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Good afternoon, Portland! Hope your week has started with a bang, just like it has for Starbucks workers across the country. Here are the headlines.
IN LOCAL NEWS:
• Three Portland-area Starbucks locations, two in Beaverton and one in Southwest Portland, have filed a petition to unionize with the National Labor Relations Board. Three stores in Eugene have filed to unionize as well.
• A new report from Portland State University is recommending that the city pay reparations and offer other benefits to the families displaced from the Albina neighborhood by the expansion of Emanuel Hospital in the 1970s. The report estimates that expansion costs displaced families at least $89 million. Alex Zielinski has more.
The fact that the city dismissed the legitimacy of these findings because they were “self-reported” not only shows a sweeping disregard for unhoused Portlanders’ opinions but a general disinterest in learning anything from the stark data.https://t.co/HbrAMM86f9
— Alex Zielinski (@alex_zee) January 31, 2022
• A new 80-page report from an independent law enforcement investigation agency has found that the Portland Police Bureau is, in the words of our Alex Zielinski, “hampered by distrust, accountability issues, and poor leadership.” Mayor Wheeler releases his police budget requests this week, and I’m just certain he’ll take all that into account.
• The short session of the state legislature is slated to begin tomorrow in Salem, where Democrats’ policy goals include bills to let incarcerated people vote, help deal with the state’s housing crisis, and potentially grant farmworkers overtime pay.
• The Clark County deputy who allegedly fatally shot an off-duty Vancouver police officer appeared in Clark County Superior Court this morning. He is potentially facing a charge of first-degree attempted murder, amidst a slew of other charges.
ICYMI: The Oregon Parks and Recreation Department is gathering public comments about a plan for reconnecting the 362-mile Oregon Coast Trail. https://t.co/w8iUQq3Eiy
— OPB (@OPB) January 30, 2022
• The new Hulu miniseries Pam & Tommy traces the beginnings of the marriage of Pam Anderson and Tommy Lee and the fallout from the theft and sale of their sex tape—where it left them, and, maybe more importantly, society as a whole. Elinor Jones has our review.
IN NATIONAL NEWS:
• Those six Oregon locations are not the only Starbucks filing to unionize. More than 50 locations of the coffee chain in 19 states across the country are seeking to follow the lead of a Buffalo location that voted to unionize last month.
• A federal judge rejected plea deals for Travis and Gregory McMichael, two of the three men convicted of killing Ahmaud Arbery in a Georgia state court last month. Arbery’s family objected to the plea, which would have allowed the McMichaels to serve their 30 year sentences in federal prison rather than state prison. The two men have until Friday to enter a new plea in the federal case.
• Sen. Brian Schatz of Hawaii and scores of others are calling on President Biden to commute the life sentence of Leonard Peltier, the American Indian Movement activist convicted without evidence in the killing of two FBI agents in South Dakota in 1975. Peltier, 77, was not given a vaccine booster shot in prison and has contracted a serious case of COVID-19.
“In the dirt lay justice like an acorn in the winter, till its oak would sprout in Derry where the thirteen men lay dead…”
It was an honour to deliver the keynote speech marking the 50th anniversary of Bloody Sunday at Derry Guildhall.#BloodySunday50 pic.twitter.com/YjKYYlw98M
— Jeremy Corbyn (@jeremycorbyn) January 29, 2022
• The U.S. Justice Department has once again declined to reopen its investigation into the killing of 12-year-old Tamir Rice by a Cleveland police officer. Tamir’s mother, Samaria Rice, said that she was “devastated and disgusted” by the decision.
• The Pulitzer Prize-winning Holocaust graphic novel Maus: A Survivor’s Tale has hit the Amazon bestseller list days after being banned by a school district in East Tennessee. A bookstore in Knoxville has offered to loan the book to any student, and has raised $80,000 to buy additional copies.
• It’s back for 2022! America’s sexiest, funnest dirty movie fest, HUMP! Coming at ya starting February 24 at Revolution Hall—GET YOUR TICKETS NOW!
• Finally… the sun is shining brightly on one former Portlander today.
🇱🇻🎩👏 @DiegoDv8 pic.twitter.com/b3wPY1MhAR
— Club Lanús (@clublanus) January 31, 2022
