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About Eugene weekly. (Eugene, Oregon) 1993-current | View Entire Issue (Nov. 10, 2016)
LET TERS STOP THE PIPELINE Eugene Stands with Standing Rock wishes to invite everyone to participate in a National Day of Action against the Da- kota Access Pipeline. There will be a rally and march in Eu- gene noon Tuesday, Nov. 15, in front of the Army Corps of Engineers office, 211 E. 7th Avenue. We will deliver letters to them and from there march to the banks. We’re asking anyone attending to please bring your letters to give to the Army Corps of Engineers. Indigenous leaders are calling on us to take to the streets, to demand that the Army Corps of Engineers, President Obama and the incoming administration stop the Da- kota Access Pipeline and any others. This movement has grown as a global outcry to stop the massive destruction of our water and earth by the oil companies and their constituents. We will not allow the current or incom- ing administration to sacrifice Indigenous rights, our water or our climate. They must reject this pipeline! We will continue to fight until native sovereignty is honored, indigenous rights are protected and our communities, water and climate matter more than fossil fuel profits. Please join us for the rally and march. On Facebook: Eugene Stands with Stand- ing Rock. For more info, go to nodaplsoli- dary.org. Sunita Chethik Eugene FORCED TO RESIGN A UO professor may be fired or, as they say in polite company, forced to resign for wearing blackface at a Halloween party. VIEWPOINT What if a black professor wore whiteface or dressed up as a Native American or worse, a lawyer? The professor was not mocking Afro- Americans but trying to make a point. The theme was based on the book Black Man in a White Coat: A Doctor’s Reflection on Race and Medicine about racism in medical school. I feel for you, Doc. Nobody gets my jokes either. Vince Loving Eugene DARK AND WARPED “He is the bourgeois ancestor of the evil slummers that invaded Haight-Ash- bury in ’69, and his intentions are dishon- est and purely vampiric.” “Hirons pharmacy is … the humble retail equivalent of the Great Pacific Gar- bage Patch, the growing clot of refuse that swirls in the Pacific Ocean current.” After reading a few of the “Staff Picks,” I had to put the paper down [“Best of Eugene,” 11/3]. Who wrote this drivel? It was not funny; it was just mean, particu- larly the “Best Eugene Stereotype.” There is a difference between poking fun and ma- ligning your subject. Snark is in, I suppose, and since sev- eral of these pieces used the same deroga- tory tone, I assume they are written by the same person. Sneer all you like at the older middle class, the smug Prius drivers, but you are just as guilty of being obnoxious. I know it is entertaining to put people down, and it makes you feel better about yourself, but please don’t labor under the assumption that you are better than any of your subjects. You probably just alienated a number of the people who read this rag. I felt bad for anyone who had to read that and see themselves reflected in the dark, warped mirror of those words. Geez, the writer needs to take advantage of some of that Eugene green, maybe hop in a hot tub at Onsen’s and release some of that negativity and hostility. Jennifer Clark Eugene RUDE AND DISMISSIVE I picked up my Weekly with the Best of Eugene results. It was as heavy as a phone book. (If you don’t know what that is, ask your father.) But before the poll results there were pages (and pages) of staff rants. I didn’t read them all; the first couple were pretty unpleasant. Rude, dismissive, vaguely age- ist. “Paunchy office workers?” I thought negative body images had been left be- hind. “They don’t get it” because they told you? No, because you made it up. The rant about “Skipper,” who isn’t even a real person, was pretty strange, too. There are plenty of real hypocrites to take on. So why make something up? By the way, learn the difference between “ances- tors” and “descendants.” Several digs at Prius drivers. Really? I drive one. You got a problem widdat? I note that the writers did not sign their work. Makes it easier to talk like a jerk when you don’t identify yourself. I did appreciate the nod to Jake Pavlak, certainly a bright light in Eugene’s musical sky. His name might have come up in the reader responses if you had even asked read- ers about Best Guitarist. More on that anon. But on to the poll results. Personally, I think Best Hangover Breakfast stopped be- ing funny 10 years