Murmurs: Teachers’ Union Tells Labor Coalition to Reject Police

TEACHERS’ UNION TELLS LABOR COALITION TO REJECT POLICE: The Portland Association of Teachers sent a scalding letter to the Northwest Oregon Labor Council over the weekend, warning it against admitting the Portland Police Association to its ranks. “PPA is not part of the labor movement. Police, by definition and in practice, are used to protect property over people, especially during labor disputes or public push back against police brutality,” PAT president Angela Bonilla wrote on behalf of the teachers’ union board. The letter also laid out allegations that the police union intimidated elected officials, which PPA president Aaron Schmautz has vehemently denied. The labor council’s executive board quietly admitted the police union to the coalition in March, but later backtracked after naysayers—led by the Portland chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America—took issue with both the substance and process of the decision (“Save the Date,” WW, April 9). Laurie Wimmer, executive secretary-treasurer of the NOLC, decided to take the PPA’s admittance to a vote of the full coalition. That vote was supposed to be held April 28, but has been delayed. It will happen in “a couple of months,” Wimmer has told WW.

WHISTLEBLOWER SUES FORESTRY DEPARTMENT: The embattled Oregon Department of Forestry faces a new whistleblower lawsuit in Marion County Circuit Court. Shauneen Scott, a 40-year state employee who most recently served as ODF’s human resources director, alleges in the April 18 lawsuit that she filed reports with the state about a variety of concerns about ODF management after joining the agency in 2024. After some of those concerns contributed to high-level departures, Scott’s lawsuit says, the department’s acting director, Kate Skinner, fired Scott in February 2025. She is seeking $800,000 in damages. The Oregon Department of Justice, which will defend the state against Scott’s lawsuit, does not comment on pending litigation. The lawsuit adds to the troubles at ODF, which has seen its top two executives fired in the past six months and was dinged by the Oregon State Treasury for poor financial management. The Legislature bailed out the agency in a special session last fall.

NEIGHBORHOOD ADVOCATE MOSES ROSS DIES: Moses Ross, a longtime political consultant and neighborhood advocate in Multnomah Village, died from an asthma attack last week. He was 58. For two decades, Ross ran Smart Voter Contact, a phone bank that reaches out to voters for Democratic Party candidates. He spent three years leading the Multnomah Village Neighborhood Association and played a key role as the city of Portland set up its first tiny pod village in the neighborhood. Ross was relentlessly positive and kind, even while navigating an often difficult relationship between the city and the Southwest Portland neighborhood. He was an organizer and sometime host of PDX Progressive Talk Radio, a public affairs show on KBOO, and over the years served on a smattering of volunteer boards. He was also heavily involved with Multnomah County Democratic Party. Ross ran for Portland City Council last year, finishing 17th among 31 candidates seeking to represent District 4. Unlike other political candidates who disappear from civic engagement after they lose a race, Ross didn’t skip a beat in continuing his advocacy for the city. “I can’t even begin to describe the type of person my father was,” his daughter, Emma, wrote in a social media post, “because he was everything good.”

PETA ESCALATES ITS WAR ON PRIMATE CENTER: People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals is keeping the heat on Oregon Health & Science University to close the Oregon National Primate Research Center, trucking a 500-pound pair of binoculars to a spot in front of the university’s library so “the public sees what OHSU carefully hides.” One eyepiece of the 7½-foot-tall binoculars shows macaques cavorting, picking fruit from trees, and caring for their young in the jungles of Southeast Asia. The other shows macaques in captivity at the nation’s seven primate labs. Unlike their wild cousins, the caged macaques rock back and forth, shudder, pick at their fur, and shake the bars on their cages. PETA and another animal rights group, the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, have been pressuring regulators to close the primate center before allowing OHSU to buy Legacy Health. The Oregon primate center houses more than 5,000 nonhuman primates on 200 acres in Hillsboro, where they are bred and used for research. Both groups say animal studies are cruel and pointless. “About 95% of drugs that appear safe in animals fail in human trials,” Amy Meyer, associate director of primate experimentation campaigns at PETA, said in an interview beside the exhibit this week. PETA plans to keep the binoculars in Portland until May 2, when staff will load them into a box truck and move them to University of California, Davis, home of the California National Primate Research Center.