Monthly Archives: April 2012

Rodney King’s ‘Junkyard of Dreams’

The last time I saw Rodney King was in a small courtroom in Fontana, Calif., east of L.A. It was seven years after the riot that correctly bears his name. He was wearing shoes that looked like Bruno Magli and a suit made of fine cloth, the kind that drapes just so. He still had […]

AG’s Race Goes Up in Smoke

If politics makes for strange bedfellows, Ellen Rosenblum’s husband might be wondering who she’s curling up with, now that she’s running for Oregon Attorney General. Or perhaps Richard Meeker doesn’t care. As publisher of Willamette Week newspaper he’ll gladly take money from advertisers selling the hottest girls (“Give in to your wildest fantasies!”) or pushing […]

Doing the Wrong Thing

The more we talk about race the less we are allowed to say – at least some of us. “If the city of Portland can’t fix this, it’s going to be a long, hot summer,” Jo Ann Hardesty (formerly known as state Rep. Jo Ann Bowman) declared at one of the recent protests against the […]

The Man With The Megaphone

When black men gathered at Self Enhancement Inc. to talk about Trayvon Martin and how to improve their families, it was a segregated affair. The men met in the auditorium. The dozen or so women who showed up were sent to a classroom. A woman leading the discussion for the females assured them that the […]