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About Eugene weekly. (Eugene, Oregon) 1993-current | View Entire Issue (March 29, 2012)
NEWS BRIEFS meetings about changing animal control and giving the job of sheltering and rehoming animals over to a nonprofit agency, Richardson also writes that “although the work would be different and performed by different people, there are no service changes being recommended for the county.” She writes that through her own proposal, the county will receive a half-time position more for enforcement work than it currently has. “Can there not be a general meeting on animal care needs in Lane County currently, regardless of any specific fund discussion?” Bartlett asks. EW did not get a response from Richardson to Bartlett’s question before going to press. In response to the animal control controversy, the No Kill Community Coalition has begun work again. Find it on Facebook at wkly.ws/189 — Camilla Mortensen BITCHES ON THE BOOB TUBE Has TV regressed in its portrayal of the working woman? Wi th TV’s spring lineup kicking off, there may be hope for contemporary portrayals of working women on TV. So where do Murphy Brown, Roseanne and Murder She Wrote fit into this picture? “I know it’s a little dated — but I think she’s actually a little more subversive example than you might think,” says Bitch Media Web Editor Kelsey Wallace of Murder She Wrote’s Jessica Fletcher. “She’s retired, she’s older, she’s widowed and she doesn’t have children.” Wallace moderated the pre-conference panel “9-5: Women’s Work in Popular Culture” at the UO’s Gender Equity and Capitalism Symposium earlier in March. Roseanne Conner and Murphy Brown also got props from the panel for being realistic female leads. Roseanne, after all, depicted a blue-collar matriarchy that tackled taboo topics like teenage pregnancy and gay rights long before Glee. And Murphy Brown was a pioneer of the single working mother at a time when Dan Quayle was accusing the show’s eponym of “ignoring the importance of fathers by birthing a child alone.” But this trio has not graced our rabbit-eared TVs since Clinton was in office. As for their present-day counterparts? “I see a lot of trends that are negative,” says Wallace. “A woman, in order to be successful at work, either has to put down other women or she has to sacrifice everything else.” Spring premieres a whole slew of women-centric shows. How do they stack up against their fearless predecessors? Bent, NBC (March 21). The tagline for this comedy is “Bad boy. Good girl.” Alex is a high-strung lawyer and recently divorced mother who contracts Pete, the womanizing handyman who is going to fix up her home (and perhaps her broken life?). Speedy banter between two attractive leads ensues, and so do the stereotypes. Even the trailer features a lesbian contractor named “Big Deb” spitting like a truck driver. Don’t Trust the B--- in Apt. 23, ABC (April 11). “A wide- eyed Midwestern girl moves to New York City to pursue her dream job only to find herself living with an outlandish girl with the morals of a pirate,” says CBS about Apt. 23. Start counting the clichés! The title is offensive enough — apparently ABC believes that women who live unconventionally are bitches? Veep, HBO (April 15). Veep follows senator turned VP Selina Meyer (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) navigating the political idiosyncrasies of Washington, D.C. Like most women played THE CLIMATE JUSTICE LEAGUE IS TEAMING UP TO STOP COAL TRAINS FROM COMING THROUGH EUGENE STOPPING DIRTY COAL IN ITS TRACKS Eugene doesn’t have to let dirty coal trains come through town wafting lung-clogging dust in their wake, according to a coalition of environmental and environmental justice groups. Beyond Toxics, No Coal Eugene and the UO’s Climate Justice League have teamed up to craft a ballot measure that would buck federal and state law to stand up against Big Coal. The proposed November ballot measure “creates a city ordinance that empowers the local authorities to stop coal trains from coming through Eugene,” says Zach Stark- MacMillan of No Coal Eugene. “I think of it as a citywide civil disobedience saying the state and federal government don’t have the final say over local communities. We should have the final say over what WWW.EUGENEWEEKLY.COM • BLOGS.EUGENEWEEKLY.COM comes through our town,” Stark-MacMillan says. A draft of the proposed ordinance calls it the “Eugene Community Bill of Rights” and cites the Declaration of Independence: “whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government.” It says the U.S. and the state have failed to protect the public trust so “the people of Eugene find it necessary to act on their own behalf.” The draft ordinance calls the “transportation of coal through the municipality” a violation of the right of the residents and ecosystems of Eugene to a healthy, natural climate. Since corporations use “corporate ‘powers’ and ‘rights’ to overturn community lawmaking focused on building sustainability,” the draft says, this ordinance removes those powers and rights from those corporations to ensure that the powers and rights of the community are superior to those of the corporations that extract, distribute and use coal. “Open-car coal trains pose a serious threat to our community,” says Lisa Arkin of Beyond Toxics. “We don’t intend to let black coal dust pollute the air and water throughout the Willamette Valley and our coastal communities.” Stark-MacMillan says in addition to the health concerns that “open-bed coal cars releasing literally tons of coal dust into the air around Eugene” create, the coalition is concerned with the climate-changing effects of burning coal and with the disruption that mile-long coal trains could cause local businesses as they chug through town. Next month the Eugene Sustainability Commission plans to debate asking the City Council to oppose coal trains. Arkin says signature gathering for the ordinance will start soon. A training on community rights ordinances will be led by Kai Huschke from the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund at 7:30 pm Wednesday, April 4, at the Growers Market and 7 pm Thursday, April 5 in Lillis 112 on the UO campus. More information can be found at BeyondToxics. org and NoCoalEugene.org — Camilla Mortensen EUGENE WEEKLY MARCH 29, 2012 7 PHOTO BY TRASK BEDORTHA country,” says Molly Sargent of the LCAS Advisory Committee. She says this one of the reasons the organization has developed so much community support. In the 2010-11 fiscal year LCAS had a 94 percent live release rate for dogs and an 88 percent live release for cats. Contrast those statistics to PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals), the national animal rights group that also runs a shelter in Virginia. In 2011 it had a live release rate of 2.5 percent for dogs and 0.4 for cats. That’s an almost 100 percent kill rate. LCAS used to have a high kill rate too, until a coalition of animal lovers began to help the city and county go no-kill. Now that LCAS is a Lane County program “that really works,” and Sargent and others want to know why its future is up in the air. Sargent also questions why the committee has not been part of the planning for the animal service changes. Scott Bartlett, who is also on LCAS’s Advisory Committee and is a veteran of the county’s Budget Committee, calls the proposed changes and budget cuts “shocking, callous and disgraceful considering all the progress which the community has sacrificed to make during the past 10 years.” Commissioners Rob Handy and Pete Sorenson asked county chair Faye Stewart to add discussing the animal control situation to the commissioners’ agenda. County Administrator Liane Richardson responded via email to the request saying, “I’m sorry, but we have been informed it will be a budget violation to have a hearing on a specific fund, which this is, prior to the Budget Committee meeting on this issue.” She continues, “We must address this through the Budget Committee process.” Further confusing the county waters after several
