July 21, 2021 The Skanner Portland & Seattle Page 3
News
Lawsuit
cont’d from pg 1
officers and the public,
Officer Ajir then tripped
on a curb and fired four
shots at Terrell Johnson,
hitting him twice in the
back, fatally wounding
him.
Officer Samson Ajir left
PPB for a position with
another law enforce-
ment agency.
Terrell Johnson’s moth-
“
He didn’t
deserve to
be shot in
the back
that day
er Alicia Johnson filed
a wrongful death suit
against the City in 2019,
represented by Oregon
Justice Resource Center
(OJRC) attorneys. During
today’s City Council
meeting, Johnson’s aunt,
Lorene Arias, spoke
about the family’s loss.
PPS
“When I think of Ter-
rell, I think of a beautiful
and kind soul who I loved
from the moment he was
born,” said Arias. “He
didn’t deserve to be shot
in the back that day or to
lose his life because he
was afraid of the police.”
Also speaking at City
Council today was the
family’s attorney, Juan
Chavez.
“Terrell Johnson would
still be alive today if Port-
land cared as much for
its citizens with mental
health issues as it does
for the feelings of the
people it pays to patrol
its streets,” said Chavez.
“We need to realize that
the conditions that lead
to Terrell’s death haven’t
changed. Officers still ex-
onerate themselves. The
City still defends these
assaults on the communi-
ty. And people still need-
lessly die in crisis.”
On Monday, July 12, U.S. Department of Education Secretary Miguel Cardona travelled to Charlotte, North Carolina to discuss the Biden
Administration’s plans to overcome the COVID-19 pandemic and make long-term investments in students. He was hosted at three
different locations in Charlotte by Alma Adams (D-NC). Cardona and Adams discussed the Build Back Better agenda, that includes $45
billion in investments for Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), as well as the IGNITE HBCU Excellence Act, a landmark
infrastructure bill to create jobs through repairing, restoring and investing in HBCUs.
cont’d from pg 1
“My whole goal as a board
chair is going to be trying to
get the board itself coalesced
around these ideas, first to
come out and say we are work-
ing towards becoming an an-
tiracist board and be very ex-
plicit about it as a goal,” DePass
told The Skanner. “And then
line us up with activities or
strategies to meet that goal.”
She added, “I don’t expect
any of my White colleagues
to be versed or even have the
language for this. They’re nice
people, but nice people that
need to be trained up in the lan-
guage of anti-racism, and they
don’t know what they don’t
know about racism, because
they’ve never had to know.
And that’s fine. So I want to do
a lot of internal work. I want to
lead us through a way of evalu-
ating the superintendent.”
As a School Board Partners
fellow, DePass plans to take ad-
vantage of the organization’s
offer to fund her certification
Rent
in educational budget finance
through Georgetown Univer-
sity.
“Budgets are always finite re-
sources, and you actually are
going to have to put money --
even if it’s unpopular -- where
“
They don’t
know what
they don’t
know about
racism, be-
cause they’ve
never had to
know
there’s more need,” DePass, the
community engagement and
policy coordinator for the di-
rector of the Portland Housing
Bureau, said. “We haven’t done
that in the past. The budget is
a moral document, and our
values absolutely need to be
reflected in the budget, and I
don’t know how to do that lev-
el of analysis on a $2 billion
budget to make sure that we’re
actually putting more money
where there’s more need.”
She said that while she’s been
able to lean on colleague and
recently elected vice chair
Andrew Scott, the deputy
chief operating officer at Met-
ro and former director of the
Portland City Budget Office,
she sees the importance of
being able to review a budget
through her own lens.
“I think Michelle’s lived ex-
perience as a person of color
in Portland is going to be so
valuable to us as a board and
for us as a district to have her
chairing,” Scott told The Skan-
ner. “There’s a lot of back and
forth; I will bring a very sort
of logical, sort of White domi-
nant approach to an issue, and
Michelle will say, ‘Well that’s
great, and let’s think about it a
different way.’”
