If it passes, a bill requiring cities to tie Drug Free Zone exclusions to a conviction could calm anger over the city's controversial policy to clean up major drug corridors.
"In this country you are innocent until proven guilty," said Rep. Chip Shields, D-N./N.E. Portland, a co-sponsor of the bill. "In the end we will be increasing public safety by encouraging convictions instead of simply excluding someone (from the zones)."
Under current rules, people arrested for a drug-related crime – and, in the past, even suspected of dealing drugs — can be excluded from large geographic areas known as "drug free zones." In Portland there are three such zones – the "north zone" covering a swath of land in inner North and Northeast Portland; the "central zone," which encompasses the bulk of downtown Portland; and another stretch along the entirety of 82nd Avenue.

Ten Grant High School students took a journey of a lifetime last week, when they traveled to Alabama to retrace Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s historic march for the voting rights of African Americans.
The students' travels took them to King's original starting point in Selma, Ala., and they marched with their teacher, Doug Winn, the whole way to Montgomery, Ala.
King's original 1965 march was the beginning of a new era in this country and played a big part in passing the Voting Rights Act, which gave Blacks the right to vote....

In the seven weeks since it opened, Nurse Practitioner Shelda Holmes' new Hands On Medicine clinic has attracted a following of North and Northeast Portland's most underserved residents.
For Holmes, it is a dream come true.
"My passion is in serving the underserved," Holmes says.
In former jobs, Holmes sometimes saw more than 24 patients each day, and had barely 10 minutes per person to diagnose and treat their problems.

Portland Center Stage, in collaboration with Hartford Stage Company and Dallas Theater Center, presents August Wilson's "Fences" April 10 through May 5.
Winner of both the Pulitzer Prize for drama and the Tony Award for best play in 1987, "Fences" stands toe-to-toe with plays like "Death of a Salesman" as both a snapshot of a troubling time in American history and an epic portrayal of the human condition, but "Fences" is told from an African American perspective.

Author Rebecca Walker, right, talks to Natasha Martin after signing a book for her new memoir, "Baby Love: Choosing Motherhood After a Lifetime of Ambivalence, " at the Douglass-Truth branch of the Seattle Public Library on March 22.
Walker is the bestselling author of "Black, White, and Jewish: Autobiography of a Shifting Self" and the daughter of novelist Alice Walker. Time magazine recently named Rebecca Walker  "One of the 50 most influential future leaders of America." She lives with her son, Tenzin, the subject of "Baby Love," in Hawaii.

According to a recent study on the link between poverty, race and food access in King County, low-income people living in neighborhoods like Rainier Valley are cutting back on healthy foods because they can't afford them.
"People are stretching their money and buying energy-deficient foods that are high in sugar, fat and sodium, such as Top Ramen," Jamillah Jordan, lead researcher of the Grocery Gap Project, which compared Seattle's Rainier Valley and Queen Anne neighborhoods. "People are making conscious decisions about what they can and cannot afford to buy at the grocery store so that they can be able to pay their bills every month."
The study found that, on average, groceries in the Rainier Valley cost 29 cents more a week than the national standard and $1.97 more a week in Queen Anne.
Jordan shopped for the basics — bread, meat, milk and cheese, fresh fruits and vegetables and condiments — at nine retailers on Queen Anne and ten in the Rainier Valley to see if a family of four can buy a week's worth of food on $121.30 a week,  the maximum a family of four with two school-age children can receive through the U.S. Department of Agriculture's food stamp program. In Washington State alone, one-half million people rely on food stamps to buy groceries each week.
Jordan's Grocery Gap Project, a pilot research study, compared and identified the availability and costs of healthy foods in low-income communities and communities of color compared to more affluent neighborhoods. Focus groups were formed to see what mattered to residents when shopping.

OLYMPIA – Community organizations and programs serving the diverse 37th Legislative District, which includes southeast Seattle and part of Renton, will benefit from funding in the House of Representatives' capital, operating and transportation budgets.
"These budgets help build a better Washington for our kids, grandkids and families," said Rep. Eric Pettigrew, D-Seattle. "I'm proud and excited that we're breaking the state record for building new schools and putting more than a billion into building colleges and universities.".............

DiversityInc.'s 2007 Top 50 Companies for Diversity® list is out and the top three spots went to AT&T (No.3), Pepsi Bottling Group (No. 2) and Bank of America (No. 1).
Although there are no companies on the list with headquarters in the Pacific Northwest, several of the companies have businesses in Washington and Oregon and employ people of color in both locations.
Kaiser Permanente, which is headquartered in Oakland, Calif., and which has been treating patients in the Pacific Northwest since the early 1940s and has medical centers and offices throughout the Portland/Vancouver region, is No. 27 on the list.

King County Councilors Dow Constantine and Larry Gossett, Beacon Hill's two representatives, will host an informal open house for their constituents from 5:30-7 p.m. on Thursday, April 5, at the Jefferson Community Center, 3801 Beacon Ave. S.
Refreshments will be served and participants will have the opportunity to speak informally with their two representatives.
The open house will be followed by a community meeting featuring both councilors and representatives from King County Metro from 7-8:30 p.m.
Councilor Constantine and Council Chair Gossett will speak about issues affecting the Beacon Hill community and answer questions from the audience.

This paper has frequently written about city leaders who ignore the plight of Portland's African American citizens. Now it has happened again.
Last year Mayor Tom Potter, along with Commissioner Eric Sten, launched the Home Ownership for Minority Equity Steering Committee — in part because the city had overlooked the role race plays in Portland's housing market.
What is the color line in Portland's housing market? Between Whites and Blacks with similar incomes, the loan denial rate is nearly two times higher for Black loan applicants. At every income level, African American and Latino households are turned down for home loans more often than Whites.