TO THE EDITOR
ing to let voters consider it. Instead, she
ignored the importance of an independent
auditor and made a motion in the Budget
Committee to hire a contractor for a one-time
audit under the supervision of the city man-
ager. Many citizens suspect this odd motion
was made simply to avoid consideration of
truly independent oversight.
This tactic is typical of Nathanson’s
equivocation — speaking for something,
then voting against it or voting for a partial
action that is often worse than no action. Do
we want a mayor who says one thing and
does another?
Beth Kamhi
Eugene
LINE OF FIRE
I’d just like to remind everyone that police
officers are people, too. And strong ones. I’m
sick of citizens treating them like ignorant
donut-scarfing losers, when police officers are
patrolling the streets every night keeping
everyone safe, without anyone stopping to
thank them. They don’t get holidays off. They
barely get paid enough to support a family —
sometimes, they can’t even do that. And just
maybe if you were to be stuck in the line of
fire trying to talk a homicidal ex-con out of a
house, you’d like to be able to go out for a few
beers after work without getting spit on,
sworn at or have things thrown at your head.
My father’s an officer of the law, and I
just hope everyone reading appreciates the
job he does while the rest of the city sleeps.
He protects, he serves, he gives his life for
other people on a shoestring budget — and
he gets slandered in the media.
Hanna Olsen
Eugene
WHAT WAR?
Thursday morning (3/18) I rushed eager-
ly to the nearest EW box. The day before the
first anniversary of a war that a year ago the
entire world marched in protest against, I
knew the EW would have a bitingly clever,
artistically poignant cover, drawing the pub-
lic’s attention to the anniversary and all the
protest activities our many peace, anti-war,
anti-Bush, anti-global multinational organi-
zations had scheduled.
Barney Fife? What did a TV character
have to do with stopping Dick Cheney and
Donald Rumsfield? Maybe a play on the
mentality of those who still thought they
lived in the white bread world of the 1950s. I
didn’t get it, so I went to the contents page.
Surely there I’d find where began the many
pages of anti-war articles and the schedule of
the weekend’s protests activities. Nothing.
I went through the entire paper. Not a sin-
gle article about the war. How as that possi-
ble? I looked again. There it was. The last
item of News Briefs. Justice Not War and
Kucinich’s friends (et al.) were going to
mobilize the voter registration on Saturday. I
applaud them for their practical approach.
Very peaceful. Eight months away from the
election, eight months to mobilize voter reg-
istration, and, apparently, the only form of
protest Eugene could come up with to mark
a year of a war that has killed tens of thou-
sands and will keep killing during the next
eight months and every year for years to
come.
I couldn’t accept this. So at noon on
Friday, anniversary day, I walked to both the
county and federal courthouses to join the
hardcore protesters I knew would be assem-
bled there. There weren’t any. I returned
again at 5 pm. Still no one. What must Wayne
Morse be thinking of his beloved town
today?
I guess Bush was right. Mission accom-
plished.
Michael Clarke
Eugene
BLUSTERY BOYCOTT
Lars Larson’s recent refusal to participate
with other invited talk-radio hosts at
Southern Oregon University’s First
Amendment Forum is revealing. He said that
he would not attend the forum if he was not
allowed to carry a concealed weapon onto the
campus. Oregon administrative rules prohib-
it concealed weapons on state campuses.
SOU administrators refused to give in to
Larson’s demand and violate Oregon Law,
thus, no Larson showing.
Larson went on to gratuitously compare
his boycott activism to the actions of histori-
cal civil rights giant Rosa Parks. Nice try, but
a more accurate comparison might be
Chicken Little.
We know personal safety is not the issue
because Larson was offered the services of
an armed security guard, which he refused.
Perhaps Larson’s blustery boycott is a con-
venient distraction, masking his fear of hav-
ing to debate ideas in an environment where
he can’t talk over, bully, ride the volume
fader, break to commercial or simply hang up
on callers whose views differ from his.
Outside the domain of his own radio show he
would be ceding the dynamic of wielding
absolute control.
Larson would have had a wonderful
opportunity to discuss and debate his con-
cerns about concealed weapons and public
access issues relating to them if he would
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