Both DePass and Scott are
graduates of Portland Public
Schools, and both were elected
to the school board in 2019.
“I’ve been in government
and public service for 25 years
doing public policy, and hope-
fully bring some of that budget
and finance and sort of that ex-
pertise, but also I ran because
I’m a product of Portland pub-
lic schools and it served me re-
ally well, but I recognize that’s
not true across the board,”
Scott said.
Looking ahead at a year that
is slated to be fully in-class-
room, DePass said she is excit-
ed to support PPS Superinten-
dent Guadalupe Guerrero in
the district’s “audacious stra-
tegic plan” that is yet to be un-
veiled.
“It’s bold,” she said. “I’m from
Portland, so I can say this:
We’re very polite, and don’t
want to have difficult conver-
sations. And addressing rac-
ism, you need to be able to say
with a straight face, ‘I am a
White person showing up to
this space. I don’t know any-
thing. But I’m here to learn.’
You need to kind of own who
you are and be a student in this
room. So I’m hoping to lead us
through the conversations. We
had a lot of belly button-star-
ing this past year, and we had a
lot of quarterly retreats where
we evaluated ourselves, and
that’s useful. Not super suc-
cessful process-wise and out-
comes-wise, but I think that we
can coalesce around wanting
to become antiracist, and it
will just make us better in the
work we have ahead of us. And
we are going to need every-
body on that board -- they don’t
have to agree, but they have to
get the language down.”
Inequitable Outcomes
The current Portland school
board is among the most di-
verse in the district’s history.
Both DePass and Scott point-
ed out that while the pandem-
ic stopped in-person classes,
“learning loss” is a concern
among parents and educators
nationwide -- but one that has
existed for students of color
all along.
Read more at TheSkanner.com
cont’d from pg 1
Chair Deborah Kafoury said during the
July 8 regular session. “Together with
our partners at the city of Portland and
our nonprofit service providers, we
now have almost $100 million to dis-
“
Rep. Alma Adams Talks HBCUs
Those extra 30
days really helps
give us some addi-
tional time to work
through those ap-
plications
tribute in a short amount of time.”
She added, “For Multnomah County,
where the need is estimated to be twice
as high as all other Oregon counties
combined, many of our providers will
likely need more than 60 days to com-
pletely work through every application
for assistance.”
Commissioners heard that the grace
period should be regarded as a “float-
ing timeline” that can be triggered by
a request for rental assistance at any
point between now through March of
next year. In other words, tenants who
are able to make rent this month, but
unable to do so in September, can still
benefit from the 90-day extension.
Human Resources
Peggy Samolinski, director of Youth
and Family Services for Multnomah
County, stated that there are currently
10,000 applications in Allita, the Ore-
gon Emergency Rental Assistance Pro-
gram’s online system.
“The challenge is volume,” Samolink-
si said. “We know the work and we’re
good at it and we can process those
applications, so I think those extra 30
days really helps give us some addition-
al time to work through those applica-
tions.”
The additional time would also be a
boon to the community-based rental as-
sistance network comprised of 43 local
organizations, she said.
“It’s a person-centered work. It relies
largely on human beings on our end
and on the client end and the tenant end
to complete that work. Time is critical.”
Liam Frost, senior policy advisor for
Kafoury, said the state had provided 10
full-time staff members who will iden-
tify incomplete applications for rental
assistance, then reach out to those ten-
ants to help them complete the filing
process.
An additional four full-time staff will
be hired to field calls at 211, a resource
hotline that connects Oregonians to
social and health services. Even those
who receive an eviction notice can con-
tact 211 for guidance on securing rap-
id-payment assistance.
“We are trying to intervene from the
moment when someone believes they
cannot pay their rent all the way up to
a court date,” Frost said.
“We are trying to provide interven-
Multnomah County Commissioner Susheela Jayapal
tions at every stage. One of the main
points will be 211, because in the evic-
tion notices, as set by SB 278, landlords
must include 211 as a resource in those
notices.”
Read more at TheSkanner.com