Excitement - Resource Blog

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Excitement of a henna tattoo

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Excitement of a henna tattoo
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Portland, Oregon

History of Portland Saturday Market
Every Saturday and Sunday from March until December the Old Town/Chinatown neighborhood transforms into a thriving arts and crafts open-air marketplace. Seeing the market’s operations staff of 10 roll out the power lines and delegate booth spaces with precision each weekend for so many years, most of the neighborhood has come to think of Portland Saturday Market (PSM) as a business like any other. But it certainly wasn’t always that way, and some surprising elements still lie at the core of this unusual non-profit operation.
Portland Saturday Market was the brainchild of two women, Sheri Teasdale and Andrea Scharf. Both were artists living in the area who had sold at the Saturday Market in Eugene; their idea was to create a similar style of market in downtown Portland. Beginning in December 1973, the two visited everyone they could think of in the city to sell their idea: an open-air market of all handmade food and craft items. It would be a win-win situation they insisted. Artists would have an economic outlet for their work, customers would gain better access to locally-produced items, and the city would have a new attraction to draw customers into the downtown area.
Receiving positive feedback to their proposal, Scharf and Teasdale recruited three other supporters of the idea – Raul Soto-Seelig, Anne Hughes and George Sheldon – to serve on a preliminary board of directors and incorporated under the name Portland Saturday Market. The new organization was incorporated under Oregon law as a mutual benefit corporation, a special class of institutions that do not make a profit, but exist for the economic benefit of their members, making PSM a non-profit organization that is not tax-exempt. The five founders could have set up the market as a for-profit venture, but they envisioned a market where craftspeople would share the cost of running the market collectively and would keep whatever profit they personally made. It was to be a market for the members, governed by the members.
With legal standing firmly established, Scharf and Teasdale were able to apply for a startup grant from the Metropolitan Arts Council, which gave PSM ,000. But they still didn’t have a location for the market. Enter Bill Naito. Naito offered them a parking lot, known as the "Butterfly lot" owing to the large butterfly mural looming over the market.
For the first year that the market operated, there was no site plan. Members set up booths wherever and they chose, working it out with their neighbors to make sure nobody’s booth blocked anyone else’s. As the market grew, vendors began arriving earlier and earlier to claim their favorite spots, leading to the establishment of the ‘seven o’clock rule’ at the start of the 1975 season, which stated that no one could start putting up a booth or claim a spot before 7:00 am. A few weeks later, a clear site plan was created for the first time, marking out 8’ x 8’ booth spaces, defining aisles and a pattern for customer traffic.
The market moved to its current site under the Burnside Bridge in 1976, and started staying open on Sundays the following year. Things have changed a lot from the early days. PSM has over 400 members and generates an estimated million in gross sales annually. It has become a central economic engine for the historic Old Town/Chinatown neighborhood, and attracts an estimated 750,000 visitors to this area each year
But some important things have stayed the same. PSM could never have gotten started without the cooperation and aid of the city and of the Naito family, and still relies on those long-term partnerships. PSM’s board of directors continues to be made up of a majority of market vendors, putting market governance in the hands of its vendors. Six full-time and ten part-time staff members administer the operations and various programs of the market, including PSM’s newly designed website www.portlandsaturdaymarket.com. Items are still sold by the people who make them, giving the customers the chance to talk directly with the artisan about their craft and why artists choose to make their living at the market.

Marrakech Security Forum, January 2011
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Leaders attend a plenary session of the Marrakech Security Forum in Marrakech, Morocco, Jan. 20.

U.S. Army photo by Sgt. 1st Class Kyle Davis

Dozens of scholars, politicians and soldiers gathered in Marrakech, Morocco, Jan. 20-22 for the second annual convocation of the Marrakech Security Forum.

U.S. Army Africa (USARAF) Commander, Maj. Gen. David R. Hogg, attended the event, which was hosted by the African Federation for Strategic Studies (FAES) with support from the Moroccan Center for Strategic Studies (CMES).

