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.