LET TERS
FINICUM’S REFUGE
Snowy plover, greater sage grouse,
short-eared owl and bobolink, white-faced
ibis, heron, killdeer, sandhill crane and
Siskin finch. The birds all pass through
Malheur, even the cuckoo and the loon.
And like all migratory species, they’ll be
leaving pretty soon.
The stillness of the winter morn gave
way to a sound of men. And just like that
the Malheur was stolen away again. White
men; again, with god and guns, found the
door unlocked and then, they seized that
dinky building, proclaiming:
We are the best of men! Picked by God
to free this land of governmental tyranny.
And if you’all are true patriots you’ll lock
and load with me. We’ll hold this wind-
swept outpost, using every means at hand,
until such time as said government meets
all of our demands! Washington cut down
the loggers and gave miners the shaft.
Poor ranchers are bedeviled with no graze
for cow nor calf. Farmers clear with fire no
longer. Hey! Leave that trout there in the
brook! Well, my name, by God, is Finicum.
And I will not, by God, be took! Not so long
as I draw breath! Not with the Lord and my
gun at my side. For in them both I place my
faith, and with them I shall abide. Here in
this shack, with this Injun crap, until those
arsonists are both set free. And public land,
Or-E-Gone to El Rio Grande, is given back
to good ol’ boys like me!
And the migratory media flocked in
from everywhere. Seducing confrontation
to justify its presence there. Until Finicum
finally took flight — like Icarus, fled for the
sun. And the arms of his Lord, and the final
reward, of his faith in his God and his gun.
And the silence returned to Malheur,
no longer marred by men. And eternity
spiraled ever onward for the birds alone
again. Trumpeter swan and Brewers
sparrow, chukar, creeper, cowbird, wren,
cattle-egret, falcon, kestrel, sap-sucker, rail
and sanderling.
David Perham
Eugene
NOT A DEMOCRACY
Library.
Police
station.
City
Hall. Civic Stadium. Capstone. EMX
extension. Willamette bike lanes. None
of these city-altering initiatives won
voter approval (voting to staff the library
isn’t approval; it’s resignation). In fact,
the first two went down to multiple voter
defeats over years. Our mayor and council
members cynically decided to go it alone
on the others, not risking certain defeat in
the face of overwhelming opposition (polls
so showing).
The architects proposing a Kesey
Square redo won (not the first try!) the
City Hall “competition.” Does anyone
doubt who will prevail in Kesey Square?
And the unpopular Multi-unit Property
Tax Exemption (MUPTE) — does anyone
question that officials will extend it?
Park Blocks plans: whereto the vagrants
dominate during non-market hours?
Is there any city that pays greater lip
service to inclusiveness? “Come, speak to
us, participate in meetings, join advisory
committees!” And be ignored.
Bend. Salem. Corvallis. None of these
has the setting of our Eugene, with lofty
Skinner Butte — and none of them allowed
a Ya-Po-Ah obscenity. In a city boasting
NOTES FROM THE RIVERSIDE
resources of a respected architectural
faculty, this continued despoiling is
shameful. It is tragic. And, in its dismissal
of the will of the citizenry, it is profoundly
un-American.
Jayme Vasconcellos
Eugene
now legislating that models be fat.
It’s cool if you are big boned or
whatever, but seriously! Please, fat
people, you are causing climate change by
requiring all this food.
Amanda França
Springfield
FAT AND CLIMATE
ARROGANT, RUDE COPS
I never throw up — but I did when I
read “In celebration of full-figured sex” in
the same Feb. 11 issue that is complaining
about free-range cattle over-grazing in
Eastern Oregon? This is just absurd.
Average Americans eat literally one ton of
food per year — 85.5 pounds of fats and
oils, 110 pounds of red meat, including
62.4 pounds of beef and 46.5 pounds of
pork. Now we are supposed to be attracted
to people whom eat three times this!
People who eat three tons of food per year?
How many cheeseburgers, Doritos
and super-extra-large Big Gulp drinks
does it take to be sexy? How much of
Oregon’s wild lands need to be converted
to grazing so fat people can have another
cheeseburger taco at a food truck? Do we
make no connection between overgrazing
and fat people’s meat addiction?
