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.