05-29-2023  11:17 am   •   PDX and SEA Weather
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NORTHWEST NEWS

Former Senator Margaret Carter Receives Honorary Doctorate of Public Service

Margaret Carter was the commencement speaker for Willamette University's Salem undergraduate commencement ceremony

Ex-Seattle Man Gets 8 Years for Stealing $1M in Pandemic Benefits

Bryan Sparks, 42, was indicted for the fraud scheme in November 2021 and pleaded guilty to wire fraud and aggravated identity theft in January. He was also ordered on Tuesday to pay more than jumi million in restitution.

Boycotting Oregon GOP Senators Vow to Stay Away Until Last Day of Session

The walkout, which began on May 3 ostensibly because bill summaries weren't written at an eighth grade level as required by a long-forgotten law, has derailed progress on hundreds of bills

NEWS BRIEFS

Oregon and Washington Memorial Day Events

Check out a listing of ceremonies and other community Memorial Day events in Oregon and Washington. A full list of all US events,...

Communities Invited to Interstate Bridge Replacement Neighborhood Forums in Vancouver and Portland

May 31 and June 6 forums allow community members to learn about the program’s environmental review process ...

Bonamici, Salinas Introduce Bill to Prevent Senior Hunger

Senior Hunger Prevention Act will address challenges older adults, grandparent and kinship caregivers, and adults with disabilities...

This is Our Lane - Too: Joint Statement on the Maternal Health Crisis from the Association of Black Cardiologists, American College of Cardiology and American Heart Association

Urgent action is needed to combat the maternal health crisis in America and cardiologists have a vital role to play. ...

New Skateboarding Area Planned for Southeast Portland’s Creston Park

Area has largest number of overall youth and of people of color out of locations studied ...

4 of 7 teens who escaped a juvenile detention center remain at large

SEATTLE (AP) — Law enforcement officials continued their search Monday for four of seven teens who escaped from a juvenile detention center after assaulting a staff member and stealing her car. The seven teens, ages 15 to 17, escaped from the Echo Glen Children’s Center campus in...

Historic acquittal in Louisiana fuels fight to review 'Jim Crow' verdicts

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Evangelisto Ramos walked out of a New Orleans courthouse and away from a life sentence accompanying a 10-2 jury conviction, thanks in large part to the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision bearing his name. Ramos v. Louisiana outlawed nonunanimous jury...

Foster, Ware homer, Auburn eliminates Mizzou 10-4 in SEC

HOOVER, Ala. (AP) — Cole Foster hit a three-run homer, Bryson Ware added a two-run shot and fifth-seeded Auburn wrapped up the first day of the SEC Tournament with a 10-4 win over ninth-seeded Missouri on Tuesday night. Auburn (34-9), which has won nine-straight, moved into the...

Small Missouri college adds football programs to boost enrollment

FULTON, Mo. (AP) — A small college in central Missouri has announced it will add football and women's flag football programs as part of its plan to grow enrollment. William Woods University will add about 140 students between the two new sports, athletic director Steve Wilson said...

OPINION

Significant Workforce Investments Needed to Stem Public Defense Crisis

We have a responsibility to ensure our state government is protecting the constitutional rights of all Oregonians, including people accused of a crime ...

Over 80 Groups Tell Federal Regulators Key Bank Broke $16.5 Billion Promise

Cross-country redlining aided wealthy white communities while excluding Black areas ...

Public Health 101: Guns

America: where all attempts to curb access to guns are shot down. Should we raise a glass to that? ...

Op-Ed: Ballot Measure Creates New Barriers to Success for Black-owned Businesses

Measure 26-238, a proposed local capital gains tax, is unfair and a burden on Black business owners in an already-challenging economic environment. ...

AFRICAN AMERICANS IN THE NEWS

Why do Kosovo-Serbia tensions persist?

BELGRADE, Serbia (AP) — Tensions between Serbia and Kosovo flared anew this weekend after Kosovo’s police raided Serb-dominated areas in the region’s north and seized local municipality buildings. There have been violent clashes between Kosovo’s police and NATO-led...

What California's Ravidassia community believes and why they want caste bias outlawed

In California, members of an under-the-radar, minority religious community are stepping into the public eye to advocate for making the state the first in the nation to outlaw caste bias. They are the Ravidassia — followers of Ravidass, a 14th century Indian guru who preached caste...

Historic acquittal in Louisiana fuels fight to review 'Jim Crow' verdicts

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Evangelisto Ramos walked out of a New Orleans courthouse and away from a life sentence accompanying a 10-2 jury conviction, thanks in large part to the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision bearing his name. Ramos v. Louisiana outlawed nonunanimous jury...

ENTERTAINMENT

CBS is television's most popular network for 15th straight year

NEW YORK (AP) — CBS claimed the distinction of most-watched television network for the 15th straight year, even as those bragging rights don't mean what they used to. The network averaged just under 6 million viewers on a typical moment in prime time for the season that just...

Country singer Tyler Hubbard's growth expands beyond Florida Georgia Line

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Singer-songwriter Tyler Hubbard was fully prepared to hang up his boots so to speak when his duo partner in Florida Georgia Line, Brian Kelley, said he wanted to go solo. The pair had been together more than a decade, and whether you were a fan of their bro...

Movie review: Julia Louis-Dreyfus reteams with Nicole Holofcener in 'You Hurt My Feelings'

If I didn’t like Nicole Holofcener’s latest film, would I tell her? OK, sure, it wouldn’t be so odd for a critic to give an unvarnished opinion. But what about a sibling? Or a spouse? If they didn’t care for Holofcener’s movie, what’s more important: Being honest or making...

U.S. & WORLD NEWS

Trump's welcome of Scott into 2024 race shows his calculus: The more GOP rivals, the better for him

NEW YORK (AP) — When Republican Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina launched his campaign for the White House last...

Casteless utopia: California religious group backs bill to ban caste discrimination

FRESNO, California (AP) — For decades, worshipping in temples, Ram Asra has sung spiritual songs known as...

Sloane Stephens leads 4 American women into 2nd round of French Open

PARIS (AP) — Back on her “favorite court in the world,” Sloane Stephens looked sharp in her opening match at...

Sleepless in Kyiv: Nighttime Russian air campaign terrorizes citizens in Ukrainian capital

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — The attacks come at night, when most in Kyiv are sound asleep. The sirens wail across the...

La Scala announces 2023-24 season as new government decree creates uncertainty

MILAN (AP) — The French general manager of Milan’s famed Teatro alla Scala is facing the threat of a tenure...

China plans to land astronauts on moon before 2030, expand space station, bring on foreign partners

BEIJING (AP) — China’s burgeoning space program plans to place astronauts on the moon before 2030 and expand...

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."