VIEWPOINT
LET TERS
BY M A R K A L O PA R K A L O
SLUG Invitation
A LETTER FROM A SOON-TO-BE OLD QUEEN
M
y Dearest Minions and Various Subjects,
Your Queen and Mine of the Society for the Legitimization
of Ubiquitous Gastropods, Markalo Parkalo, wishes to convey
warmest wishes, solstice celebration and official offerings
herewith:
First, thank you for your support of my favorite nonprofit: LILA (Lane Independent
Living Alliance).
Your contributions from my Third Ball amounted to more than $2,000, and we
increased awareness of Independent Living (IL) in Lane County. IL is the applied
value of choice for people with any disability.
Having choice in our lives is a core desire for us all and LILA promotes choice for
anyone who comes to us. LILA offers peer support and advocacy at no cost for many
of our programs. The money we raised is dedicated to assisting local businesses to
make their locations more accessible to people with disabilities.
If you own a business, call LILA to request a Blue Path Survey. The first hour
of consultation will be free to the first 30 businesses. We will show you methods,
many at low or no cost, that allow more customers access to your shop. We advertise
businesses to people with disabilities for organizations that complete our Blue Path
Survey.
Third, (I’m saving second ‘cause it's so great!) thanks for the community
support for Empathy Tent. We began last year to offer free empathy for folks
at Saturday Market. Thanks to the board and management at Saturday Market for our
spot with you.
A very wide variety of people stop in to be heard. I get to meet a lot of people new
to town or homeless. We have a team of listeners staffing the tent from 11 am to 5
pm most Saturdays. Look across from the Wells Fargo Bank and come meet us. We
not only hear troubles and heartbreak but also the most supreme celebrations and all
that is in between. Empathy Tent is a living memorial to the life of the late Marshall
Rosenberg and his Nonviolent Communication.
Second, Empathy Tent opened at Oregon Country Fair this year in the tail of
the dragon near the entrance! Our local mediation center, Center for Dialogue and
Resolution, hosted the tent at the Fair. I have been mediating conflicts for Center for
Dialogue and Resolution and at Small Claims Court for 10 years. And I look forward
to continuing empathy work to polish my rough edges and to contribute, in whatever
measure, to peace on our precious planet.
Fourth, I invite you to see my metamorphosis from Raining Queen to Old Queen.
The Society for the Legitimization of Ubiquitous Gastropods invites you to the 34th
annual SLUG Queen Competition and Coronation. Somesuch occurs every year
about this time at 6 pm Friday, Aug. 12, at the Saturday Market stage. Come on out
and we’ll sing for you and entertain you. (Bring a chair.)
Thank you for the very fun year.
THE PEOPLE CAN’T BE
STOPPED
If the Lane County Board of
Commissioners votes in late September
to give themselves the power to yank duly
approved initiatives from the vote of the
people because they decide the initiatives are
not “of county concern,” there is at least one
bright spot: the subsequent people’s initiative
to reverse that unconstitutional ordinance
will most assuredly be “of county concern.”
To Commissioners Bozievich, Stewart,
Farr and Leiken: The initiative process
belongs to the people!
Keep your eye on the Board of
Commissioners’ agendas at goo.gl/J7Alni.
Cathy Barr
Deadwood
CALL FOR PEACE AND
EDUCATION
Both the Third Annual Interfaith
Peace Walk and the Hiroshima-Nagasaki
Commemoration remind us of the
importance of working for peace in our
world (Activist Alert, 8/4).
Of course with hunger, disease and lack
of educational opportunities, it is hard for
peace to take hold. But we can support the
bipartisan Education for All Act of 2016 in
Congress, to focus on helping the 59 million
children without educational opportunity to
finally go to school.
Your calls and letters to your
representatives about supporting this
legislation can make a difference.
Willie Dickerson
Snohomish, Washington
COUNTY AND CONSTITUTION
We are concerned that some members of
the Lane County Board of Commissioners
do not understand the concept of separation
of powers enshrined in the U.S. Constitution.
