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About Street roots. (Portland, OR) 1998-current | View Entire Issue (Jan. 20, 2012)
street roots Jan. 20, 2012 Charlottesville By Jay Thiemeyer Photo by Mike Hastie Vietnam Veterans Memorial Washington, D.C. 2008 Padded Cell By Mike Hastie Army Medic Vietnam A Vietnam vet stretches to touch a name on the Wall. As an infant child reaches out to touch its mother’s breast, I just want to touch the Wall. For a chosen few, the Wall will become flesh. Fast forward 40 years since the end of the Vietnam War, and there are fewer Vietnam vets touching the Wall. Why? Because Vietnam vets are being pushed to extinction. The lies of that war are being reinvented to make it appear as if it were a noble cause. I once saw the Moving Wall in a small town in Idaho. On the moving monument was written: The Cost of Freedom is Written on the Wall. I had a PTSD reaction that ambushed me right there. I had a flash back to when I was in a padded cell in 1980. I was raging against everything America stood for. Now it is time for Iraq and Afghanistan vets to hear the screams of Vietnam Vets. The rage of rape makes us soul brothers. We are next of kin through betrayal. Lying is the most powerful weapon in war. sleeping or passed out beneath the statue in the park of George Rogers Clark, the misspent ‘hero of the northwest’ his NC Wyeth profile defying all but age and booze with its granite angle, I woke to two comrades from Monticello-Albemarle corrections, bosom buddies, ‘hope to die’ who, steadfast to purpose, tenex propositi, brought me to with the odor of a new bottle, spirited at closing time from the nearby store, ‘the neighborhood taverna’, I called it- one distracting the counter man, a dirty joke, the other sliding the gold into his coat its spring water metallic, sour, wonderful to wake to ‘the sun’s over the yardarm’, I said, mechanically echoing my father, still not awake, my mind in a muffle from the summer’s heat, and we went to drink and throw the knife at the poster of something no longer recognizable, in the lightless hourless caboose where they lived these days on a side spur, just past the statue’s park where the pines were straight as needles before canopying in a dark jumble overhead concealing sky and stars, the caboose sat long idle away from everything but the medical school, the emergency room, my taverna, my home away from home, and dark enough, we could carry on unseen, unheard except to ourselves the thudding of the heavy knife slicing the disabled door splinters dangling from its frame we spent those hours drinking our death and solitude god only knows where they are now Legal Notice If you worked for Labor Ready Northwest in Oregon on a repeat ticket between 1997 and the present, you could receive up to $25 or $50 from a class action. A wage and hour class action called Crawford v. Labor Ready Northwest, Inc. has been filed on behalf of certain Oregon employees of Labor Ready Northwest. The class consists of everyone who has worked for Labor Ready Northwest in the state of Oregon at least once on a repeat ticket since June 27,1997. A “repeat ticket” is an assignment by Labor Ready Northwest to the same job on the next business day. The worker who brought this class action and Labor Ready Northwest have now reached a settlement which an arbitrator must approve. If you are a member of the class, depending on when you first worked for the company, you may receive up to either $25 or $50 from Labor Ready. If the arbitrator approves the settlement, your rights will be affected unless you take yourself out of this case. On November* 28,2011 a Notice of Class Action Settlement was sent to the last known address of many class members. That notice explains the settlement, including how much will be paid to class members who file claims on time if the settlement is approved; how to object to the settlement; and how to take yourself out of the case. If you did not get this notice, you can obtain it by callinq 1 -888- 226-8857, or writing: Oregon Labor Ready Class Action P.O. Box 26170 Santa Ana, CA 92799 and providing your name, current address, current daytime telephone number and current email address. You may also obtain a copy of the notice at www.lrnwsettlement.com. Please act quickly. The deadline for filing a claim, for objecting to the settlement and for asking not to be in the case is February 6,2012. If the settlement is approved and you have not made a claim or asked to be taken out of the class, you will not be paid anything but still will not be able to brinq your own suit.
