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.