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