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About Eugene weekly. (Eugene, Oregon) 1993-current | View Entire Issue (April 7, 2016)
BY CAMILLA MORTENSEN LANE COUNTY AREA SPRAY SCHEDULE Oregon Department of Transportation is spraying roadsides. Call (503) 986-3010 to talk with a vegetation management coordinator or call 1-888-996-8080 for recent herbicide application information. Highways I-5, 99, 101 and 126 East were recently sprayed. We received faxed notification of upcoming spray on Hwy. 36 beginning April 14. Forestland Dwellers: 541-342-8332, www.forestlanddwell- ers.org 8 A pril 7, 2016 • eugeneweekly.com fraud. Like Oregon’s presidential primary, Arizona’s presidential preference election is a closed vote. Jim Williams, elections director for the Oregon Secretary of State, tells EW via email “we have no reason to believe that the problems experienced in Arizona are an issue here in Oregon.” Williams says, “Our system keeps an audit log of any and all changes to a voter’s record. We can see who changed the record, when the record was changed and why the record was changed (including a saved image of any accompa- nying voter registration card or other documentation).” He adds, “Generally speaking, what we have seen is that vot- ers who received the ‘nonaffiliated voter’ mailer are indeed regis- tered as nonaffiliated, and they were mistaken about their actual affiliation,” but, he says, they have to look at each case separately. “In other cases,” he says, voters “may have registered in the window of time between when we pulled the list of voters for our mailing and when the letters landed in their mailboxes.” Oregon’s deadline to register to vote and to change party af- filiation is the same: April 26. Williams says you can check your registration at oregonvotes. gov/myvote or by calling the local county election offices. Wil- liams says voters should know “online changes may take two to three days to be processed and will not show up immediately on an online record.” Call Lane County elections at (541) 682-4234 to check your registration. n the aftermath of the Arizona primary election fiasco, with voters waiting in long lines and ballots getting thrown out, Lane County voters are wondering how they can make sure their ballots get counted. Concerned area residents have contacted EW saying their voter affiliation is incorrect and that they had registered as Democrats but recently re- ceived a notice from the Or- egon Secretary of State Elec- tions Division saying they were unaffiliated. Lane County resident Jana Thrift says she was reg- istered as a Democrat, but when she looked while filing a change of address, she saw she was listed as Independent. In order to vote in Oregon’s closed primaries, voters must be registered as members of the party whose primary they will be voting in. Some supporters of Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders had previously left the Democratic Party, but to vote for him in Oregon must again become registered Dems. Thrift says she is concerned Lane County voters might run into the sort of problems that hit Arizona in the March 22 presi- dential preference election. A lawyer for the Sanders campaign threatened to file suit last month over the large number of provi- sional ballots that were tossed out in Maricopa County. According to NBC News in Arizona, “About 80 percent of the 24,000 provisional ballots were ruled invalid because the voter wasn’t registered with a political party.” Voters in Phoenix wait- ed in line for hours to vote because Maricopa had cut polling lo- cations by 70 percent since 2012, and some have alleged election I You can check your voter registration at oregonvotes.gov/myvote. STEPHEN WOOTEN “I started my study of anthropology at home,” says Stephen Wooten, the youngest of nine children in an Irish Catholic family in Weymouth, Massachusetts. “My dad was on the police force. He was a beat cop, on his feet, building relationships with people.” Wooten continued his study at UMass Amherst and got his masters and Ph.D. in anthropology at the University of Illinois. He’s been a professor at the UO since 2001. “I couldn’t have picked a better place,” he says. “I was a big Grateful Dead fan, saw hundreds of shows. All that camping and hanging out with people, the human interactions, were fuel for my career.” Before he entered grad school, Wooten served in the Peace Corps in the West African country of Mali. “I felt a deep connection to those rural farming people,” he says. “Their lives are simple materially, but complex and rich socially and culturally.” He has since been back to Mali more than a dozen times, including an eight month stay in 2011-12 along with his wife Tracy Lomax and their kids August and Wren. Wooten’s book, The Art of Livelihood (2009), examines the dynamism between food production and aesthetic expression in West Africa. “Food is so much more than nutrition,” says Wooten, who has developed an interdisciplinary food studies curriculum at the UO, offering a graduate specialization and an undergrad minor. “Food is about family, culture and meaning; about environment, soil and farming.” Check the UO Food Studies Facebook page to learn about local food, agriculture, gardening events and opportunities. BY PAUL NEEVEL • A discussion on “Why Aren’t There More Black People in Oregon? A Hidden History Conversation Project” will be from 6:30 to 8:30 pm Friday, April 8, at the Cottage Grove Community Center, 700 E. Gibbs Ave. Speakers include PSU adjunct professor and author Walidah Imarisha. Sponsored by Cottage Grove Blackberry Pie Society, the Cottage Grove Library, the Rural Organizing Project and Oregon Humanities. Email blackberrypie@gmail.com for more information. • Willamette Riverkeeper is planning its annual River Guardian Spring Clean Up on the Willamette River Saturday, April 9. Some space on rafts is available or bring your own boat. Shuttle provided. Email Emmons@ willametteriverkeeper.org to sign up. • Local transgender social justice activist Ariel Howland will be teaching the workshop “Confronting Transmisogyny & Rape Culture” 5:30 pm April 11 at the UO Global Scholars Hall Room 117. Transmisogyny is the intersection of transphobia and misogyny specifically affecting trans women and trans-female spectrum people. Free and open to the public. Part of Sexual Assault Awareness Month. Search “Confronting Transmisogyny” for the event on Facebook. PRESIDENTIAL PRIMARY ELECTION QUESTIONS HAPPENING PEOPLE • Café Soriah at 384 W. 13th Ave. has expanded into the former dress shop next door, adding another dining room with 40 more seats. Owner Ib Hamide tells us Soriah plans to open for lunch Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays starting April 13, from 11:30 am to 2 pm. The lunch menu will bring back much of what Hamide served at Casablanca when it was in the 5th Street Public Market, he says, including falafel, shawarma, tabbouleh, hummus “as well as a few interesting and popular additions to complement the Mediterranean menu.” • “The Power of Email Marketing” is the topic of a free workshop at 6 pm Thursday, April 7, at the Eugene Public Library downtown. Workshop leader is Carol Infranca, an award-winning print and broadcast journalist and marketing specialist. Sponsored by SCORE, Constant Contact and the library. Call 682-5450. • Midori, the world-renowned educator and writer on sexuality, will be teaching her hands- on workshop “Rope: Control and Dominance Moves,” at 7 pm Wednesday, April 13, at 1645 W. High Street. The workshop is sponsored by As You Like It: The Pleasure Shop, which tells EW that Midori “is motivated by helping people create authentic and intimate relationships while emphasizing self actualization, shame reduction, acceptance and justice.” She is the author of The Seductive Art of Japanese Bondage, Wild Side Sex and Master Han’s Daughter. Tickets are $20 in advance and $25 at the door.
