OPINION
4A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 16, 2017
Founded in 1873
DAVID F. PERO, Publisher & Editor
LAURA SELLERS, Managing Editor
BETTY SMITH, Advertising Manager
CARL EARL, Systems Manager
JOHN D. BRUIJN, Production Manager
DEBRA BLOOM, Business Manager
OUR VIEW
Few signs drug
blight is abating
ur story last week about Dave and Kerry Strickland’s cou-
rageous decision to talk about their late son Jordan and the
realities of drug addiction in our area deserves to be taken
to heart. The death of Knappa’s Whittney Ferguson generated sim-
ilar introspection a year ago. There are few if any signs the drug
blight is abating.
Anyone with more than cursory connections here on the coast
— or just about anyplace else in rural America — is aware that
serious drug problems are woven throughout our networks of
friends and relations. To have a teenager or 20-something child
here is, at a minimum, a window on some of his or her acquain-
tances’ struggles with opioids, methamphetamine and other
destructive substances. Such problems are certainly not confined
to the young, however.
Since 2014, 12 people are known to have died in Clatsop
County from prescription drugs and heroin. The nationwide over-
dose death rate for whites ages 25 to 34 is something like five
times what it was in 1999, with similarly shocking rates among
other age groups. From being rarely mentioned in small newspa-
pers like ours, heroin came up in 213 stories in The Daily Astorian
in the four years between 2012 and 2016, compared to 74 times in
the four years ending in 2010. In the 1990s, it rarely was reported
at all.
This is an awful problem, one very resistant to easy or quick
answers. But there are points that need to be made as often as
possible:
• Addiction is a disease. Treatment can help some recover. We
should emphasize treatment over punishment for drug users.
• State law encourages the reporting of overdoses. Those who
either overdose or call to report them will not be charged with
most lower-level drug-related crimes.
• Police and emergency responders, along with the family
members of addicts and addicts themselves, should have easy
and affordable access to Narcan (naloxone), which saves lives by
counteracting opioids.
• State and federal leaders must do a better job of ensuring eco-
nomic and educational pathways for rural Americans, to stem the
hopelessness and tedium of dead-end lives.
• Alcohol remains our biggest drug problem and must not be
forgotten.
Let’s do whatever we must to save local people from the death
and corrosive destruction of drugs.
O
State fire fee fiasco is a
lesson in communication
n the 1967 movie “Cool Hand Luke,” there’s an often repeated
line: “What we’ve got here is a failure to communicate.”
That’s the case between the Oregon Department of Forestry
and a group of local landowners who object to a fee the state
assesses for fire protection for forest and grazing land. The fee
funds wildfire protection efforts.
In early January about 2,300 Astoria Fire Protection District
landowners were notified that their properties, designated as for-
estlands last July, would be assessed an annual fee as part of their
property taxes. Some, however, argue their properties should not
qualify as forestland and others said they had not received proper
notice their property was being reclassified. The reclassification
project began in October 2013 and by May 2016 was fully pub-
lic. Two public meetings and a hearing conducted in Astoria and
Seaside produced no oral or written public comments and the final
reclassification was recorded in July, Astoria District Forester Dan
Goody said. The landowners were notified by the January letter of
the property assessments.
The problem that surfaced, however, was that some property
owners whose land was reclassified say they were unaware the
process took place. About 70 attended a recent town hall meet-
ing, organized by state Sen. Betsy Johnson and state Rep. Deborah
Boone, and voiced objections. Also at the meeting were mem-
bers of the Department of Forestry. The state had mailed postcards
about the reclassification to residents 10 months prior to finalizing
it, but the postcards may have been discarded as junk mail, Goody
said. He said there was no intention to blindside anyone.
While the reclassification process is finalized, the state received
29 assessment appeals before the deadline and is considering
them.
But as Sen. Johnson said, “The number of people who attended
the town hall meeting gave rise to the fact that there was some
kind of failure to communicate. If we had this kind of disconnect
in communication, something is wrong.”
The Department of Forestry should consider reopening its
appeal period for Clatsop County landowners, and other state and
local taxing entities should learn from this lesson in communica-
tion. When it comes to people’s pocketbooks there’s no such thing
as too much communication.
I
The power of disruption
AP Photo/Jim Salter
A Planned Parenthood supporter and opponent try to block each other’s signs during a protest and
counter-protest Saturday in St. Louis.
By CHARLES BLOW
New York Times News Service
T
he Trump resistance move-
ment is stretching its wings,
engaging its muscles and
feeling its power. It is large and
strong and tough.
It has moved past
debilitating grief
and into righteous
anger, assiduous
organization and
pressing activism.
