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About Eugene weekly. (Eugene, Oregon) 1993-current | View Entire Issue (Nov. 30, 2017)
NEWS BY CORINNE BOYER • Yes for Healthcare, the campaign to protect health care for vulnerable Oregonians such as seniors, people with disabilities and 400,000 children, is holding a Yes on Measure 101 Rally and Canvass Sunday, Dec. 3 at the Wayne Morse Free Speech Plaza. The rally begins at noon and features Rep. Nancy Nathanson and other community leaders. Organizers say that at 1 pm, volunteers will begin knocking on doors to tell voters to vote yes on Measure 101 on Jan. 23. • Burrito Brigade, a grassroots nonprofit organization serving hot vegan meals to the hungry in Eugene/ Springfield, says it served its 100,000th nutritious meal since it started three years ago. If you want to help out, you can join the Brigade at the First Christian Church at 1166 Oak Street Dec. 3 and 10. Burrito prep starts at 11 am, burrito rolling is at 1 pm, and distribution and clean up after making about 500 burritos kicks off at 1:45 pm. Burrito Brigade asks you join its Facebook event so they know you are coming. Search “Sunday Burrito Brigade” on Facebook. • On Tuesday, Dec. 5, from 6 to 8 pm, in First Christian Church parlor at 1166 Oak Street there will be an Egan Warming Center volunteer training. Organizers say to use the south door to enter the parlor, and the pay-to-park lot across the alley from the church is open 24 hours, seven days a week. Fill out and submit the new volunteer application on the website. Go to eganwarmingcenter.com for more info. • Oregon’s Long-Term Care Ombudsman Program seeks volunteers to “advocate for residents who are elderly and disabled living in nursing homes, assisted living facilities and adult care homes to help ensure resident rights, dignity, safety and care.” According to the Office of the Long-Term Care Ombudsman, “the need for volunteer ombudsmen in Lane County is great. Currently, only 60 percent of the facilities have an ombudsman assigned to them, leaving many vulnerable residents without the advocacy and protection they need.” Volunteers work about four hours a week. Applications are due Dec. 15 and training will be held in Eugene January 2018. For more info call 800-522-2602 or go to www.oregon.gov/ltco. POLLUTION UPDATE The Oregon Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) recently sent a warning letter to the city of Albany for failing to staff its wastewater treatment plant with qualified personnel while the plant superintendent was elk hunting. DEQ discovered the violation during an Oct. 17 inspection of the plant. DEQ’s warning letter notes that “[t]rained and certified operators are necessary to ensure that the systems are managed in a manner that fully protects public health and the environment” and notes the increased risk of system failure, and resulting water quality and health hazards, in the event of staffing violations like the one observed at the Albany treatment plant. Doug Quirke/Oregon Clean Water Action Project LANE COUNTY AREA SPRAY INFORMATION Giustina Land and Timber, 541-345-2301, plans to hire Western Helicopter Services, 503-538-9469, to spread urea fertilizer pellets on 439.5 acres in the Gate Creek area. See ODF notification 2017-771-13413, call stewardship forester Brian Dally at 541-726-3588 with questions. Roseburg Resources, 541-679-3311, plans to do pre- harvest hack and squirt spraying of imazapyr on 250 acres near Wolf Creek and tributaries. See ODF notification 2017- 781-13523, call Dan Menk at 541-935-2283 with questions. M Three Timber, 541-767-3785, plans to do pre-harvest hack and squirt spraying of imazapyr on 35.7 acres between Cottage Grove Lorane Road and Hazelton Road. See ODF notification 2017-781-13558, call Brian Peterson at 541-935-2283 with questions. Compiled by Gary Hale, Forestland Dwellers, ForestLandDwellers.org 8 November 30, 2017 • eugeneweekly.com JORDAN MAZUREK AND MEMBERS OF FIGHT TOXIC PRISONS SHOW SOLIDAR- ITY WITH THOSE ARRESTED PROTEST- ING TRUMP'S INAUGURATION PHOTO COURTESY CAMPAIGN TO FIGHT TOXIC PRISONS PERNICIOUS PRISONS End Toxic Prisons Campaign addresses iffy incarcerations at UO lecture he United States locks up more people than any dictatorship in the world. A total of 2.3 million people are currently in local jails and state or federal prisons, making us the leading country in incarceration, according to the Prison Policy Ini- T tiative. A recent lecture at the University of Oregon delved into the history and current status of racism and toxicity in the U.S. prison industrial complex. Of the 630,000 people being held in local jails across the nation, 443,000 have not been convicted of a crime and are held for not being able to make bail, the Prison Policy Initiative says. Of Oregon’s 4 million residents, African-Americans comprise only 2.1 percent of the population, but Oregon has the seventh highest incarceration rate of African- American males in the country, with one in 21 black men having spent time in prison, according to the Sentencing Project. Jordan Mazurek is a Ph.D. student at the universities of Kent and Hamburg. He spoke Nov. 21 to a small lec- ture hall of students and community activists at the Uni- versity of Oregon about the toxicity of mass incarceration and its affects on people and the environment. Mazurek is also an organizer with the Campaign to Fight Toxic Prisons, which successfully shut down a $444 million prison project proposed in Kentucky. Inmates in federal prisons can be subjected to solitary confinement, where they can remain for days, weeks, months or even years for 23 to 24 hours per day. The United Nations has called for the end of the use of soli- tary confinement, which it defines as torture. Prisons have toxic impacts on prisoners socially, physically, mentally and environmentally. Historically, prisons are built on landfills and superfund sites, defined by the EPA as hazardous waste sites. Mazurek says black and brown people are much more likely to live in toxic environments and prisons. According to Montreal-based think tank Global Re- search — the Centre for Research on Globalization, “The U.S. Department of Defense is both the nation’s and the world’s, largest polluter.” Prison labor is used to build everything from military weapons to the student dorm furniture at the UO. In addition to abuse, mistreatment and the psycho- logical impacts prisons have on people, inmates also face toxic conditions like mold. Journalist Chandra Bozelko spent seven years in York Correctional Institution and no- ticed mold and other environmental issues in the prison. “I worked in the kitchen and sometimes the water would have rust in it when we filled a big kettle to make hot cereal in the morning,” Bozelko tells EW via email. “Some kitchen supervisors told us to cook with it; oth- ers wouldn’t allow it. The water tasted terrible and came from a reservoir that the prison shared with local towns.” Seattle artist and emcee Bypolar spoke during the lec- ture. He’s a prison and police abolitionist and recalled the horrific medical care he received while incarcerated. “I had my arm broken when I was in prison,” he says. “It’s still crooked now because they didn’t even set it. They casted it without setting it and sent me back and put me in the hole.” Racism entrenched within the prison system is not limited to adults. Mazurek recalls the story of a young black woman who was sent to a juvenile detention center for dying her hair an “unnatural color … she dyed her hair blonde,” he says. Mazurek cites legal scholar Michelle Alexander’s analysis in her book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarcer- ation in the Age of Colorblindness in which she draws the line from slavery to prisons as a way to control black people after slavery was abolished. He adds that the ex- pansion of prisons is a result of the “war on drugs,” a po- litical tool used by the Nixon campaign to target its “two enemies: the antiwar left and black people,” according a statement made by John Ehrlichman, a Nixon aide. According to a CNN Money analysis of 40 states, funds used to imprison people far outspend tax dollars for public elementary students. For example, the state of New York spends nearly $20,000 per student, but by comparison its shells out nearly $60,000 per incarcerated inmate. For more information about prison toxicity, visit fighttoxicprisons.org.
