News
Family guy: Sex columnist and gay rights activist Dan Savage
Dan Savage grew up in a Catholic family in Chicago. At 18 years old, he came out as gay to his family, who after one rocky summer, Savage says, became aggressively supportive. That support has served him well. Today, his name is synonymous with gay activism and sex positivism. He is the author of the…
A new fresh start: immigrant youths stay above street influences
When Jacques moved to Portland four years ago from a refugee camp in Burundi, job prospects for his mother were bleak, it was nearing the end of the school year, and neither he nor his six brothers and sisters knew a word of English. “I couldn’t understand anything,” Jacques remembers. “They might be saying something,…
Native voices: “An Indigenous People’s History of the United States”
It’s been said that education is what you are left with after forgetting everything you learned in school. And unfortunately for us, American history books already forgot to mention a few things: like human beings inhabiting North America for over 20,000 years before Europeans. In fact, the Europeans our history books call the “original Americans”…
An inconvenient investment: Activists urge Mayor to divest from fossil fuels
During a speech he delivered on World Environment Day 2013, Portland Mayor Charlie Hales urged the state to stop investing in fossil fuels. One month later, during a visit with environmental journalist Bill McKibben, he reaffirmed his commitment to steering investments away from the fossil fuel industry. But despite the mayor’s lip service to environmental…
Opinion
Individual development accounts can restore opportunity
The federal budget President Barack Obama unveiled this week is intended to help working families feel some economic security. His spending priorities aim to address our massive income and wealth gaps as he asserts that all Americans should both share in and contribute to America’s success. This call to arms for the middle class should…
Vendors, readers inspired by weekly paper
How is weekly going? That’s the question we’ve been getting all month. Amazing. For readers who aren’t aware, vendors purchase the newspaper for 25 cents and then sell it for a suggested $1 in the community. When we launched weekly at the beginning of January, we set the price of the paper for vendors at…
Housing initiatives a step toward ‘righting the ship’
In his State of the City address, delivered last week before City Club of Portland, Mayor Charlie Hales talked about spending the past two years “righting the ship.” Financially, the city is stronger than it has been for several years, with commissioners and bureau chiefs now licking their chops over the city’s budget surplus. But…
