PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) -- Thousands of demonstrators marched through downtown Portland on Saturday to protest Arizona's new illegal immigration law, which requires authorities to question people about their immigration status.

It would be an understatement to say bicycles get a lot of attention in this town. But the attention is mainly White attention, especially when it comes to hardcore bike commuters.
And the Community Cycling Center has set out to find out why.

Sunrise March 15, 1951 -- Sunset April 24, 2010. Memorial Services: Monday, May 10, 2010 11:00 am, Bethel AME. Church, 5828 NE 8th, Portland OR. Jerome Cox Tanner, Funeral Director, 503 281 4891

Zora Elisa said she was a bit troubled when she saw the crack house on the lawn of the seminary school she attends. She wasn't the only one; several other students attending Multnomah University theology school in East Portland were also troubled by what they saw.

Ron Sims, deputy director of HUD, came to Portland, Oregon, to explain why $8 billion in community development funds will go to projects that link urban and rural communities and help lift poor people and people of color out of poverty.

Walter Kelsaw had a story in his head that he just couldn't shake. It was pieces of his life on the streets of Portland, people he once knew, and the lifestyles they used to lead -- plus a good dose of fiction in between. Kelsaw has now joined a growing army of independent book publishers, authors who've had either bad luck or no luck getting publishing houses to pay attention to their work.

Two of the seven Portland Public Schools board members voted against continuing with the proposed high school redesign  March 9 – educator and former Latino Network President, Martin Gonzalez, and Portland State University Professor Dilafruz Williams.
Gonzalez told The Skanner that while he agrees that Portland's high schools are segregated and vastly unequal, he disagrees with the idea that students of color will be better off in large comprehensives.
"The outcomes are not there," Gonzalez said. "Grant High School is a large comprehensive with all the characteristics they say every school should have. And 95 percent of White students are meeting or exceeding the academic benchmarks in reading but only 45 percent of African American students are meeting or achieving the benchmark.

The scene was a public meeting at Portland Community College's Cascade campus, organized by the Oregon Association of Black School Educators. The topic was Portland Public Schools' proposal to change the high school system from the ground up. School district administrators John Wilhelmi and Charles Hobson made the case for turning two high schools into small specialized "focus" schools, while sending most students to larger neighborhood comprehensives. Their audience -- made up mostly of teachers, was less than enthusiastic.

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) -- The Oregon Supreme Court has ruled that workers can be fired for using medical marijuana even if they have a card from the state program authorizing its use.

The state of Oregon will soon be holding hearings to let the public voice their concerns about where money should be allocated within the Department of Human Services. MindFreedom International – an organization made up of mental health care consumers –is calling upon the state to financially support a advocacy office for customers of the state's mental healthcare system