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