I am an average woman 5-foot 4-inches
and weigh 110 pounds. I don’t go to a gym
or do any diets. I do run and stretch every
day, I eat fresh food from my garden and
home-grown poultry; however, it is now
illegal for me to model in Paris because I
am not fat enough. My BMI is 18 not 18.5
which is the legal limit.
Wake up, America: You’re eating the
world out of food and grazing your great
state to death to feed these fat people, and
When I moved to Eugene many years
ago an attorney friend living here told me
about the poor reputation of the Eugene
Police Department. She was especially
concerned about how they had treated
her during a routine traffic stop. During
my encounters with Eugene cops over
the years, I learned several times that my
friend was right.
While minding my own business Feb.
7, I learned again how arrogant and rude
your cops can be. After pulling into the 76
Station on West 11th, I noticed numerous
cop cars and fire trucks and wondered what
was going on. I walked onto the path along
Amazon Creek. There was no police tape
between the parking lot and path and no
tape across the path. Anyone coming along
the path had open access to the large group
of cops and others gathered about a quarter
or half block away. I had no idea what
they were doing. I was standing beside
two women who might have been news
reporters.
Suddenly a woman officer comes
storming my way, waving her arms and
yelling at me, “Get back! This is a crime
scene!” She was in my face with a look
that would freeze water. I asked her what
the problem was and she said again, “This
is a crime and you can’t cross the police
BY M A RK H A RRIS
Celebrating Excellence
LIMITS PERSIST ON WHAT BLACKS CAN ACCOMPLISH
N
egro History Week started as an internal
Negro
Community
Celebration,
remembering the birthday and the
difference between Frederick Douglass
(my personal favorite Republican) and
Lincoln (my least favorite Republican who edges out
Ben Carson and Donald Trump). Douglass was part of
a pre-Civil War meeting in which Lincoln suggested
the solution to slavery was to ship all four million black
people to Costa Rica. Douglass was one of the radical
Republicans who felt the solution to slavery was full
black citizenship, the vote, education, reparations, 40
acres and a mule, an end to white supremacy and the
establishment of human equality.
Negro History Week was born as a response during
the Harlem Renaissance, seven years after the Red
Summer of 1919, an intense period of lynchings. Not
that there’s a mellow period of lynchings. Sandra
Bland died in a county where eight lynchings had
taken place, so some of us are not convinced her arrest
and subsequent death were a suicide — as a court of
law found that Martin Luther King Jr. was shot by an
Army sniper, not James Earl Ray.
4
February 18, 2016 • eugeneweekly.com
I make a distinction regarding black urban legends
because, unlike their generic counterparts, black urban
legends are true — like the details of lynching, but white
people don’t believe them. On the 50th anniversary,
somebody actually believed I was making up Emmett
Till. Mamie Till got death threats for wanting his body
back to have a funeral in Chicago. His killers admitted
doing it and were acquitted. People went to lynchings
after Sunday church, brought children (held them
up for a better view), brought picnic lunches, took
pictures, sent the pictures through the mail (early 20th
century social media). Wrote on said mail “Here’s a
Coon We Barbecued,” certainly causing one to doubt
whether “picnic” is from the French picanique, or
the American picanig. And Trump wants us to worry
about Muslims. The danger seems to be coming from
people who look and speak like him.
Black History Month grew from our need to
celebrate an excellence that was present but not shown
in mainstream curriculum, which typically limited
themselves to slavery and Martin Luther King Jr.,
astronauts (16), architects like DeNorval Unthank,
doctors like Solomon Fuller, Charles Drew, Frantz
Fanon, Mae Jemison and Jocelyn Elders (OK, Ben
Carson, but I’d still rather have him operating on your
brain than in the White House).
We can even aspire to the White House, but there is
a limit to what we can achieve there. We have a black
president, but also more black men and women under
correctional control than were in slavery in 1850 —
and a new Jim Crow when they get out. Unarmed black
men, women and children are killed at predictable
rates by policemen, security guards, armed vigilantes,
gang members or random shooters. Where Black Lives
and Black History Matters is: What was once done to
us because of race, is now being
done to us because of money. It
might be of benefit studying
how we overcame, or will
overcome. I don’t think
the Malheur occupiers
learned anything from
Martin Luther King Jr.,
the Black Panthers or
MOVE. Or maybe
they did.
Mark Harris is an
instructor and sub-
stance abuse pre-
vention coordi-
nator at Lane
Community
College.