Eugene weekly., November 15, 2012, Page 4, Image 4

LET TERS
RACIST CODE WORDS
KNEE-JERK ASSUMPTIONS
As I was fi lling out my ballot, I did
what I always do and checked EW’s
endorsements. While looking through
the article on the Taylor/Valle race, I
encountered two paragraphs that made
me wonder if I should read anything
else. I reproduce them here so that they
can be carefully examined with some
commentary:
“Valle’s campaign manager is former
progressive councilor David Kelly, and his
largest contributor ($4,238) is Kelly’s wife,
Jane Kelly, but other donors contributing
to his campaign are far less progressive.
“Development and real estate-
related interests that have donated to
Valle include the Eugene Association of
Realtors, developer Dan Neal, Anslow &
DeGeneault, Inc., Bennett Management
Company (commercial and large-scale
apartment management), Jean Tate of
Windermere Real Estate and real estate
consultant Hubert J. Prichard.”
The last clause in the fi rst paragraph
indicates clearly that what follows is
a listing of the “far less progressive”
donors to Valle’s campaign. I guess we
have to assume that anybody who owns
or develops property is automatically “far
less progressive” than somebody or other.
And yet, of the people listed that I
know or have had contact with, Dan Neal
produces some of the best built, most
attractive, and most environmentally
appropriate housing in the area. Bennett
Management is headed by Rob Bennett,
former city councilor, founding member
of the Intergovernmental Housing Policy
Board, forever an advocate and activist
for affordable housing, and one of the
prime motivators for the revitalization
of downtown Eugene. Jean Tate has too
many progressive involvements and good
deeds in her career to even begin to list
them, and is a founding board member of
Metropolitan Affordable Housing, one of
the primary nonprofi t housing companies
in our area. And then there’s Hubert J.
Prichard, who, I assume, is the same
person everybody else on the planet knows
as Hugh Prichard, longtime advocate
for affordable housing, sensible urban
planning and general progressive good
FR
EE
HO
NE
Y!
The election brought good news,
not only because the candidates whom
I supported did well, but because the
process speaks well of us. The biggest
money didn’t always carry the day. And
a campaign of racism, misogyny, gay-
bashing and persecution of immigrants and
the poor got its ass kicked.
See, my whole life I have thought that
racism was fading away, that left alone it
would decompose like dead leaves. So the
“rebirth of American racism” we’ve seen
in the last few years has been a shock.
As Fran Leibowitz pointed out, “He’s a
Muslim,” “He’s a socialist,” “He’s not
a U.S. citizen” are code words. They all
mean “He’s different, he’s not ‘one of us,’
he’s colored.”
The effi gy lynchings, the monkey
pictures, the threats of violence are
dangerous symptoms of a dark disease.
The Republican campaign did nothing to
challenge this, nothing to discredit it, and,
in fact tried to cash in on it. But it didn’t
work.
NPR is complaining that after all that
money spent, all that work, that nothing
has changed, we have all the same players.
I beg to differ. We have 20 women in the
U.S. Senate. It’s not parity, but it’s closer
than we’ve ever come before. Three states
legalized universal marriage and another
beat off a gay-bashing amendment.
Welcome to the future. Starts now.
William (Chico) Schwall
Eugene
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November 15, 2012 • eugeneweekly.com
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