04-19-2024  11:19 am   •   PDX and SEA Weather
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NORTHWEST NEWS

Don’t Shoot Portland, University of Oregon Team Up for Black Narratives, Memory

The yearly Memory Work for Black Lives Plenary shows the power of preservation.

Grants Pass Anti-Camping Laws Head to Supreme Court

Grants Pass in southern Oregon has become the unlikely face of the nation’s homelessness crisis as its case over anti-camping laws goes to the U.S. Supreme Court scheduled for April 22. The case has broad implications for cities, including whether they can fine or jail people for camping in public. Since 2020, court orders have barred Grants Pass from enforcing its anti-camping laws. Now, the city is asking the justices to review lower court rulings it says has prevented it from addressing the city's homelessness crisis. Rights groups say people shouldn’t be punished for lacking housing.

Four Ballot Measures for Portland Voters to Consider

Proposals from the city, PPS, Metro and Urban Flood Safety & Water Quality District.

Washington Gun Store Sold Hundreds of High-Capacity Ammunition Magazines in 90 Minutes Without Ban

KGW-TV reports Wally Wentz, owner of Gator’s Custom Guns in Kelso, described Monday as “magazine day” at his store. Wentz is behind the court challenge to Washington’s high-capacity magazine ban, with the help of the Silent Majority Foundation in eastern Washington.

NEWS BRIEFS

Governor Kotek Announces Chief of Staff, New Office Leadership

Governor expands executive team and names new Housing and Homelessness Initiative Director ...

Governor Kotek Announces Investment in New CHIPS Child Care Fund

5 Million dollars from Oregon CHIPS Act to be allocated to new Child Care Fund ...

Bank Announces 14th Annual “I Got Bank” Contest for Youth in Celebration of National Financial Literacy Month

The nation’s largest Black-owned bank will choose ten winners and award each a $1,000 savings account ...

Literary Arts Transforms Historic Central Eastside Building Into New Headquarters

The new 14,000-square-foot literary center will serve as a community and cultural hub with a bookstore, café, classroom, and event...

Congressional Black Caucus Foundation Announces New Partnership with the University of Oxford

Tony Bishop initiated the CBCF Alumni Scholarship to empower young Black scholars and dismantle financial barriers ...

Firefighters douse a blaze at a historic Oregon hotel famously featured in 'The Shining'

GOVERNMENT CAMP, Ore. (AP) — Firefighters doused a late-night fire at Oregon's historic Timberline Lodge — featured in Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 film “The Shining” — before it caused significant damage. The fire Thursday night was confined to the roof and attic of the lodge,...

Idaho's ban on youth gender-affirming care has families desperately scrambling for solutions

Forced to hide her true self, Joe Horras’ transgender daughter struggled with depression and anxiety until three years ago, when she began to take medication to block the onset of puberty. The gender-affirming treatment helped the now-16-year-old find happiness again, her father said. ...

University of Missouri plans 0 million renovation of Memorial Stadium

COLUMBIA, Mo. (AP) — The University of Missouri is planning a 0 million renovation of Memorial Stadium. The Memorial Stadium Improvements Project, expected to be completed by the 2026 season, will further enclose the north end of the stadium and add a variety of new premium...

The sons of several former NFL stars are ready to carve their path into the league through the draft

Jeremiah Trotter Jr. wears his dad’s No. 54, plays the same position and celebrates sacks and big tackles with the same signature axe swing. Now, he’s ready to make a name for himself in the NFL. So are several top prospects who play the same positions their fathers played in the...

OPINION

Op-Ed: Why MAGA Policies Are Detrimental to Black Communities

NNPA NEWSWIRE – MAGA proponents peddle baseless claims of widespread voter fraud to justify voter suppression tactics that disproportionately target Black voters. From restrictive voter ID laws to purging voter rolls to limiting early voting hours, these...

Loving and Embracing the Differences in Our Youngest Learners

Yet our responsibility to all parents and society at large means we must do more to share insights, especially with underserved and under-resourced communities. ...

Gallup Finds Black Generational Divide on Affirmative Action

Each spring, many aspiring students and their families begin receiving college acceptance letters and offers of financial aid packages. This year’s college decisions will add yet another consideration: the effects of a 2023 Supreme Court, 6-3 ruling that...

OP-ED: Embracing Black Men’s Voices: Rebuilding Trust and Unity in the Democratic Party

The decision of many Black men to disengage from the Democratic Party is rooted in a complex interplay of historical disenchantment, unmet promises, and a sense of disillusionment with the political establishment. ...

AFRICAN AMERICANS IN THE NEWS

Attorneys argue that Florida law discriminates against Chinese nationals trying to buy homes

An attorney asked a federal appeals court on Friday to block a controversial Florida law signed last year that restricts Chinese citizens from buying real estate in much of the state, calling it discriminatory and a violation of the federal government's supremacy in deciding foreign affairs. ...

Mississippi legislators won't smooth the path this year to restore voting rights after some felonies

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — Kenneth Almons says he began a sentence in a Mississippi prison just two weeks after graduating from high school, and one of his felony convictions — for armed robbery — stripped away voting rights that he still has not regained decades later. Now 51,...

Chicago's response to migrant influx stirs longstanding frustrations among Black residents

CHICAGO (AP) — The closure of Wadsworth Elementary School in 2013 was a blow to residents of the majority-Black neighborhood it served, symbolizing a city indifferent to their interests. So when the city reopened Wadsworth last year to shelter hundreds of migrants, without seeking...

