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About Eugene weekly. (Eugene, Oregon) 1993-current | View Entire Issue (Jan. 22, 2009)
NEWS BRIEFS slant CHIHUAHUAS FROM HELL! happening people BY PAUL NEEVEL GABRIEL HAMEL As a senior at South Eugene High School in 2000, Gabriel Hamel was the first from his school in 25 years to win a state championship in wrestling. He also joined the Army National Guard as a senior and found himself 20 miles south of Baghdad in 2003-04, patrolling Iraq’s main highway. “It was a good personal experience; it grew me up,” says Hamel, who got out in ’05. “I’m thankful we made it back.” Struck by the poverty he saw in Iraq and on trips to El Salvador, he launched Humans for Humanity, a nonprofit umbrella group to support projects that help poor people. HH’s first project is Escuelo Camino Claro (caminoclaro.org), a community education cen- ter in Pavones, Costa Rica, co-founded by Hamel’s SEHS classmate Haley Whitely. ECC will hold its second annual Pura Vida fundraising event at the Fenario Gallery, 881 Willamette Street, on the evening of January 31, featuring a silent auction and music by four local bands. Since his return from Iraq, Hamel has also served as wrestling coach at South. “My first year back, there were four kids on the team,” he says. “Now we have 22, mostly freshmen and sopho- mores.” Last fall he began full-time work at the school, teaching a life skills class for special-needs kids. WWW.EUGENEWEEKLY.COM • BLOGS.EUGENEWEEKLY.COM • Now it’s time for the community to organize Obama. That’s what former UO Law School Dean Derrick Bell suggests in his closing lines written for EW this week (see Viewpoint). That’s also the theme of the People’s Agenda for a New America, a series started last week by Progressive Responses, a program of CALC. About 70 local folks, some of them quite cranky, gathered in Harris Hall to talk about a new peace strategy in Afghanistan, Pakistan and India. Dan Goldrich, retired UO professor, and Stan Taylor, LCC professor, laid out options for solutions other than endless war in that region. Next session is 7 pm Jan 24, at the UO Law School, room 110, featuring David Bacon, who wrote Illegal People: How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants. The underlying theme of this series is that all of us who supported Obama should trust him but organize ourselves to put our progressive agenda square- ly in the middle of his administration. • Some of the most moving lines spoken during the inaugural/Martin Luther King Jr. string of events came at the dedication of the Rosa Parks statue at the LTD station in downtown Eugene Jan. 19. The stir- ring program included local school- girls simply reading what Rosa Parks said: “Our mistreatment was just not right, and I was tired of it ... I knew someone had to take the first step and I made up my mind not to move ... When I made that decision, I knew that I had the strength of my ances- tors with me … I only knew that as I was being arrested, it was the last time I would ever ride in humiliation of this kind. ... Racism is still with us. But it is up to us to prepare our chil- dren for what they have to meet, and, hopefully, we shall overcome.” Dr. Ed Coleman was the master of ceremonies and Greg Evans was chair of the committee to honor Rosa Parks. Hundreds came, many on LTD buses, to honor her with a statue in our city center. SHANNON BROWNING I’m going to look at it,” Walker says. became a state, the federal government des- ignated about 6 percent of state’s land to She says that she encourages citizens to support K-12 public schools. Profits from attend upcoming meetings about the lands mineral, timber, grazing and other resources and their management. As for her comment go to fund schools, according to our state at the town hall that the only tree left constitution. The Elliott State Forest standing would be the one in her is currently managed and logged colleague’s backyard, Walker by the Oregon Department of responded to Nelson via Forestry. email, “You knew as well as everyone else in that room According to Jan Nelson, that when I made the com- who attended the town hall, ment that I would only Walker talked about trees in leave the tree standing in the Elliott and said she wants Sen. President Courtney’s to, “cut them, plant them, and backyard that I was telling a then cut them again.” joke. Your attempt to paint it oth- Nelson says, “I think this is Vicki Walker erwise is disingenuous and not appre- something that is an unfortunate deci- ciated.” sion, and not very creative.” The Elliott State Forest is currently the “Nobody’s buying wood right now,” subject of a lawsuit by the Cascadia Nelson says, so “it’s a poor idea to pour Wildlands Project, Umpqua Watersheds and more wood into the market.” Nelson says other conservation