downtown, for the cannery district —
where the input opposed re-routing
Highway 99 along the riverfront — and
for the Civic Center, where the input sup-
ported preservation of City Hall.
• We need to start saving the important
buildings we have left, like the purpose-
fully anti-monumental City Hall and the
classic industrial-Deco EWEB steam-
plant building.
• We need improved hospital
planning. That should be helped by the
recent CHOICES/FoE state appeals court
victory against shotgun zoning changes
for hospital siting by the City of Eugene.
• We do need a hospital in central
Eugene, like we have now. But we
shouldn’t put it right on the downtown
riverfront; we shouldn’t sell off the EWEB
headquarters at a quarter or third of its
value to do it; and we shouldn’t cut the
800-foot Patterson Trench — up to 20 feet
deep and maybe 60 feet wide — under the
tracks right at the riverfront.
• In contrast, Millrace daylighting
could emerge as a magically inspiring
downtown-to-university connection strate-
gy. Activity-friendly development and
detailing could fight back against obesity
in Track Town.
• Reclamation of the rail yards, when
the time is right, could foster myriad
improvements in our central neighbor-
hoods.
• Protection of upland-wildlife habitat
and all our open waterways could ensure
living, green hills for the future.
• Despite our standing policies and reg-
ulations, development has breached the
wooded ridges of our South Hills both in
the east, like around Spring Boulevard,
and in the west, like around
Hawkins. Protected only by the difficulty
of development and by the historic South
Hills Study, these areas that are essential
for habitat and for recreation need more
protection.
• We should continue to protect and
restore Amazon Creek, starting with
acquisition of the Amazon Headwaters
Keystone at Martin and West Amazon, and
continuing all the way through town.
• An urban land trust could start to pro-
tect pocket parks and trail and habitat rib-
bons by assembling voluntary conserva-
tion easements as well as key acquisitions
in situations where the city can’t respond.
• We need to work together — city,
neighborhoods, sympathetic developers,
and Friends of Eugene, backed up by 1000
Friends of Oregon — to restart the city
efforts on nodal development.
• To make nodal development begin to
work here — as it is working already up in
Portland and down in Berkeley — we
could use a new name, like “urban vil-
Human Rights
By Hope Marston
Eugene residents deserve a lot of cred-
it for their consistent stands against hate
literature. Every time some white
supremacist group starts handing out
overtly racist pamphlets or flyers, people
from Eugene are quick to decry the
racism and to provide community educa-
tion.
Eugene is not yet as quick to recognize
more subtle, yet persistent, forms of
racism. A common perception is that
Eugene is liberal and tolerant; that in
Racial profiling in Eugene, as in every
other community in this nation, is the
usual, not the unusual.
lages.” More importantly, we need a real
and specific definition of the goals and
attributes of an urban village to focus our
efforts.
• We’ve shown quantitatively that
developing the Royal Node — or any node
at the urban fringe — would actually
increase car miles; whereas, the main
point of nodal development is to
naturally ramp down car miles. It is time
for the city to cancel all nodes at the urban
fringe.
• On Dec. 9, in this very room, 48 citi-
zens testified against the draft Regional
Transportation Plan, the RTP, which is
partially replacing TransPlan. No one
spoke in favor of the draft plan. The
Metropolitan Policy Committee, the MPC,
then voted to pass the plan, 8-1. I’m
pleased to announce that on Dec. 30, FoE
filed an appeal of that rushed-through
RTP. We are going to stop the WEP! To do
it, we need your help. Please visit our web
site at FriendsofEugene.org to support this
effort.
So this question goes out to the Eugene
community: Is it time? Are Eugene pro-
gressives really ready to step up and do
what it takes to support an emerging pro-
gressive establishment? I hope so!
1"Ê-V ÊvÊÕÃVÊÊUÊÊ
Eugene, police won’t bother you unless
you’re somewhere you shouldn’t be, doing
something you shouldn’t do.
But that’s not true. Just this year, we
learned from a well-respected city of
Eugene employee that he was racially pro-
filed by a Eugene police officer while
walking to his car with four friends on
Labor Day weekend. And that wasn’t the
first time Cortez Jordan experienced racial
profiling — or even the second or the
third. In the months following his com-
plaint, many more charges of racial profil-
ing have been reported to the NAACP and
Communities United for Better Policing
(CUBP).
Racial profiling in Eugene, as in every
other community in this nation, is the
usual, not the unusual. Largely invisible to
the dominant culture, it looms large in the
eyes of those who encounter racism every
day. We salute the efforts of CUBP in ask-
ing the City Council to create an external
police review board. Our community
needs independent review to ensure
accountability in the EPD so that when
there are complaints of racial profiling, a
critical eye from the community can make
an evaluation based on evidence.
To Eugene’s credit, a series of study
circles on racism is being organized. It,
too, is long overdue and much needed.
Back in 2001, when European-
American activists like me became con-
cerned about the sweeping new post 9/11
laws being passed by Congress — like the
so-called PATRIOT Act — Latino activists
had a different view. “You’re worried
about police coming in the middle of the
night and dragging you or your loved ones
away?” one activist asked me. Then she
said, “Our communities have faced secret
detentions for many years. You’re worried
about being held without charges? You’re
worried about disappearing? We’ve been
there for many years. 9/11 just made it
worse for us.”
But what can a city like Eugene do
about national laws with sweeping powers
that may threaten members of our own
community? On Nov. 25, 2002, the
Eugene City Council did something that
The Register-Guard, Mayor Torrey, and
even some council members didn’t think
was possible.
Eugene became the 16th municipality
to express its outrage at post 9/11 laws and
orders that resulted in detentions and
abuse of innocent people. Councilors
voted unanimously to pass Resolution
4743, which states that no city funds will
be used to support the federal government
in secret detentions or in upholding the
PATRIOT Act.
The council took a local stand on a
national issue. And because Eugene city
councilors stood up for human rights in
this way, other communities took heart,
and today, there are 367, with more and
stronger resolutions being passed.
The Lane County Bill of Rights
Defense Committee aims to strengthen
Eugene’s original resolution by asking the
City Council in 2005 to pass an ordinance
that would make it illegal for city employ-
ees to cooperate with federal officials in
secret detentions or harassing immigrants
or racial profiling. In this way, local peo-
ple can influence a vital national issue. In
this way, we, the people can defend the
promise of our Bill of Rights, building on
what we accomplished in 2002.
■
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14 JANUARY 13, 2005