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About The skanner. (Portland, Or.) 1975-2014 | View Entire Issue (Oct. 13, 2021)
October 13, 2021 The Skanner Portland & Seattle Page 3 News cont’d from pg 1 According to doc- uments and records, through corrupt means, the City of Manhattan took ownership of their property, representing the racial imbalance of that time. Looking through a lens of equal- ity today, public officials of Los Angeles County decided to revisit the possibility of returning “ The dis- taste in Black-own- ership was not hidden power of the beachfront back to the descendants of the Bruce family. Located on 2600 High- land Avenue in Manhat- tan Beach, California, Bruce’s Beach served as an oasis-like resort for people of color looking to enjoy the scenic coast during times of segrega- tion. Noted previously, Willa and Charles Bruce purchased this piece of paradise for $1,225 ($33,034) and followed suit in buying more land after that. Other families of col- or bought beach estates alongside them, forming a Black community of coastal property owners developed during the Jim Crow era. There was a shared notion that only certain races should be allowed selected proper- ties; this agenda was car- ried out through policies to seize privately- owned land for the betterment of the community. The distaste in Black-ownership was not hidden; racially charged vandalism and sabotage were found routinely at Bruces’ Beach and sim- ilar places. During the Jim Crow era, Manhat- tan Beach City officials Awards obtained the rights to Bruce’s beach, and oth- er Black-owned coastal plots, through an ordi- nance known as eminent domain. Through the eminent domain procedure, cer- tain members of the Manhattan community empowered City offi- cials to acquire private- ly-owned properties and reinvent the lots for pub- lic use. The urgent take- over of the Bruce’s land was to fill the need for a public park. The Bruce family fought for years in lit- igation; they asked for $120,000 ($3,203,044) for loss of property and damages. After a strenu- ous battle, the Bruces re- ceived $14,000, which is $300,000 in present-day, and the other families re- ceived far less than that. On April 8, Los Ange- les County Supervisor Janice Hahn announced steps towards returning the waterfront landscape known as Bruce’s Beach back to the decedents of Charles and Willa Bruce. California State Gover- nor Gavin Newsom an- nounced through a press release, “Moving to Right Historical Wrong.” He signed legislation to re- turn Bruce’s Beach back to descendants of the original owners. According to the infor- mation released by the California governor’s office, the directive, SB- 796, allows Los Angeles County Supervisors to transfer the land imme- diately to the Bruce fami- ly. Soaking up the histor- ical moment at Bruce’s Beach, Newsom was joined by Senator Steven Bradford, Bruce’s family members, and other civic public servants. Read more at TheSkanner.com PHOTO/WORKSYSTEMS Bruce Driving Diversity Opens New Doors Chip Shields, a former Oregon state senator established the Portland Justice Fund which provided funding to Worksystems to develop a unique program that’s creating new pathways for people of color and women into trucking careers. Partnering with Interstate Trucking Academy and the Portland Haulers Association, Worksystems developed the Driving Diversity in Portland Program to prepare and qualify diverse job seekers to work in the recycling and waste hauling industry. On Friday, October 8 the second cohort of students graduated and entered driver careers. To date, 80% of trainees have been hired by Portland Haulers Association member companies into permanent jobs that start at $50,000 or more and include comprehensive benefits. Reimagine cont’d from pg 1 ly stalling legislation important to Reimagine Oregon. Wise said the group was now working with Prozanski to bring back areas of criminal justice reform that were cut from the now-passed House Bill 2002. Wise also said the group gave Clackamas County an “F” grade on public safety, noting that com- munication with the county had broken down with the transition to Clackamas Board of County Commissioners’ Chair Tootie Smith’s leadership. Housing Last year, Reimagine Oregon partnered with elected officials at the city, count and state levels to hold lawmakers accountable to substantive policy change, as out- lined on the project’s website, ad- dressing urgent needs in educa- tion, police divestments, housing, health and wellbeing, transporta- tion, economic development, leg- islative process and community safety. Demands were categorized as state-wide, Metro, or by county, with legislative leads designed to each. Reimagine