Prof. Mohammed Benhammou of FAES, the event organizer and moderator, welcomed participants and turned the floor over to Pieter de Crem, the Belgian Minister of Defense.

Hogg spoke next, describing the structure and mission of USARAF and its higher headquarters, U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM), and discussed the threats all countries face from terrorist movements to their stability and well-being.

Following the initial plenary session, participants broke up into discussion groups. Hogg attended a session that focused on redefining the threats and security risks against stability and development in Africa in general, and the Sahel region in particular.

The discussion provided considerable, high quality food for thought, said Lt. Col. Uli Calvo, North Africa Desk Officer, Security Cooperation Directorate, USARAF.

“The conference was focused on the developing threat of AQIM (al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb) in the trans-Sahel region in Africa, and just basically terrorism around the world,” he said.
For instance, a Belgian participant presented a synopsis of responses to terrorist activities in Indonesia during the past decade, and a Mexican delegate discussed the evolution of the war waged there against narcotics networks.

“That was the primary focus,” Calvo said.

A second plenary session focused on Algeria, which Hogg had recently visited. The theme was “From the GSPC (Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat) to AQIM: The transformation of the Algerian terrorist group to a branch of al-Qaida.” A range of scholars and government representatives made presentations on the subject of the group’s evolution, which also proved very interesting, he said.

Among the discussions were two competing views of how terrorism evolves, Calvo said.

One view sees terrorist organizations and activities as driven by poverty, while another view ascribes the motivation to political injustice.

“I think that the conventional wisdom is that poverty is the root cause of terrorism,” Calvo said. “But the problem with that is that you’re criminalizing the poor. There are regions in Africa, and around the world, where poverty is widespread but instances of terrorism are statistically insignificant.”

The debate continues.

Other themes over the course of the three-day forum included discussions of AQIM’s activities and strategic objectives; its evolution from jihad to narcoterrorism; the interconnections among illegal trafficking, terrorism and political conflict; AQIM’s accommodation with criminal gangs; connections between regional terrorist movements and global organizations; and the development of regional strategies for combating terrorism in the Sahel.

Throughout the course of the forum, Hogg was continually greeted by participants he had met on previous trips to the continent and by individuals who had heard of him and wanted to make his acquaintance, the great majority of them from sub-Saharan Africa, Calvo said.

Hogg also spoke with reporters from RTM (Radiodiffusion-Television Marocaine) and 2M TV, the official government television channels, and to Radio Africa 1, a French radio network with a wide reach across the continent.

“General Hogg’s response to reporters, the main thing he stressed was international cooperation — that countries with experience and expertise in responding to terrorism should help nations in the trans-Sahel build their own capacity to deal with it,” said Calvo.

“Sharing their experience and lessons learned should help individual countries devise local solutions to local problems,” he said.

Hogg also had to reiterate that neither U.S. Army Africa nor AFRICOM have any plans to establish a headquarters on the African continent, a notion that remains current in African perceptions and African media despite consistent clarification the contrary from American officials over the past several years.

Hogg and his party had the opportunity while in Marrakech to take a cultural tour and gain a first-hand insight into the power of tourism as a bulwark of the Moroccan economy, said Calvo.

“I think this visit was beneficial to the CG (Commanding General) in a couple of ways,” said Calvo. “First, it exposed him to new developments having to do with AQIM and counterterrorism. And secondly, he was able to get a taste for Morocco in advance of his first formal visit there later this year.”

To learn more about U.S. Army Africa visit our official website at www.usaraf.army.mil

Official Twitter Feed: www.twitter.com/usarmyafrica

Official YouTube video channel: www.youtube.com/usarmyafrica

Marrakech Security Forum, January 2011
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Image by US Army Africa
Leaders attend a plenary session of the Marrakech Security Forum in Marrakech, Morocco, Jan. 20.