WW welcomes letters to the editor via mail, e-mail or fax. Letters must be signed by the author and include the author's street address and phone number for verification. Preference will be given to letters of 250 words or less. LIVING FOR THE CITY I wish to point out that the cover story summary appearing on the front page of your March 15 issue contains two glaring inaccuracies regarding the employees of Powell's City of Books ["Powell's City Divided," WW, March 15, 2000]. For one thing, it states that Powell's "employees are well-compensated...." I beg to differ based on information contained in a Powell's help-wanted ad appearing on page 107 of the very same issue. It is an ad for Book Sellers for Powell's Beaverton store and quotes wages starting at $6.50-$8 an hour, depending on experience (emphasis mine). This means that, regardless of the fact that Powell's median wage for all its workers may be above the industry's standard, Michael Powell is still willing to pay his beginning workers as little as the Oregon minimum wage! Anyone knows this is not enough to live on in the Portland metropolitan area! The Northwest Job-Gap Study, published in The Oregonian over a year ago, cited a living wage for the Portland metro area at approximately $10.50 an hour then. And the cost of living here has risen significantly since then. Your article quotes Michael Powell as saying, "It's clear that somehow I failed...to convince employees that their working conditions were the most important thing to me..." If there was even a shred of sincerity to such a statement then Michael Powell would, at the very least, pay all his workers a living, sustainable wage so they could live decently in the economic market they serve with their highly skilled labor! The other inaccuracy of your article summary is implied by the question, "Why do so many want a union?" In fact, Powell's workers have had a union to represent them for nearly a year now. Just because Powell's management team's intransigence and foot-dragging have prevented final agreement on, and signing of, a decent contract for Powell's employees doesn't mean the vote to unionize the store last April is any less legitimate or binding. Powell's employees voted the ILWU to be their sole representative in contract negotiations with the employer, and the union is there to stay until (and after) the contract is signed! Luke Anavi Southeast Grand Avenue PDX BLUE Philip Dawdy's article, "Friendly Fire" (Feb. 23, 2000), leaves Portlanders with the impression that the important work going on in the Citizens for Police Account-ability Campaign is just a melodramatic brawl. Why did he direct his fire against democratic discussion and debate? At the meeting that Dawdy reported on, 60 community members, feminists, black activists, community representatives, those who work with homeless youth, the NAACP, Radical Women, Copwatch, the National Lawyers Guild and other groups had a freewheeling debate on how to create an effective Civilian Police Review Board. This is how good decisions get made, not behind closed doors. This issue is crucial: the life-and-death matter of how to hold police officers accountable when they abuse, harass and murder civilians. The contention over what method would be the best avenue to reining in the cops has come down to these key issues: Who will discipline the police? How will a civilian review board be formed--elected or appointed by the City Council? Will the civilian review board be independent of City Hall and the police department? A majority advocated a civilian review board independent of City Hall. It would have investigatory and subpoena powers into police shooting deaths and other abuses. The police cannot police themselves; the community must. If the board has powers to hold police accountable, but are themselves under the thumb of City Hall, those powers will not be used. Ability to discipline is essential, otherwise there is no point to having a board since recommendations have historically gone unheeded by City Hall and the police chief. We also advocated for an elected review board, but this did not pass. Elections allow for community representation, especially by those who have a history of being abused by the police, to oversee cases of police misconduct. We all want a bill that will pass, but to weaken it so it is acceptable to the establishment and then to "win" a toothless board is a waste of people's time, trust and money. That process is how we got PIIAC (Portland Internal Investigations Auditing Committee). Philip Dawdy equates the urgent issue of how to safeguard community members' lives from police brutality to the shallowness and slapstick nature of a prime-time sitcom. The two are opposites. This is not television; police brutality and unaccountability are very real, as the family and community of Amadou Diallo can testify to. Jennifer Laverdure, D. Spring Svart, Susan Sandstrom Radical Women Jordana Sardo Freedom Socialist Party Stephen Amy Pacific Green Party Lawrence E. Boothby NAACP Kris DeMaria Carolyn Giles Bill Reetz Eric J. Frazier Philip Dawdy responds: At the Feb. 15 CPAC meeting, participants did not approve initiative language that would allow a reconstituted PIIAC to discipline police officers, as the above letter suggests. Instead, the approved language would let PIIAC recommended disciplinary action to the chief of police, who could then act or not act upon it. What CPAC did approve was language letting the new PIIAC set policy for the Portland Police Bureau. For the record, Mr. Diallo was shot and killed by New York City police. The officers involved were cleared of all charges by a jury that included African Americans. END OF INNOCENCE While I tend to share C. Norman Winningstad's lack of sympathy for murderers ["Theory and Execution," Letters, WW, March 15, 2000], Mr. Winningstad seems rather ignorant of the "real world" of which he writes. Belonging to a social class affording better treatment from the justice system is something that Mr. Winningstad has no doubt worked very hard for, but that does not excuse his ignorance. Indeed it is probably rare that innocent people are actually executed, since executions are relatively few. However, anyone who claims to have knowledge of the "real world" should be aware that innocent people are wrongly convicted in this country, especially those who cannot afford experienced legal representation. Police are under pressure to solve crimes. Sometimes they manufacture evidence or obtain confessions from innocent parties after lengthy interrogations while ignoring exculpatory evidence. The individual officers may feel that it is better to convict the wrong person than to allow a serious crime to go unpunished, which would encourage more crime and lower police morale. Of course the motives for this phenomenon are speculative, but the undeniable fact is that it does occur and real human beings are locked away as a result. Juries are influenced by politically ambitious prosecutors who hold up graphic crime scene photos which have nothing to do with whether the accused actually committed the crime. Witnesses are human and crime is a traumatic experience. Modern DNA testing has proved that eyewitness accounts are not always accurate. Mr. Winningstad confidently states that innocent people are rarely executed, but the truth is we don't really know how many have been wrongly convicted. There have been a number of cases where a convicted person was later proved innocent. That does not mean that no other examples of the abuse and imperfections of the system exist. No, Mr. Winningstad, I am not an attorney. My feelings regarding capital punishment are ambivalent. But I do have compassion toward my fellow man, including the unjustly convicted. David Findlay Southwest Barnes Road - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Willamette Week | originally published March 22, 2000