groups. The groups’ suit there are other options, such as using the says the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service forest for carbon sequestration. failed to reconsider the impacts of logging Nelson has sent out an appeal for con- the forest’s old-growth trees on the northern cerned citizens to email Walker and “let her spotted owl in light of new information know she has a bad idea.” showing the owl is facing increased threats. “If one cares about children and their The groups say that the Elliott could be future, would one so carelessly desecrate managed to preserve the old forests and their environment?” Nelson writes. protect the spotted owl while fulfilling the Walker, who received a copy of Nelson’s need to provide funds for Oregon’s letter (see this week’s Letters page), wrote schools. — Camilla Mortensen in response to the accusation that she intends to log the state forests, “Of course I do. That is the purpose of our state forests.” Walker says that the 93,000 acre forest is already being logged, and she’s interested in finding out if it and other Common School Fund lands are being managed to maximize revenues. According to the senator, the for- Since EW published an exclusive inter- est made a profit of $34 million for the fund view with Cesar Millan (the Dog Whisper), several years ago. As a member of the Ways Aug. 28, 2008, people have been asking: So and Means Subcommittee on Natural what happened with El Diablo, the most Resources, Walker says she will be review- vicious Chihuahua to darken a doorstep in ing the way those lands are managed. Lane County? As blog readers learned last week, “Oregon is rich in natural resources, and I according to the National Geographic chan- made that point at that town hall,” she says. nel you can see the “world premiere” of the “There certainly has to be a balance. It doesn’t “Chihuahuas from Hell” Dog Whisperer mean I’m going to log every tree; it doesn’t episode at 8 pm Friday, Jan. 30, (if you have mean I’m going to leave every tree standing. • Fix the economy by spending more? What we heard from the Bush admin- istration for eight years is that the solution to our nation’s economic woes is for everyone to go out and shop. Obama has better solutions, but old attitudes and values die hard. Excessive consumption, particularly on credit, has been a major contributor to both our economic and environmental problems. What makes more sense is to focus individual and government spending on useful products and services. Money spent on warfare and prisons, for example, brings a lousy return on investment, as does money spent on the unrepairable plastic and electronic gadgets that overflow our landfills. But spending strate- gically on education, child welfare, preventive medicine, green energy, green design, infrastructure, the arts, organic agriculture, sensible and practical con- sumer goods — this is how we build a solid and dependable economy. • Longtime R-G editor/manager Jim Godbold left the R-G in December, but if the paper published anything about his departure, we missed it. Godbold joined the paper in 1983 and rose through the ranks to become managing editor, over- seeing 100 newsroom staffers when the paper was at its peak, then executive editor, then editorial page associate editor. Godbold had a big impact on the newspaper and was a candid critic of the paper’s shortcomings (see EW news story, 5/27/04). He left quietly to join the PR staff at PeaceHealth. We remem- ber some hoopla when Fred Crafts retired after decades as an arts critic at the R-G. Maybe Godbold got a party. Godbold is not the first seasoned journalist to leave the daily paper for a PR job, and he likely won’t be the last. Environmental reporter Lance Robertson took a PR post with EWEB several years ago, and his job was never filled; other reporters picked up some pieces of his beat. Tim Gleason, dean of the UO’s School of Journalism and Communication, told a crowd at City Club last week that one of the great tragedies in journalism today is that “so much intellectual capacity and institutional memory” is leaving the profession. On the upside, we hear retired R-G editorial writer Don Robinson is back on staff editing letters to the editor. • A sparkling and energized downtown Eugene is touted in the January VIA magazine put out by the AAA. Oregon is celebrated in the Northwest edition, and to read the “Weekender” story by Christopher Hall (www.viamagazine. com), you’d think our downtown is full of life and vitality. We will take his vision, knowing that every new visitor helps make it come true. SLANT includes short opinion pieces, observations and rumor-chasing notes compiled by the EW staff. Heard any good rumors lately? Contact Ted Taylor at 484-0519, editor@eugeneweekly.com EUGENE WEEKLY JANUARY 22, 2009 9
