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About The skanner. (Portland, Or.) 1975-2014 | View Entire Issue (Oct. 13, 2021)
Page 2 The Skanner Portland & Seattle October 13, 2021 Challenging People to Shape a Better Future Now Bernie Foster Founder/Publisher Opinion Why I Went to Jail on October 5 Bobbie Dore Foster Executive Editor S Jerry Foster Advertising Manager Patricia Irvin Graphic Designer Saundra Sorenson Reporter Aurora Hernandez Digital Content Monica J. Foster Seattle Office Coordinator Susan Fried Photographer 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. ©2021 The Skanner. All rights re served. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission prohibited. ometimes friends have to hold friends account- able. That’s why I got ar- rested outside the White House on Oct. 5. I was there with other civil rights and re- ligious leaders to call on Pres- ident Joe Biden to do more to protect voting rights that are under attack. We know that President Biden supports voting rights. He has called anti-voting laws being passed by Republican state legislators the biggest threat to our democracy since the Civil War. We need him to act like he truly believes those words. We need a federal voting rights law passed this year. More states are enacting voter suppression. They are abusing the redistricting pro- cess to rig future elections and give Republicans more power than they would win in a fair system. They want to shut Democrats out of power in 2022 and 2024. They want to stop progress that millions of Americans voted for when we put President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris in the White House—and mo- bilized to elect Georgia Sens. Raphael Warnock and Jon Os- soff. We have seen this before. When Black people and their allies won political power after the Civil War, white su- premacists used violence and illegitimate power to reverse Ben Jealous People For the American Way that progress. State-level vot- er suppression was a core tac- tic of Jim Crow. The solution then, and the solution today, is strong federal voting rights legislation that will override those state laws and prevent new ones from taking effect. “ They want to stop progress that millions of Americans voted for The good news is that the legislation has been written. It has passed the House of Representatives and it has the support of every Democratic senator. If it gets to the White House, President Biden will sign it. That bad news is that Senate Minority Leader Mitch Mc- Connell and his Republican colleagues are using Senate filibuster rules to keep voting rights from coming up for a vote. This is 2021, not 1921. President Biden and Senate Democrats cannot let McCo- nnell have the final word on voting rights in this country. In the 1960s, President Lyn- don Johnson did not choose between civil rights and his anti-poverty agenda. He knew the country need- ed both and he used his mas- tery of the Senate to get both passed. That’s what we need from President Biden, who has more experience in the Senate than any president since Johnson. The infra- structure bill is vitally im- portant. So is the Build Back Better agenda. But we need the White House to devote the same level of urgency to the infrastructure of our democracy. President Biden must lead Senate Democrats in passing voting rights this year—and getting rid of the filibuster if it stands in the way. We need strong, effective moral leadership both inside and outside the White House at this moment. The civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s was a moral move- ment. It called on Americans to live up to their own ideals as well as to the promises in our founding documents. It brought the public pressure that compelled LBJ to use the powers of his office to pass civil rights and voting rights legislation. I was proud to stand out- side the White House with so many religious leaders: a Catholic nun representing thousands of her sisters; a Jewish rabbi in whose orga- nization’s office the original Voting Rights Act was drafted; Black Baptist and AME cler- gy taking their place in the Black church’s long legacy of working for justice. We were joined by representatives of secular social justice and vot- ing rights organizations. Rev. Timothy McDonald, who pastored in Martin Lu- ther King’s church and who serves as the co-chair of Peo- ple For the American Way, the organization I lead, led us in singing and prayer and brought powerful words of truth. I choked up a bit with grat- itude for their leadership, and with gratitude for all the members of the movement, including members of my own family, who risked their lives over the years to secure the right to vote for all