Welcome to the dawn of the
fighting-mad majority: The ones
who didn’t vote for Trump and
maybe even some who now regret
that they did.
They are charging forward under
the banner of sage wisdom that has
endured through the ages: Show
up, get loud and fight back. Do it
with your body and words, with
your time and money, with every
fiber of yourself. They see what this
dawning regime means and they
don’t intend, not even for a second,
to wait around to see what happens.
“What happens” is happening right
now and it’s horrific.
Donald Trump is a vulgar, unin-
formed, anti-intellectual, extremely
unpopular grifter helming a family
of grifters who apparently intend to
milk their moment on the mount for
every red cent.
Trump still hasn’t released his
taxes or fully disconnected from his
businesses. His wife is suing The
Daily Mail because she believes
the newspaper may have injured
her “unique, once-in-a-lifetime
opportunity” to “have garnered
multimillion-dollar business
relationships for a multiyear term.”
When his daughter Ivanka’s cloth-
ing line was dropped by Nordstrom,
Trump lashed out at the retailer on
Twitter, citing Ivanka as something
of his moral compass: “My daughter
Ivanka has been treated so unfairly
by @Nordstrom. She is a great
person — always pushing me to do
the right thing! Terrible!” This begs
the question: “Why do you need
someone to push you to do the right
thing?”
Then, top Trump adviser
Kellyanne “QVC” Conway, from
the confines of the White House
briefing room, said during a tele-
vised interview: “Go buy Ivanka’s
stuff is what I would say.” She
continued: “I’m going to give a free
commercial here: Go buy it today,
everybody; you can find it online.”
Unethical is too kind a word for
these classless cretins. Furthermore,
Trump has nominated, and his
Republican conspirators in the
Senate have confirmed, a rogues’
gallery of some of the least quali-
fied, most questionable appointees
in recent memory. Aside from
some of them being the fiercest
critics of the very agencies they are
charged with leading, some have
also been accused of bigotry, pla-
giarism, insider trading and overall
vacuousness.
Trump’s Muslim ban has also
been an absolute disaster and
has met some much-applauded
resistance in court, most recently
with the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of
Appeals rebuking the administra-
tion’s lawyers like children.
What is there
to wait and
see? A rose
will never
bloom from
a weed; you
must snatch
that thing up
at first sight,
by the root.
This administration is manifest-
ing as the disaster we knew it would
be; the stench of its rot surrounds
us. What is there to wait and see? A
rose will never bloom from a weed;
you must snatch that thing up at first
sight, by the root.
That is why you are seeing so
much grass-roots resistance from
a multiplying array of groups.
One of the most prominent is
called “Indivisible.” The Nation
interviewed Ezra Levin, a former
Democratic staffer and co-founder
of the project and reported on
the exchange: “Levin says that
Indivisible built on the Tea Party’s
model of ‘practicing locally
focused, almost entirely defensive
strategy.’ This, he adds, ‘was very
smart, and it was rooted in an
understanding of how American
democracy works. They understood
that they didn’t have the power to
set the agenda in Washington, but
they did have the ability to react
to it. It’s Civics 101 stuff — going
to local offices, attending events,
calling their reps.”
I would add that these groups are
practicing one of the most effective
tactics of confronting power: dis-
ruption. Town hall meetings have
been disrupted; protesters disrupted
Education Secretary Betsy Devos’
plans to enter a Washington school.
Disruption works!
When Frederick Douglass
attacked Abraham Lincoln by
saying that he “seems to possess an
ever increasing passion for making
himself appear silly and ridiculous,
if nothing worse,” Douglass was
being disruptive.
When women suffragists paraded
through Washington, they were
being disruptive.
When Rosa Parks refused to
surrender her seat, she was being
disruptive.
When civil rights activists
marched across the Edmund Pettus
Bridge, they were being disruptive.
When LGBT people fought back
at The Stonewall Inn, they were
being disruptive.
When Act Up flooded Times
Square, they were being disruptive.
When Occupy Wall Street
refused to move from their parks,
they were being disruptive.
When Black Lives Matter took
to the streets and ground traffic to a
halt, they were being disruptive.
When Native Americans stood
in resistance at Standing Rock, they
were being disruptive.
When Elizabeth Warren per-
sisted, she was being disruptive.
Disruption is not a dirty word;
in this environment, it’s a badge of
honor.
Yes, it’s important to show up on
Election Day, but it is also important
to show up on the hundreds of days
before and after. This is what the
resistance movements are saying
to Trump and his America: Buckle
your seat belts, because massive
disruption is in the offing.
Trump is not normal. He is not
competent. And we will not simply
sit back and suck it up.