Independent Journalist and Communications Professional
Join KBOO's Lisa Loving as we pay our respects to one of Portland's progressive powerhouses. Dave Mazza was a long-time KBOO host and editor of the Portland Alliance newspaper. He passed away this week after entering hospice care. Call (503) 231-8187 to share your memories of Dave.
In 2002 The Willamette Week called Dave Portland's Best Grassroots Political Activist and wrote:
Dave Mazza looms large in leftie Portland politics, and it's not just because he's the guy you'd most want to hide behind whenever the cops trash a protest. A prominent critic of the way the city investigates police misconduct, Mazza, a hulking former private investigator, also edits the Portland Alliance, a monthly nonprofit rabble-rousing newspaper whose 21-year-old bark is way larger than its 8,000-circulation bite. Two years ago, it was Mazza and the Alliance that obtained copies of the infamous anti-gay tapes that nearly cost Police Chief Mark Kroeker his job. Born into a family of bricklayers, the bespectacled, bushy-bearded Mazza might resemble a former Soviet apparatchik, but in person he is wise, personable and witty. He credits the paper's increase in circulation not to his columns or editing, but to the police who shot bean bags at him during the May Day 2000 rally, thus elevating the paper's visibility. "I've tried to get the other (Alliance) board members to be shot at by the police, as well," he says, "but they've been hesitant."