| The Oregonian
(Portland, OR)
January 17, 2008
PORTLAND SETS UP OFFICE OF HUMAN
RELATIONS
Rights - The city gives approval at Jefferson High,
where a student testifies it will be a place to seek justice
By Andy Dworkin
Mahogony Black remembers waves of frustration ending a shopping
trip to Clackamas Town Center in 2004. She was riding home
when police pulled the bus over and detained her and a friend,
saying they "fit the description of two women who had
just done a strong-arm robbery."
The African American teen was pretty sure race was the reason.
And she didn't know where to go to right the wrong.
"I felt as if there was nothing I could do to solve
this," Black, now a senior at Jefferson High School,
told the Portland City Council at a Wednesday evening meeting
in her school.
For the first time in five years, Portland will have a place
for people to discuss sensitive social issues such as racial
profiling, sexual discrimination, hate crimes and ethnic misunderstandings.
The council established an Office of Human Relations that
would oversee a new Human Rights Commission as well as an
existing police Racial Profiling Committee.
The commission will not prosecute hate crimes or discrimination
suits -- police and the state Bureau of Labor and Industries
will keep those roles, said Lew Frederick, a consultant who
helped create the program.
But it will conduct studies on Portland's social relations
and problems, seek justice and understanding, and mediate
disputes ranging from spats over loud music in diversifying
neighborhoods to the citywide fight over renaming a street
for labor leader Cesar Chavez.
Black said it "would be the place that I, and other
people like me, could go to seek justice."
Many cities, from Beaverton to Boston, have human rights
commissions. Portland established one in 1948, the year the
United Nations passed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
The city group explored and exposed issues from housing discrimination
to school suspension rates, Frederick said, then morphed into
a city-Multnomah County panel. But political infighting and
falling budgets hampered the group, and the city cut it in
2003.
"We've gone too long without one," said Jeannette
Pae-Espinosa, former head of the human rights commissions
in Salem and, from 1989 to 1991, in Portland.
In the late 1980s, Portland saw more than 100 hate crimes
a year, including the fatal 1988 beating of Ethiopian immigrant
Mulugeta Seraw by racist skinheads. The commission played
a key role "in stabilizing this city that was fraying
at the edges," she said.
"The problem is that, just beneath the surface, nothing
changed," Pae-Espinosa said. "We see it flare when
topics of immigration and gentrification come up."
The hubbub over renaming a street for Chavez exposed ethnic
tensions in Portland as well as the inability of the all-white,
all-male council to mediate such disputes. Frederick said
the new commission might have helped.
Community members, especially the 11 to 15 selected as commissioners,
will help set the commission's agenda, Frederick said. The
new office will be under the mayor but will report to the
full City Council, which will approve its director.
The program aims to have four full-time staff, including
a researcher to quantify demographic changes and human rights
problems. It has a $200,000 budget for this year, enough to
get started and hire a director.
All four council members present voted for the group; Erik
Sten was absent. However, some expressed concern about its
broad mission.
Randy Leonard said he wanted the group to actually reduce
wrongs, such as job and housing discrimination, instead of
just making recommendations. Dan Saltzman said he worried
about "mission creep" and high budgets, noting the
city already has staff focused on disability rights, police
abuses and other issues.
Andy Dworkin: 503-221-8239; andydworking@ news.oregonian.com
Copyright 2008 - The Oregonian
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