ENTERTAINMENT

Celebrity birthdays for the week of April 21-27

Celebrity birthdays for the week of April 21-27: April 21: Actor Elaine May is 92. Singer Iggy Pop is 77. Actor Patti LuPone is 75. Actor Tony Danza is 73. Actor James Morrison (“24”) is 70. Actor Andie MacDowell is 66. Singer Robert Smith of The Cure is 65. Guitarist Michael...

What to stream this weekend: Conan O’Brien travels, 'Migration' soars and Taylor Swift reigns

Zack Snyder’s “Rebel Moon – Part Two: The Scargiver” landing on Netflix and Taylor Swift’s “The Tortured Poets Department” album are some of the new television, movies, music and games headed to a device near you. Also among the streaming offerings worth your time as...

Music Review: Jazz pianist Fred Hersch creates subdued, lovely colors on 'Silent, Listening'

Jazz pianist Fred Hersch fully embraces the freedom that comes with improvisation on his solo album “Silent, Listening,” spontaneously composing and performing tunes that are often without melody, meter or form. Listening to them can be challenging and rewarding. The many-time...

U.S. & WORLD NEWS

Soldiers who lost limbs in Gaza fighting are finding healing on Israel's amputee soccer team

RAMAT GAN, Israel (AP) — When Ben Binyamin was left for dead, his right leg blown off during the Hamas attack on...

The Latest | Iran says air defense batteries fire after explosions reported near major air base

Iran fired air defense batteries Friday reports of explosions near a major air base at the city of Isfahan, the...

Indians vote in the first phase of the world's largest election as Modi seeks a third term

NEW DELHI (AP) — Millions of Indians began voting on Friday in a six-week election that's a referendum on...

European Union official von der Leyen visits the Finland-Russia border to assess security situation

COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) — The head of the European Union's executive branch said Friday that Finland's decision...

Soldiers who lost limbs in Gaza fighting are finding healing on Israel's amputee soccer team

RAMAT GAN, Israel (AP) — When Ben Binyamin was left for dead, his right leg blown off during the Hamas attack on...

The West African Sahel is becoming a drug smuggling corridor, UN warns, as seizures skyrocket

NIAMEY, Niger (AP) — Drug seizures soared in the West African Sahel region according to figures released Friday...

By Lisa Loving of The Skanner News

You've almost certainly seen her work – she's currently showing her paintings and drawing at four different locations around town, plus on cars and exterior walls.

Or your kids have probably spent time engrossed in an art project she's led – including scores of students just in the past few weeks.
She's just as likely to be hanging her jewel-toned canvases in banks or government buildings as she is to be offering support to a grieving community through art, as she did in December at the Community Healing Ceremony organized by the Healing Roots Center for the Medina family after the death of their daughter and her young son.
Nevertheless you may never have heard her name. It's Mo – just Mo.
"I make a point of making sure that I'm involved," she says.
"I've taught out at the juvenile detention center for the past three years I just did a thing with Ockley Green where we did 80 self portraits with kindergarten through second grade, and instead of making it a visual portrait we did portraits about things that we like and things that we did representing us not what we look like."
Mo was the first African American Visual Arts scholarship winner at Portland State University – an honor her straight-A's allowed her to pull down four years in a row.
She received degrees in art as well as history, investing time in research on African American artists through history.
Her biggest mentors have been Portland State art instructor and muralist Isaka Shamshuddin, and her mother.
"The back of my mom's piano still has drawings from when I was five," Mo says. "My mother always doodled and she was always drawing eyes, and eyes are very important in my stuff."
Currently Mo has a whopping four shows.
A stunning all-ink show is at Paccini's Restaurant and Bar, 1717 SW Park Ave., that she describes as "busy crazy basically sharpie and paper."
Her other collections are on the walls at The Calabash 835 SW 2nd Ave., at the Salmon Street Studios in Southwest Portland, and a large Black History Month show is up at the Albina Community Bank in the Pearl District, at 430 NW 10th Ave.
Mo has a special relationship to the Internet, which she sees not as an isolating force, but an educational and empowering one which shaped her many canvases – some tiny, some huge — on important historical figures currently covering several walls of the Albina Community Bank.
"A lot of people on those walls are not necessarily celebrated as heroes, and they need to be," she says.
She lists Malcolm X, Carmichael, and many music and entertainment figures as worthy of more public attention and respect.
"Pretty much anyone on that wall – Paul Robeson, he should be known about," Mo said. "He has, out of the FBI files on people, the biggest file historically, as far as someone they were watching, and a lot of people don't know that, and we should. That's our history combined, all of ours."
Mo is also currently tutoring two young people at Jefferson High School as part of the Professional Artist Mentoring program that will culminate in an art show at the Interstate Firehouse Cultural Center running Feb. 25 through March 20, Tuesdays through Fridays, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. and Saturdays noon to 4 p.m.
"We need to be involved in our community and giving back, paying forward, through the younger generation," she says. "We have gotten kind of cubicalized where we're really independent and self-centered in our thought process and our function without really thinking about the generations that are coming up underneath us.
"We wonder what's wrong with them – what's wrong with them is us, we're not giving to them like we're supposed to."



The Skanner Foundation's 38th Annual MLK Breakfast