The commissioners’ interest in giving
themselves the power to deny “we the
people” the right to vote on countywide
ballot measures that we ourselves have
initiated seems decidedly un-American,
given that the courts in this country are the
bodies that decide on the constitutionality of
laws, not elected lawmakers.
After a ballot measure has been approved
by voters, then it can be challenged — in
the courts. If the commissioners enact
this illegal ordinance, they will certainly
be wasting taxpayer dollars defending it
in court. Ironically, saving money is their
stated reason for considering the ordinance,
but perhaps they have other motives.
The commissioners who have expressed
the most interest in selectively squashing
citizen initiatives are the same ones who
are well-funded by the timber industry,
which opposes a citizen initiative currently
collecting signatures for the ballot.
The Cottage Grove Blackberry Pie
Society
Leslie Rubinstein, Cathy Bellavita,
Steve Kilston, Gail Hoelzle, Julie Parker,
Brian Forge, Alice Doyle
OMISSION
I appreciated the recent issue, “Black
Lives Matter,” and Camilla Mortensen’s
brief section “And So Does Oregon’s
History of Racism.”
However, it was a great oversight in that
4
A ugust 11, 2016 • eugeneweekly.com
article to omit mention of the nationally
recognized and immeasurably important
work on this topic by Walidah Imarisha,
former Oregon Humanities Foundation
Fellow, longtime Portland State University
Black Studies professor, author, poet,
organizer and frequent public speaker on
Oregon’s white supremacist history.
She is the creator of the acclaimed
Oregon Black History Timeline and
associated presentation/related curriculum,
“Why Aren’t There More Black People In
Oregon?” I have heard that when she gave
this talk at the Eugene Public Library, it
attracted a near-capacity crowd. Professor
Imarisha is also a local expert: an alumna of
Springfield High School. As an Oregonian,
African-American, woman scholar with
recognized expertise on the subject of
Oregon Black history and its founding
as a white supremacist state, she and her
work should have received attention in
an article on Oregon’s racist history, over
a book published more than 10 years ago
by an (apparently) white man. I encourage
anyone interested in the roots of modern
racism in Oregon to explore Imarisha’s
work, much of it accessible online.
Bayla Ostrach
Boston, Mass.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Agreed it’s preferable to cite a source
from the community of color when writing about that
community, in this case Walidah Imarisha herself cites
Loewen as her source on sundown towns. See one of our
previous stories on Imarisha’s research at goo.gl/VdzRi6.
GRIM STUPIDITY
“Our religious and cultural heritage is to
deny ... that we’re in any way connected to
the rest of life on earth. We don’t come from
it ... we own it and we’re put here to run the
place. It’s deeply threatening to our ideology
... to admit that we’re constrained by ...
biology ... and our puritanical heritage.”
I quote author Barbara Kingsolver from
her book, Small Wonder, in order to bring
context to the strictly white, Christian,
entitled world in which both Jerry Ritter
[Letters, 7/21] and Lon Miller inhabit.
Within this context, their white privilege
justifies such ignorant arrogance that
belies hatred. But enough of Miller. I want
to address Ritter’s letter, “Grim Statistics.”
Let me start by countering his Taylor
Swift lyrics with “I’ve never heard such
stupidity quite like this.” His soundbite, easily
disputable, lazy generalities are akin to the
flatulence of Trump’s pink, puckered piehole.
It is Ritter’s “(in)convenient truth” to
avoid something called facts and history,
where black lives lived and died, so since
he sarcastically inquires as to where are
those who have cared about his statistical
concerns, I have an answer: 240 years
of founding fathers’ slaves (and their
offspring); slaves building the “White”(!)
House; Buffalo Soldiers and their forced
killing of Native Americans; Sojourner
Truth; Booker T. Washington; Frederick
Douglass; Jim Crow; NAACP; lynchings;
segregation; Rosa Parks; Medgar Evers;
Fred Hampton; Paul Robeson; James
Baldwin; Malcolm X; Martin Luther
King; Julian Bond; COINTELPRO; the
Black Panthers; MOVE’s firebombing in
Philadelphia; Grace Boggs; Cornel West;
Muhammad Ali; War on Drugs; Gary
Webb’s “Dark Alliance”; Ta-Nehisi Coates’