LET TERS
telling their children if they misbehaved, I
would arrest them.
Parents: Please don’t use me to threaten
your kids. Had your child become lost, they
would have hesitated to approach anyone
dressed like me for help. It’s terrifying
enough to be lost in a crowd of people,
loud noises and frightening rides without
having a place of safety to go to.
The people in the orange shirts should
be a beacon of hope for your kids, not the
people to fear. Next time, point us out and
tell your kids if they are lost or need help,
we are the people to provide it, along with
a sticker and a smile! Thanks!
Mayra Martinez
Eugene
SLICE OF THE GOLD
For Woody, Pete and Jim Hill: Proud
to be in the SEIU and glad to see that
paying my dues is going for the cause.
The striking fast-food workers want a
fair slice of the “Golden” arch. The only
response that the National Restaurant
Association could come up with was that
“increasing wages to $15 will not solve
income inequality.” Well it sure would be
a step in the right direction. And as to the
accusation that we’re only in it to “boost
dwindling membership” is ironic since the
fundamental foundation of capitalism is to
expand.
You and your kind may have won the
battle of the “closed shop,” but be sure
many of us will continue to support the
NOTES FROM THE RIVERSIDE
union and erase that inequality you so
affectionately mentioned in your press
release.
Vince Loving
Eugene
PAINLESS EXECUTION
Like most of the civilized world, I’m
against the death penalty. Even though
in the U.S. 35 states have banned capital
punishment, we still rank in the top fi ve in
the world for execution. China, Iraq and
Iran are the top three.
The Eighth Amendment to our
Constitution prohibits “cruel and unusual”
punishment. Recently the stories about
prisoners gasping for breath for two hours
after being injected with untried cocktails
BY M A RK H A RRIS
Rites of Passage
BUILDING STRONGER CHILDREN
I
t’s summer, and that means rites-of-passage time
when I do workshops for African-American related
youth on preventing addiction and problems
related to sexuality, whether or not you’re under
the infl uence. I combine 21st-century knowledge
with 25th-Dynasty wisdom, i.e. African Old School. It’s
about keeping your spirits, your wits and your body safe,
as well as safeguarding those around you.
It comes down to and improving upon “Who raised
you!?” Among my peeps, that phrase usually means
you had absent or questionable home training. Or,
conversely, you had good home training and you “actin’
like you ain’t got no sense,” aka Motherwit.
Watching the UO basketball player sexual assault
situation, rites of passage and “Who raised you?” come
to mind. I played in my mind, "What if they (males
and females) were my kids?" A source told me the
athletes played hooky from a structured rites-of-passage
program to go to that party. If so, I’m thinking maybe the
approach wasn’t African Old School/Motherwit enough.
It’s probably not reasonable to expect the UO and
Eugene-Mayberry to replicate Black Old School, but
neither they, nor the young woman, can go back “home.”
My exemplars for black basketball player behavior
are Paul Robeson, my father and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.
They exemplify that college athletics is merely a gateway
through an intellectual life, into one of service and activism.
Kareem recently wrote in Time magazine: “You
can’t go home again … Wolfe, who took that title
with permission from writer Ella Winter, used it to
mean that after we leave home and are battered about
by our adventures in life, we are changed. And in our
of chemicals have crossed over into the
“cruel and unusual” punishment zone.
If we are still going to put people
to death, let’s at least make it swift and
painless as possible. Such a method exists.
It’s called inert gas asphyxiation. We
currently use it to humanly put chickens
and pigs to death. It’s a simple method
of fi lling a room or bag with helium or
nitrogen. Consciousness is lost in less than
a minute and a painless and peaceful death
follows within a few minutes.
It’s time we act like a civilized nation
and ban cruel and unusual executions.
Michael T. Hinojosa
Drain
disillusioned mind, ‘home’ becomes a romanticized
symbol of our innocence, in which we dreamed
limitlessly and were loved unconditionally.”
Speaking of losing innocence through battering
adventures, if two guys take one woman into a bathroom
in someone else’s house while one stands outside as
lookout, and one acknowledges that he wouldn’t want
what was done in that bathroom to happen to his mom or
sister, is it shooting beyond their conceptual arc that this
woman should be treated as if she is a daughter, a sister,
a potential mom? I’d say they knew they were doing
wrong, by anyone’s standards. To say they’re being
lynched … white folks … pleeze.
Paraphrasing Frederick Douglass, it is easier to
build strong children than to repair broken adults.
Having raised daughters and sons in this community
who’ve avoided being either targets or perpetrators of
sexual assault (but who have not avoided being racially
targeted), I have tried to pass on the collectivist adage
I was raised with: When you are out in society you are
not there representing yourself, you are representing us
(black Americans specifi cally, and the best of humanity
generally). So hold yourself to a standard of behavior
better than those around you, particularly when they’re
acting like they ain’t got no sense.
What role should the UO community take in its culturally
competent in loco parentis avatar, in raising what the Old
School Black Community would call an upright strong black
man? A dangerous black man, i.e., law-abiding, intelligent,
articulate, activist, armed with a college degree?
I’m glad attention is being paid to the experience of
the victim, without overt regard to her race. But whatever
privileges a woman might have because of her race, her
gender often makes her an unprotected target, prey to
white men and “honorary” white men like certain black
male athletes who are not held to culturally specifi c
aspirational standards of behavior.
A salient set of questions for women of any race or
gender expression is how do I detect whether this person
will harm me? It's not like serial rapists of any race in
college settings can’t simulate being harmless, before
abruptly turning on you.
My kids (and the vast majority of LCC rites-of-
passage kids) have so far successfully avoided being
criminals, perpetrators or victims of sexual crimes, or
even accused of such. Our upbringing prepares us against
inevitable targeting either as a victim or a perpetrator. We
are taught to make appropriate adjustments in character
and action as if we’re an active target.
My hope for the “sister” in this incident is that
she comes back strong, like Maya did from similar
circumstances, saying, “Every human grouping, whether
it's just two people, a family, people in the neighborhood,
people in the city, in a nation, a tribe, a species; people live
in direct relation to the heroes and the sheroes they have.”
I have relatives who were actually lynched; I was raised
with Emmett Till as a cautionary tale. A black man married
to a white woman was lynched in Eugene (half his body
was found in the Willamette). I’d say the use of the term
“lynching” is made by people whose families weren’t
targets of actual lynching, therefore their home training did
not include how to conduct yourself as if you were a target.
Black women living in Eugene during the time of
that lynching faced rape, broad-daylight-attempted
kidnapping and abduction, racial attacks and had no
recourse to police, nor could they appeal to the district
attorney to prosecute, as the Eugene Klan was quite
active yet less overtly violent than in Mississippi.
Mark Harris is an instructor and substance abuse prevention
coordinator at LCC.
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