ago. Give Brails a Life- time Achievement Award and move on, for goodness sake. You have more than 20 categories for food and only one for music. Really? In a town like this where we have bluegrass bands, rappers, songwriters, indie rock bands, tribute bands, all manner of folk mu- sic, an under-celebrated jazz community, several professional orchestras and music you can’t really pin down at all, the Weekly has only one category for music. “A Great City for the Arts,” indeed. By the way, I think Medium Troy was overvoting. Again. Under the banner of celebrating the Best of Eugene you have shown us the worst: smug, snarky and trivial. Chico Schwall Eugene REPEATED CITATIONS Bartels Packing is once again in the news, this time for being shut down by the USDA for consistent and frequent inhu- mane slaughtering practices. The article on the front page of last Fri- day’s Register-Guard cites three specific instances in August and September; how- ever USDA, inspection records for 2005 to 2015 cite hundreds more regulation viola- tions: non-ambulatory cattle treated inhu- manely, risk materials on edible portions of carcasses, incidents of inhumane slaughter, unidentified species in cooked products, foreign material in meat products and sani- tation violations. All this in addition to repeated cita- tions, fines and intent to sue warnings for BY K EN NEUBECK Homeless Downtown ADDING POLICE IS NOT THE SOLUTION H omelessness and impoverishment are not law enforcement prob- lems and cannot be mitigated by police actions. The Eugene City Council needs to stop dithering and being paralyzed by NIMBY trolls who could not care less that housing is a human right. So many people who are homeless are ill and surely more will die in the streets. It is urgent that the council come up with solutions that get people who are unhoused off the streets and into safe and legal places to be. Most Eugene housed residents have no idea how people who are homeless are trauma- tized by the conditions they deal with each and every day. Where can I eat? Where can I relieve myself? Where can I shower and bathe? Where can I sleep? Where can I just sit or lie down and rest? Where can I go to feel safe from attack or theft? Where can I keep my belongings safe and dry? Where can I get my wet clothing and sleeping gear dried? Where can I get ad- equate health care and appropriate medications for my physical and mental health problems? Where can I stay when I feel really ill or I have been released from the hospital after surgery? Where can I self-shelter without being cited or arrested? If I am able to look for work, who will hire me if I am unbathed, my clothes or I smell, and I lack a permanent mailing address? How am I ever to get employed or ever be accepted by a landlord with my police record of citations and arrests for illegal camping? How can I keep from being noticed and approached by police? 4 November 10, 2016 • eugeneweekly.com People who are homeless and unsheltered wake up each day asking themselves these questions, questions that keep coming back to them every waking hour. Police are not seen as friends — they are seen as people who harass and push those who are tired, sleep deprived and often not well into moving along. We should not be at all surprised at how people gathered in the Park Blocks Oct. 21 — many if not most of whom are homeless — negatively reacted when three police officers sought to physically detain and arrest a man who kept asking why and what he had done, Tasing and hitting him while holding him against a police car. In response to these officers’ call for backup, 25 police cars arrived to support their completion of the arrest, this huge show of force further angering and incit- ing those bystanders drawn to watching the arrest. It is all on a YouTube video. Current city policies toward homelessness that rely heavily upon law enforce- ment are not working. Indeed, many police officers greatly dislike the position into which they are being put, a waste of their intensive training as professionals who prevent and respond to serious crimes. Moving people who are homeless from point A to point B, citing and arresting some along the way, is an endless process that many of the police can barely toler- ate. The City Council needs to forge more effective, less costly and more humane solutions for dealing with people who are impoverished and often homeless. Ken Neubeck is chair of the Eugene Human Rights Commission and a volunteer at Occupy Medical and Egan Warming Centers. The views expressed here are his own.
