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About Eugene weekly. (Eugene, Oregon) 1993-current | View Entire Issue (Jan. 12, 2017)
LET TERS ANTI-DEMOCRATIC NONSENSE Love your new life. Weight loss surgery can help you take off the extra weight, move and breathe easier, and reverse some health conditions. What’s not to love? Weight loss surgery Counseling support Nutrition advice peacehealth.org/weightsurgery Democracy keeps on taking hits from special interests. Last summer, [local re- tired attorney] Stan Long and his corpo- rate industry buddies attempted to grant power to the county commissioners to de- cide what initiatives Lane County citizens could vote on. The community’s reaction was swift in letting the commissioners know: “Don’t you dare mess with the people’s business.” The commissioners dropped the corporate- concocted plan. However, democracy in action was lost on Stan Long, who then filed a lawsuit claiming the county erred in approving ini- tiative circulation for an aerial spray ban on herbicides and — get this — securing the right of the people to govern their own affairs over that of, let’s say, corporate in- dustry. The lawsuit is absurd, largely because Mr. Long failed to voice his complaints within the clearly allocated 60-day win- dow allowed. I can’t imagine the courts rewarding tardiness. The hearing date is Feb. 3. Mark your calendars. Let’s pack the courtroom! Mucking with direct democracy, wheth- er by changing the rules in the middle of the game or gaming the courts, is bad news no matter one’s political stripes. Muting people’s political speech and ultimately the people’s right of self-government just means we become more subject to the rule of the corporate class. I won’t sit idle. Beside protesting this court case, I will do my part to make sure the aerial spray ban and the right of local community self-government initiatives make it to the ballot and are ultimately voted in by the people. Bullies beware. Michelle Holman Community Rights Lane County Deadwood POWER TO THE PEOPLE Last month, I saw the We the People 2.0 documentary at the Bijou Art Cinemas. It opened my eyes to what “democracy where I live” really means. The Community Rights Movement — championed locally by Community Rights Lane County (CRLC) — is the only grass- roots, action-oriented effort seeking to give meaningful legal authority to We the People. This movement seeks to amplify the voice of the people over the clamor of government and corporate interests that threaten our way of life and our planet, for profit. Our situation is increasingly dire. Ac- tion is required. Join me in attending Com- munity Rights Lane County’s monthly meetings on the third Monday of the month at the First United Methodist Church (1376 Olive St.) from 6-8 pm. And check out CRLC at communityrightslanecounty.org. Marge Holman Eugene TRANS PACIFIC PUPPETS I love Eugene, but I am constantly amazed at how uninformed some people can be. Leigh Anne Jasheway spends two paragraphs trashing The Donald [“Beware Trumplestilsken,” 12/29] and then, in the next paragraph, says how great it is that the 6 January 12, 2017 • eugeneweekly.com people can get together and stop the Trans Pacific Partnership. This is stunning. It is The Donald who is going to, and pretty much already has stopped the TPP. The people have almost nothing to do with it, other than electing Trump. If Hillary had won, we would be getting TPP. If Obama were to stay in power, we would be getting TPP. If Bernie had been elected, he would probably have stopped it. That Jasheway does not know that a key issue of the Trump campaign was to stop the TPP and other such trade deals that are very bad for America shows an amazing lack of awareness of the political situa- tion leading up to the election. In actuality, Bernie and Trump almost exactly agreed on trade, trade deals and getting industry going again. The TPP was a globalist initiative, cre- ated and paid for by international corpora- tions and pushed by their puppets in gov- ernment, such as Obama. Time to take the head out of the sand and give the devil his due. Jim Showker Eugene UO DID RIGHT After hearing more of this ongoing sto- ry about Prof. Nancy Shurtz’s Halloween party for the past few months, I feel com- pelled to comment. I am not a University of Oregon law student. However, if I was, and I was in- vited to a private party at an instructor’s house, I would already feel awkward. Then, if she came into the room wear- ing a white lab coat and blackface, and then started doing something weird with silver- ware, I would be running to the nearest exit. Whether Shurtz is racist or needs some kind of health evaluation, either way the university got it right this time when they decided to relieve the professor of her in- structional duties. Law school is expensive. You need to get the best you can out of it. Elizabeth Arbogast Eugene RESIST FASCISM It is not too late to reject our president- elect, and there is something you can do: Go to refusefascism.org and sign the call to say, “NO! In the Name of Humanity, We Refuse to Accept a Fascist America!” And in the days leading up to his inaugu- ration, it is up to us — it is up to the masses — to get into the streets and declare a re- sistance to the fascist regime that will come under a hateful, sexist, racist, Muslim-bash- ing, wall-building, climate change denier. We cannot “wait and see” what he does — for we have already seen what he has done to women, to families and to the people. We must prevent the Trump-Pence regime from taking power! Lola Bravo Eugene LETTERS POLICY: We welcome letters on all topics and will print as many as space allows, with priority given to timely local issues. Please limit length to 200 words and include your address and phone number for our files. Email to letters@eugeneweekly.com, fax to 484-4044 or mail to 1251 Lincoln, Eugene 97401.
