Eugene weekly., August 04, 2011, Page 7, Image 7

Shit happens to everybody, regardless
of who you are or what you do. Showing
up late for an important interview.
Forgetting your anniversary. Running out
of gas halfway between Sisters and
Eugene. Getting soused the night before
that big midterm. Cavities.
For Sara Iback, shit happened in a big
way. Living in Wisconsin, she decided to
use the $2,500 she had saved up to move
to Eugene and go to school. She’d been
homeless once, but was able to claw her
way back up and start anew. When she got
to Eugene she found the apartment she had
rented didn’t exist, and her money was
nowhere to be found. Back to square one.
Recently featured in a Register-Guard
article, Iback is a member of a community
in Eugene that has a somewhat dubious
reputation. Anecdotes about altercations
with police, aggressive panhandling,
peeing and defecating on private property
and other behavior issues downtown have
created a distinctly negative impression on
the minds of downtown residents, and
TWAC protests logging in the Elliott
TWAC PROTESTS LOGGING
TWAC! “is the lovely sound of smashing patriarchy,” say the organizers of a
recent Trans and Womyn’s Action Camp. It was also the sound of jaws dropping at
the Oregon Department of Forestry office in Molalla when 30 TWAC protesters
showed up on Aug. 1, some dressed only in their underwear, to call attention to
clearcut logging on the Elliott State Forest.
According to a press release, “TWAC was formed out of a need to make space for
marginalized identities that otherwise may not be represented within the broader push
for environmental justice.” The action was organized and carried out by women and
trans-identified people.
Cascadia Forest Defenders and other direct action groups have resolved to make
the proposed increase of clearcut logging on the Elliott from 500 acres up to 850 acres
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street. Even if it’s only $15 a week, you’d
still get a lot of homeless willing to pay
that. I’d be willing to do that, I don’t want
another $575 ticket.”
“I know that there are a lot of people
who want to be out here,” she said. “But
there are a lot of us who don’t.”
“Society is very bigoted; people are
very judgmental,” she added.
“A lot of misbehavior is attributed to
homeless people, whether it’s justified or
not,” said Mandelblatt. “What I saw (on
July 27), when we’re talking about the
homeless, we really don’t know who we’re
talking about. When we’re talking about
the homeless, we’re throwing a blanket
over something that’s too big for a blanket
to cover.”
PHOTO COURTESY TWAC
A SEARCH FOR
SOLUTIONS
whether justified or not this impression has
spurred a search for solutions.
The Downtown Neighborhood Asso-
ciation hosted a meeting July 27 to do just
that. A sort of informational session, the
meeting introduced members of down-
town: business owners, residents, travel-
ers and several organizations that provide
services to the homeless. Representatives
from the Eugene Police Department,
CAHOOTS, Womenspace, FOOD For
Lane County and the American Civil Lib-
erties Union fielded audience questions
on everything from disappearing benches
to more signage for public restrooms.
Most of the questions dealt with what
each service provided and what individu-
als should do in certain situations, only
rarely delving into deeper questions sur-
rounding the issue.
“I was delighted with the meeting,”
said David Mandelblatt, chairman of the
Downtown Neighborhood Association. “I
thought that people were very open and
passionate.”
“There were some obvious differences
of viewpoint,” he admitted. “But one of the
strengths of downtown is our diversity, and
I think we showed that quite nicely … I
hope that everybody felt they were heard.”
Some people weren’t as satisfied with the
limited format of the meeting, seeking a
more direct approach to the problem.
“The city needs to have a designated
area where people can fly signs,” said
Iback, who also attended the meeting.
“And they should provide permits for
people who want to busk or sell on the
“What we can do is mitigate the
problem,” he said. “If I feel bad about
your behavior, that’s a problem. If you pee
in my doorway, that’s another problem …
I can’t control what you do, but I can
control what I do. What kind of person do
I want to be?”
The next steering committee meeting
for the Downtown Neighborhood
Association will be at 6 pm Wednesday,
Aug. 24 in the Singer Room of the Eugene
Public Library, where they will review the
results of the July 27 meeting and discuss
further action. All are welcome to attend,
regardless of where they live. The DNA
can also be contacted through its website
at www.eugenedna.org, where it has a
forum for posting comments. — Nils Holst
a year the focus of a long campaign. The logging increase would result in 40 million
board feet of wood being taken from the forest per year.
Last week three protesters were arrested after putting up blockades and tree sits in
the forest. That action was also the culmination of a CFD action camp in which activists
attend workshops educating them on everything from forest issues to how to climb
trees.
On the same day as the TWAC protest in Molalla, a banner was dropped over a Seven
Feathers Casino billboard on I-5 that proclaimed, “Log exports? More clearcuts? Hell
no!”
The Elliott State Forest is a coast range forest with some of Oregon’s last remaining
native, unlogged trees. It is home to endangered species-listed marbled murrelets and
spotted owls. One of the demands the CFD tree sitters made, in addition to stopping the
logging of Oregon’s native forests, was to “end the slaughter of the mountain beaver.”
Kevin Weeks, ODF public information officer, says, “There are an extraordinary
number of mountain beavers within the Elliott.” He says it is a “different genus from
the iconic beloved Oregon beaver,” and calls them “large rodents.” He says the
mountain beaver eat the seedlings that are planted when a clearcut is reforested.
Weeks adds that ODF has had a policy of trapping mountain beaver in the Elliott
for some years and kills about 3,000 of the animals a year.
ODF supports “the right of anyone to express their opposition to the forest
management plan,” Weeks says. But “when peaceful opposition crosses a line into
damage of public resources, impacts to public safety or unlawful acts,” the agency
will call in law enforcement.
Jason Gonzales of CFD says the Molalla protest, which was in solidarity with the
Elliott tree sit, shut down Highway 211 for several hours and resulted in the arrest of
three protesters.
Meredith Cocks, who participated in the CFD action camp and was one of those
arrested in Molalla, calls the clearcutting in the Elliott, “the worst in the state.”
According to the Molalla Police Department, the three women who were arrested
had locked themselves together “utilizing interlocking improvised arm tubing.”
About 30 other protesters, many in bright pink, some in fishnets and others in bras
and panties, chanted and held signs in the ODF office, and later moved outside to the
lawn.
Gonzales says CFD’s message to ODF is “we’re in the fight to win.”
— Camilla Mortensen
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