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