unlawful wall be tak-
en down. We plan to hold the
government to its word, and
will seek the removal of every
mile of unlawful wall built
while this temporary stay is
in place.