Amer- icans. Before I was arrested and spent the night in jail, I deliv- ered a message to President Biden: When the president of the League of Women Voters is willing to risk arrest, when pastors in Dr. King’s lineage are willing to risk arrest, when Catholic nuns are will- ing to risk arrest to call you to fulfill your promise to make voting rights a top priority, it is time to examine your moral conscience. How Food Became the Perfect Beachhead for Gentrification E Local News Pacific NW News World News Opinions Jobs, Bids Entertainment Community Calendar LOCAL NEWS BRIEFS LOCAL EVENTS Updated daily online. d ay ! • L i ke u s o n F ebo m me • nts TheSkannerNews o k • learn • co in y o u r c o m m u n to y • ac it Hear about it first. Sign up for Breaking News and Events at verybody, it seems, wel- comes the arrival of new restaurants, cafés, food trucks and farmers mar- kets. What could be the down- side of fresh veggies, home- made empanadas and a pop- up restaurant specializing in banh mis? But when they appear in unexpected places – think inner-city areas populated by immigrants – they’re of- ten the first salvo in a broader effort to rebrand and remake the community. As a result, these neighborhoods can quickly become unaffordable and unrecognizable to long- time residents. Stoking an appetite for gen- trification I live in San Diego, where I teach courses on urban and food geographies and conduct research on the relationship between food and ethnicity in urban contexts. In recent years, I started to notice a pattern playing out in the city’s low-income neigh- borhoods that have tradition- ally lacked food options. More ethnic restaurants, street vendors, community gardens and farmers markets were cropping up. These, in turn, spurred growing numbers of white, affluent and college-ed- Pascale Joassart- Marcelli Prof Geography and Dir., Urban Studies and Food Studies Programs, San Diego State University ucated people to venture into areas they had long avoided. This observation inspired me to write a book, titled “The $16 Taco,” about how “ White, afflu- ent and col- lege-educated people to ven- ture into ar- eas they had long avoided food – including what’s seen as “ethnic,” “authentic” or “al- ternative” – often serves as a spearhead for gentrification. Take City Heights, a large multi-ethnic San Diego neigh- borhood where successive waves of refugees from plac- es as far away as Vietnam and Somalia have resettled. In 2016, a dusty vacant lot on the busiest boulevard was con- verted into an outdoor inter- national marketplace called Fair@44. There, food vendors gather in semi-permanent stalls to sell pupusas, lechon (roasted pig), single-sourced cold-brewed coffee, cup- cakes and tamarind raspado (crushed ice) to neighborhood residents, along with tourists and visitors from other parts of the city. A public-private partner- ship called the City Heights Community Development Corporation, together with several nonprofits, launched the initiative to increase “ac- cess to healthy and cultur- ally-appropriate food” and serve as “a business incuba- tor for local micro-entrepre- neurs,” including immigrants and refugees who live in the neighborhood. On paper, this all sounds great. But just a few blocks out- side the gates, informal street vendors – who have long sold goods such as fruit, tamales and ice cream to residents who can’t easily access supermar- kets – now face heightened harassment. They’ve become causalities in a citywide crack- down on sidewalk vending spurred by complaints from business owners and resi- dents in more affluent areas. This isn’t just happening in San Diego. The same tensions have been playing out in rap- idly gentrifying areas like Los Angeles’ Boyle Heights neigh- borhood, Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood, New York’s Queens borough and East Austin, Texas. In all of these places, be- cause “ethnic,” “authentic” and “exotic” foods are seen as cultural assets, they’ve be- come magnets for develop- ment. Why food? Cities and neighborhoods have long sought to attract ed- ucated and affluent residents – people whom sociologist Richard Florida dubbed “the creative class.” The thinking goes that these newcomers will spend their dollars and presumably contribute to economic growth and job cre- ation. Food, it seems, has become the perfect lure. It’s uncontroversial and has broad appeal. It taps into the American Dream and appeals to the multicultural values of many educated, wealthy food- ies. Small food businesses, with their relatively low cost of entry, have been a corner- stone of ethnic entrepreneur- ship in American cities. Read the rest of this commentary at TheSkanner.com nt • lo c a l n e w s • eve
