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About Eugene weekly. (Eugene, Oregon) 1993-current | View Entire Issue (Nov. 21, 2012)
LET TERS ANOTHER DEADLY WINTER CAN’T BE BOTH WAYS When the Occupy Eugene site was closed in December last year, we went peacefully under the impression that certain promises made by our City Council would be followed through. We went under the false understanding that those who had no place to call their own would be taken care of, that they would not face another winter, sickness and probable death, alone on the streets without at least the option for a warm place to sleep. We thought that despite everything, we had made some small but solid victories. We now face another winter and what we took as promises have yet to have been made good on. There was never a wet-bed shelter provided, nor the women’s and children’s shelter that was talked about, and all the work people have done to create an Opportunity Village was not enough to encourage the city to take appropriate action. None of the things discussed as solutions by our city and task force on homelessness has happened and we are now looking to the cold months of winter with little more to offer the unhoused community but our regrets that we did not fi ght harder to keep the site, and our own promise that we will keep fi ghting for them. When people are allowed to die on the street because of bureaucracy and apathy it can only be described as murder. Whose hands will the blood be on when the temperatures begin to drop and the deaths begin to pile up? We must make a stand and demand our local government respect I have noticed an error in your newspaper. You state that Cowfi sh is the best singles scene in Eugene and then you state that Cowfi sh is the best gay bar in Eugene [readers’ poll in Best of Eugene, 11/1]. Can’t be. No straight male is going to go into a gay bar because he doesn’t want to fend off advances all night long. I went into a gay bar once, in 1965, in Champaign, Ill. I didn’t realize my mistake until I had a Pabst Blue Ribbon in front of me. I expect never to return. So you need to publish a correction. Either Cowfi sh is a straight bar or a gay bar. It can’t be both. Jim Humphries Eugene GUTTER POLICE people over policy. This year there will be no site, no camp, no hope for the most downtrodden and marginalized of our community. Our social services are already maxed out and the numbers of unhoused people in Lane County keep growing. We were tricked into believing certain DOWN BY THE RIVERSIDE steps would be taken in defense of the unhoused by our local government, in what seems now to be a ploy just to get us off their backs, just to keep us silent, and will undoubtedly result in the unnecessary deaths of fellow human beings. Gwendolyn Iris Eugene On the afternoon of Nov. 5, I crossed the pedestrian cross walk between 8th and Broadway on Willamette, turned onto Willamette towards Broadway and did not get on the sidewalk for half a block and instead walked in the gutter. I was stopped by a Eugene police offi cer who brusquely instructed me to provide some ID for illegally walking in the street. I asked the offi cer if had been obstructing traffi c and stated that I thought it seemed inappropriate for him to stop me simply because I had been walking in the gutter. The offi cer responded that I had not been obstructing traffi c. BY MARK HARRIS Wringing of Hands REPUBLICANS ARE NOT THE ONLY CLUELESS ONES “G ood black don’t crack,” my grandma always said. By which she meant we age well, not always “looking our age,” as well as having a certain apparent resilience in the face of continuous stressors. I took my fi rst break from Lane Community College in 20 years for nine months, a sort of medically demanded heart rest after my academic sabbatical was denied for curious reasons. Cancer, schmancer, lose 20 pounds swimming in Hawaii, broccoli kale, Sodarshan Chakra and Kirtan Kriya, more music, more writing, all as therapy. Lost the locs on the fi rst full moon of August, planted them in the garden on the blue moon. Changing my look from lion to conservative drag panther. Returning to work with the notion of staying away from bitter responses to continuing local and national vexing politics, which set me on the path of anger becomes cancer. Maya Angelou in her Iconoclasts pairing with Dave Chappelle (Season 2, Episode 6): If you are not angry, you are either a stone, or you are too sick to be angry. You should be angry. Now mind you, there’s a difference, you must not be bitter. Let me show you why. Bitterness is like cancer. It eats up on the host it doesn’t do anything to the object of its displeasure. So you use anger yes, you write it, you paint it, you dance it, you march it, you vote it, you do everything about it. You talk it, never stop talking it. Like the old Elvis Costello song, “I used to be disgusted, now I try to stay amused.” I was really amused watching the election process both locally and nationally. It was my pleasure to assist a black fi rst-time voter in my offi ce, to re-elect the president, and to observe the white wringing of hands at “losing their country” to the minority and women vote. But Republicans aren’t the only one’s clueless about minority and race relations. 4 November 21, 2012 • eugeneweekly.com I’m not in Eugene Ward 2, so I didn’t care about the outcome, predictable as it was. I observed the obvious unspoken racial subtext, following an email thread, about the “debate.” A Betty Taylor supporter asked Juan Carlos Valle about abortion, not an issue in the council’s jurisdiction, but a dog-whistle shibboleth presumably aimed at his presumed religion. A Valle supporter, an NAACP offi cial, asked about Taylor’s two negative council votes against renaming Centennial to be Martin Luther King Boulevard. A number of her supporters favored the renaming, which was both a progressive and parliamentary procedural no-brainer (City Council had always seconded previous unanimous Planning Commission votes). A vote which is a continuing sore point with communities of color should be legitimately explained, not described as a “low blow.” We can disagree, but you should articulate your position, even if you prioritize the interests of luxury car dealerships over local civil rights struggle. A position, I’m just sayin’, more stereotypically Republican, than Democrat. We won the street and the White House, not her bench, or their “traditional America.” It’s OK, “we honor diversity.” ■ Mark Harris teaches addiction studies and ethnic studies at LCC. Past submitted columns can be found at his blog Flight of the Secretary Bird at http://pln.lanecc. net/harrism