Oregon asked the relevant legislators to give a prognosis -- or progress report -- on each demand. While Reimagine Oregon’s demands are divided into eight “ People have spo- ken in streets, in research reports and in daily service categories, the group focused on three in summarizing the state’s performance last week: housing, public safety and legislative pro- cess. “We launched this project about a year ago in the spirit of expecta- tion,” Katrina Holland, executive director of JOIN, said, adding it was “an expectation of catalytic movement, of beginning to dis- mantle anti-Black racism in Ore- gon.” In the area of housing, howev- er, the state had only made incre- mental improvements, she said. Reimagine Oregon had asked the state to intervene in evictions and aide COVID recovery by can- celing rent and removing barri- ers to rent assistance. “Early in the legislative session and even before, there were many alternative options to canceling rent that were presented and discussed, that would’ve taken the burden off of renters, recog- nizing the constitutional poten- tial violation that canceling rent would’ve brought on, that would assure just compensation, but a lot of them weren’t thoroughly explored or even attempted,” Hol- land said. The group had also pushed forward the cancelation of a controversial housing subsidy: mortgage interest deductions on secondary residences, which crit- ics point out costs the state about $500 million each year). Read more at TheSkanner.com cont’d from pg 1 shadow for the film development pro- cess. Until the 1970s, the subject was always a White woman who was often labeled “normal,” with other skin col- ors -- if they were included at all -- re- ferred to as “other.” Davis explored the idea of working with visual media that had white skin and whiteness already programmed in as a default. The ef- fect is his often vintage-style portraits of Black subjects in their own Shirley card-evoking layouts, much more vi- brant and colorful than Kodak’s restric- tive calibration would have allowed. “I did these paintings that were about that, so a lot of the subject matter that circles around the subject and the piece kind of references those Shirley cards, or magazine publications from the fif- ties, more Black-centered publications like Jet and Ebony,” Davis said. “I try to include a little bit more content in the bodies of work that are about an idea versus a particular subject.” For a more recent project, however, Davis stuck to the portrait approach. In 2015 and 2016, Davis wrestled with the feverish press coverage of police “ I wanted to also spotlight achieve- ments from Black people killings of unarmed Black Ameri- cans. While he felt the attention was necessary, he also wanted to see more Black media presence that wasn’t over- whelmingly sad. “I wanted to also spotlight achieve- ments from Black people,” Davis said. “So I started doing these paintings around then that kind of highlighted these different artists, poets, people that I knew and people that I just found out about through research that just really enhanced the work for me, and enhanced the experience for people viewing the work.” He was drawn to the lesser-known histories in particular, like civil rights and women’s rights activist Pauli Mur- ray and singer and early screen star Nellie Hill. “The idea of making work that calls people to do their own research, find out something new and dig in, just be- came really interesting to me,” Davis said. “It just continues the process of seeing the piece in the museum, then you want to go home and find out more, to expand upon -- it being an art piece, it being a learning experience at the same time.” Community Justice Preuitt started as a probation and parole officer nearly three decades ago with Multnomah County’s De- partment of Community Justice Gang Unit, later becoming the director of the department’s Adult Services di- vision. In 2017 she became the first African American woman to act as president of the American Probation and Parole Association, which serves 45,000 community corrections pro- fessionals nationally. She was named Director of Multnomah County’s De- partment of Community Justice in 2019 (https://www.theskanner.com/news/ northwest/29158-erika-preuitt-ap- pointed-director-of-multnomah-coun- ty-s-department-of-community-jus- tice). Her approach is grounded in the be- lief that people have the capacity to change. “I look at it from the perspective that we are about public safety, but our pub- lic safety impact really is a long-term impact,” Preuitt told The Skanner in 2019. “Because when we help a person change their life, and help them to re- store their family, we help our commu- See AWARDS on page 10
