PEG MORTON FASTING
ON CAPITOL STEPS
Eugene Quaker and retired mental
health worker Peg Morton, 72, began a
week-long fast and vigil this week on the
steps of the state Capitol building in
Salem. Her intention? To draw attention to
shrinking funding for social services in the
state.
“My heart feels torn apart as I learn of
the effects, and potential effects of massive
cuts to human services by the Oregon state
government,” she says. “A disabled friend
of mine attempted suicide because of re-
moval of her medications. Another person,
living with mental illness, did commit sui-
cide because of desperation in her search
for services. Large numbers of people ad-
mitted to emergency mental health facili-
ties are now released without medication
or follow-up counseling. The stories are
unending. Disabled people by the thou-
sands live in fear of what will happen to
them.”
Morton’s juice fast began Monday, July
21, and she is being joined by supporters in
prayer groups, meditations and songs of
justice and peace.
“Oregon is a state with many resources
and much wealth,” she says. “Taxes must
be raised, in ways that do not harm people
of lower and middle incomes.
Inappropriate tax loopholes must be
closed. Long term tax reform towards a re-
turn to a progressive tax structure, includ-
ing corporations, must happen.”
Morton is no stranger to political ac-
tivism. She has been involved in many
peace and social justice causes over the
years, including civil disobedience at the
U.S. Army School of the Americas in
Georgia. She says she hopes her Salem
vigil and fast will “serve as a magnet to
bring others out to make a strong state-
ment. It will not be especially effective un-
less others join me. Time is running out
and the Legislature will soon close its
doors.” — Ted Taylor
AIR QUALITY SLIPPING
The air around here is getting dirtier.
The number of days of “good” air quality
in the Eugene/Springfield area declined
from 323 in 1999 to 302 last year, an extra
three weeks of questionable air, according
to the Lane Regional Air Pollution
Authority (LRAPA).
Last year there were 56 days of “moder-
ate” health concerns for a very small num-
ber of people. There was a week of un-
healthy days for certain people that are sen-
sitive to bad air. That’s a total of over two
months of less than good air — much
longer than you can hold your breath. — AP
BY PAUL NEEVEL
Yotokko Kilpatrick
“The Willamette Valley was once a mosiac
of prairies, savannah, and riparian hard-
wood forests, burned annually by Native
Americans,” notes Yotokko Kilpatrick,
founder of the Walama Restoration
Project. “Now it’s highly fragmented —
less than 1 percent left.” WRP enlists
schoolkids and other volunteers in pro-
jects designed to maintain and restore
natural habitat. “We’ve worked mostly in
urban parks,” Kilpatrick says. “We’ve done
invasive species removal and riparian
habitat revegetation.” To honor his
Cherokee ancestry, Oklahoma native
Kilpatrick adopted the name Yotokko,
which means “mud where shore and
water meet.” He moved to Eugene in 1991,
just before the Gulf War, and helped orga-
nize Food Not Bombs, an informal group
that served meals under the Washington
Street bridge. He left in 1996 to study permaculture and sustainable living in several
Northwest locations, aided in the Lomakatsi Restoration Project for the regeneration of
watersheds in southern Oregon, then returned to Eugene in 2001 to start WRP. “I try to
foster connections with the natural world,” Kilpatrick says. “These kids will be environ-
mental advocates in 20 or 30 years.” — Paul Neevel
CLOSING IN ON
KLAMATH FARMING
TORREY ARENA IDEA
GETS COOL RECEPTION
A proposal to improve the management
of the Klamath Basin National Wildlife
Refuge failed to pass the U.S. House of
Representatives last week, but the narrow
margin — 228 opposed to 197 for —
shows growing support for limiting com-
mercial farming on the refuge to less water
intensive crops.
By only 31 votes, the House
voted down language that
would have required that
farms
on
the
Klamath refuges
whose leases
expire in the
next fiscal
year comply with the same rules that the
U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service applies to
farming on other wildlife refuges, and re-
duce their use of water and toxic pesti-
cides. The bipartisan measure was spon-
sored by Earl Blumenauer (D-OR), Mike
Thompson (D-CA) and Christopher Shays
(R-CT).
“The number of votes in favor of this
amendment illustrates the support for real
solutions to the problems of water short-
ages in the Klamath Basin,” says Susan
Holmes, senior legislative representative
at Earthjustice. “This common sense
amendment would have made an impor-
tant start toward rebalancing the equation
in the Klamath Basin to benefit wildlife,
fishermen, Native Americans and farm-
ers.”
Unlike other national wildlife refuges
that permit farming to provide food for
wildlife, some lease farming on the
Klamath Refuges is done purely for
commercial purposes. If this amend-
ment had passed, crops that provide
no benefit to wildlife, and which con-
sume the most water and use the most
pesticides, would have been barred.
Water diversions for Klamath Basin
farms have been blamed for massive
fish kills in the Klamath River,
putting thousands of people involved
in salmon fisheries out of work.
— Aria Seligmann
Eugene Mayor Jim Torrey is pushing
for the city to allow the UO to build a new
basketball arena at the site of the former
Agripac cannery.
In an e-mail earlier this month to the
City Council and city executives, Torrey
writes that the replacement for
MacArthur Court could be built
alongside the planned new federal
courthouse and be part of a new
convention center. “I do believe
that [with] the critical mass
that the new Mac Court and the New
Federal Courthouse will bring, that that
area of downtown Eugene could very well
entice a new hotel with additional conven-
tion capacity in that same general area. The
new Mac Court could also serve as a won-
derful venue for large convention recep-
tions in the area surrounding the court ...”
But councilor Bonny Bettman e-mailed
back, “It is not beneficial to downtown to
site an arena there. It would most likely be
a detriment to downtown and a drain on
taxpayers.”
Bettman raised a number of concerns in-
cluding: The UO facility wouldn’t pay
taxes, the expansion would cost the city
money in subsidized parking and land trans-
fers, game fans would eat at the arena and
not local restaurants, the arena would create
parking problems for surrounding busi-
nesses and neighborhoods, and the facility
would be vacant most of the time. Bettman
said there was little support for the
arena among councilors and the
city Planning Commission.
— Alan Pittman
JULY 24, 2003 7