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About Eugene weekly. (Eugene, Oregon) 1993-current | View Entire Issue (Oct. 19, 2017)
NEWS BY CORINNE BOYER RACIST AND ANTI- SEMITIC PROPAGANDA WAS ANONYMOUSLY DROPPED OFF AT EUGENE WEEKLY'S OFFICE • On the afternoon of Wednesday, Oct. 11, a strange fellow crept into Eugene Weekly's office wearing sunglasses and a hoodie, then left a few offensive sheets of paper on our front counter and slid out without a word. White supremacists are organizing in Lane County, and they’re trying to make us afraid. It won’t work. Our community must be strong against hate and show that these creeps are right to hide their faces and silently scuttle back to the shadows. Ignoring them won’t make them go away. See our cover feature this week on antifa and some of the people they oppose. • Quietly and without fanfare the downtown dog ban was allowed to expire. Hooray! Woof! • It looks like creating an elected, independent city auditor will be on the spring ballot in Eugene, thanks to volunteers who last week submitted nearly 13,000 signatures — far more than the required 8,090. Also last week, the mayor’s Auditor Study Group wrapped up its research into other cities and counties that have performance auditors. The group compared how a dozen governments hire, fire, supervise and fund auditors, how audit topics are chosen, etc. The group will report to the Eugene City Council in mid-November, without recommendations. The more we learn about independent auditors and their growing popularity, the more we appreciate how they can not only save taxpayers money but also create transparency and accountability in local government. That bodes well for passing the city auditor measure next May. • While we had Sen. Ron Wyden on the phone the other day, we asked him if he thought impeaching Donald Trump was a possibility. Wyden said as a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee he can’t discuss classified information, but he can say that there are “big developments coming up” and special counsel Robert Mueller “is going to play a big role in the days ahead.” • New Eugene Symphony Music Director Francesco Lecce-Chong has been here, there and everywhere in town since taking the post this summer. Unlike many of his predecessors on the podium, Lecce-Chong actually moved to Eugene — he’s rented an apartment downtown — and has been spending his free time getting to know the community and its people in detail. Check the EW blog for a story about his dropping in this week to conduct part of a rehearsal for the young musicians of the Eugene Springfield Youth Symphony. • When Eugene Police Chief Pete Kerns becomes chief of staff for St. Vinnie’s executive director Terry McDonald, he’ll just be following a family tradition of service. In 1973, the chief’s father, Dr. Tom Kerns, helped found Eugene’s Serenity Lane, the drug and alcohol treatment center, and that was only one of his countless contributions to this community. One of eight Kerns kids who grew up in Eugene, Pete soon will be coming at society’s problems from a new direction. We wish him well. • EWEB is in the best financial position it has been in in a decade. That’s some of the good news that EWEB General Manager Frank Lawson delivered to the City Club of Eugene Oct. 13. Considering that EWEB is the single largest taxpayer in the county, that’s really good news. Lawson said the biggest issues facing the public utility are emergency preparedness and disaster recovery and electric supply resources. He touched on aesthetic considerations such as underground or overhead lines, but maybe that’s a subject for another City Club meeting: Do we need a public advocate for an aesthetically pleasing city? 8 October 19, 2017 • eugeneweekly.com DISCUSSING DOMESTIC AND SEXUAL VIOLENCE Eugene lawyer offers ideas for people in abusive relationships S o far in 2017, 496 people in the United States have died in instances of fatal do- mestic violence involving guns. An average of 20,000 phone calls are made every day to domestic violence ho- tlines, and each year 10 million individuals “are abused by an intimate partner,” according to the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence. The nonprofit also says “twenty percent of women in the United States have been raped.” On Oct. 15, in the wake of new revelations about Harvey Weinstein, actress Alyssa Milano posted the tweet “Me too,” asking people to use the same reply if they have also experienced sex- ual assault or harassment. The social media hashtag has been used mil- lions of times and continues to pop up across the globe. Conveying the magnitude of sexual violence and sexual harassment is the purpose behind the campaign. In 2015, the National Sexual Violence Resource Center found that “among male students who reported perpetrating attempted or completed rape, 63 percent report multiple rape acts (an aver- age of 5.8 rapes per serial rapist).” October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month, which originated from the “Day of Unity” held in 1981 to commemorate women and chil- dren survivors of domestic violence. Michael Quillin, supervising attorney at the Domestic Violence Clinic at the University of Or- egon Law School, says public needs to be edu- cated about the prevalence of domestic violence. “One in four women experience domestic vio- lence,” Quillin says. “If we were talking about whooping cough, there’d be a CDC [warning] out on the corners of every street,” he says. “This is an epidemic, and it really needs to be brought to the surface.” The Domestic Violence Clinic started in 1999 and was housed within Lane County Legal Aid. “Our primary goal is to teach law students how to work with survivors of domestic and sexual vio- lence and civil legal matters such as family law, restraining orders, employment issues, housing is- sues, typical civil/legal needs,” Quillin says. “It’s like legal aid but focusing on the needs of domes- tic violence and sexual abuse survivors.” The Domestic Violence Clinic was recently awarded a $500,000 grant by the Department of Justice’s Office of Violence Against Women, which will fund and expand the clinic’s services. Despite domestic and sexual violence statis- tics, many people don’t comprehend the complex- ities and barriers that may prevent a person from leaving a dangerous relationship. “I think the nature of the response when a per- son who is not experienced in working with sur- vivors is, ‘Why don’t they just leave?’” Quillin says. He cites a number of reasons. “If the perpetrator of the abuse is the primary breadwinner, then they might have difficulty fi- nancially trying to get out on their own,” Quillin says. “A lot of times housing is an issue. Low- income housing is very difficult to find in Lane County. Many times they are afraid of what might happen if they leave and the children are given unsupervised parenting time with the abuser — a lot of times they will stay in order to care for the children.” If people find themselves in an unsafe situa- tion and are thinking about leaving, Quillin says, there are support systems in place. “If they can reach out in a safe manner and contact someone at Womenspace, that would be a good first move to try to both understand their situation as well as get help in how to leave their situation.” You can contact the Domestic Violence Clinic via the UO School of Law, 1515 Agate Street or call 541-346-8555 for services or 541- 346-8260 for information.
