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