For Avel Gordly, class is in

BACK STORY • After long legislative career, senator will focus on education

By Jim Redden

The Portland Tribune, Jul 24, 2007, Updated Oct 30, 2009 (6 Reader comments)

L.e. Baskow / Portland tribune

The 2007 legislative session was the last for state Sen. Avel Gordly, I-Portland, who was the first black woman to serve in the state Senate. She now teaches in the Black Studies program at Portland State University.

Avel Gordly feels she has spent much of her adult life warning Portlanders about growing community problems.

While working for the Urban League of Portland in the early 1980s, Gordly told city and law enforcement officials that local children were forming gangs modeled after the Crips and Bloods.

As the first African-American woman elected to the state Senate, Gordly predicted the community upheaval that followed the Portland police shootings of Kendra James and James Jahar Perez.

Now, with the end of her legislative career in sight, Gordly is warning that Portland schools are not prepared to deal with the growing number of students from immigrant families who are flocking to town.

But Gordly has always done more than merely sound alarm bells – she also has personally worked to address the problems she saw coming.

After the 1988 drive-by killing of Joseph “Ray Ray” Winston finally opened the city’s eyes to the growing gang menace, Gordly became the first program director of the House of Umoja, the local chapter of a nationally recognized program that helps at-risk youth.

During the final hours of the 2007 Legislature, Gordly teamed with Oregon Attorney General Hardy Myers to finally pass a law requiring a planned response to incidents in which police use deadly force.

And even though Gordly is giving up her legislative influence over the state’s education system by not running for re-election when her third senate term ends next year, she is working to encourage more minority public school teachers as an associate professor in Portland State University’s Black Studies program.

“Portland has come so far,” said Gordly, 60. “But there is much more to be done to open the doors to everyone who lives here.”

Those who know Gordly are not surprised she’s still focused on the future. At an age when many people are planning their retirement, Gordly sees a lot of unfinished work ahead. Short-term projects include a town hall meeting on West Nile virus in her district. In the longer term, Gordly has set a much larger goal for herself – helping make Portland a true international city.

“To Avel, diversity is more than just a concept. She takes it and pushes the envelope as far as she can get,” said state Sen. Ted Ferrioli, the Senate’s Republican leader, who represents much of Central and Southeastern Oregon and considers Gordly a lifelong friend.

Gordly is working toward this goal in ways big and small. Over the years, she has visited 17 African nations and led an official mission to increase trade between Oregon and South Africa. In September she will travel to Africa again, this time to Ghana, as part of a PSU program.

On a more local level, Gordly enjoys spending time in one of the most diverse parts of town, the Rose City Park neighborhood, where the influx of recent immigrants is so pronounced the Northeast Central Sandy Business Association recently changed its name to the Portland International District to embrace the change.

“I just love living here and being able to take in all the different sights and sounds in the neighborhood,” said the twice-divorced Gordly, who lives alone in a condominium near Northeast 67th and Broadway.

Her Senate District 23 – which includes portions of Northeast and Southeast Portland that are west of Interstate 205 – extends at its widest part from Northeast 21st Avenue almost to 148th Avenue.

Happy Avel Gordly Day!

The city officially honored Gordly’s 16 years of public service as a state legislator on July 11 with a proclamation from Mayor Tom Potter and a reception for her in the council chambers.

Potter and other speakers recited Gordly’s lengthy string of accomplishments, including her sponsorship of the successful 2002 ballot measure removing all remnants of racist language from the Oregon Constitution.

“Throughout her career, she has brought a sense of urgency and importance to every issue, compelling people to find solutions and take action,” Potter said.

Gordly reacted modestly to the praise.

“I wake up every morning and say out loud that I am living a blessed life,” she said.

In fact, Gordly had to fight against racism and discrimination to come this far in her life.

Gordly was born and raised in Northeast Portland. Her father was a Pullman porter with the Union Pacific Railroad and her mother worked at the shipyards during World War II.

When Gordly attended the former Girls Polytechnic High School, her teachers and counselors discouraged her from pursuing her first interests – nursing and operating business machines, the forerunners of today’s office computers – because of her race.

“They told me there were no opportunities for me. They wanted me to take up commercial food – to become a cook,” she said.

Instead, Gordly proved them wrong. After graduating in 1965, she promptly landed a job at Pacific Northwest Bell operating business machines.

The company was so impressed by her skills that she was selected to test the next generations of their machines.

“I had an aptitude for them,” she said.

College called

Gordly decided to go back to school in 1971 after visiting a friend at Portland State University. By then she had a son, but the father was in Vietnam and it was obvious they were not going to get back together when he came home.

“I was enthralled by everything on the campus,” she said.

She enrolled at PSU and began majoring in political science, but quickly switched to the Administration of Justice department, inspired by the knowledge that almost everyone who goes to jail eventually returns to their communities.

“I always thought, what are we doing to help them come back?” she said.

Once she entered the program, Gordly met two professors who became mentors. One was Lee Brown, who subsequently became New York City’s police commissioner and Houston’s mayor and police chief.

The other was Gary Perlstein, an internationally recognized terrorism expert and PSU professor emeritus. Perlstein remembers Gordly as “extremely bright, extremely knowledgeable, a great critical thinker.”

After earning her Bachelor of Science degree in 1974, Gordly was hired as an adult parole and probation officer for the Oregon Department of Corrections.

According to Gordly, she began clashing with the department’s administration almost immediately. First, Gordly said, the department wanted to assign her only female convicts. Gordly also realized that few minority inmates were being released to go back to school.

Most of the minorities in the system were being placed on work release, a program that required them to find a job within 30 days or go back to prison.

Gordly fought both restrictions, eventually being allowed to supervise both men and women and increasing the percentage of minority inmates returning to school. The battles took their toll, though. Worn down, she quit in 1978 without another job.

“I needed to heal, even though no one used that word at the time,” she said.

Ganging up on gangs

Unemployment did not last long, however. The Urban League of Portland recruited her to serve as its director for youth services, a position that put her in direct contact with many of the city’s minority children.

1 | 2 Next Page >>

Facebook	Digg	Del.icio.us
Newsvine	Stumbleupon	Reddit