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THE ASTORIAN • SATuRdAy, OcTObER 2, 2021
OPINION
editor@dailyastorian.com
KARI BORGEN
Publisher
DERRICK DePLEDGE
Editor
Founded in 1873
SHANNON ARLINT
circulation Manager
JOHN D. BRUIJN
Production Manager
CARL EARL
Systems Manager
BOOK REVIEW
Agitation often
begets change
P
rovidence must have been smil-
ing when a trio of eminent Ore-
gon authors agreed to collaborate
on this immensely readable history of
three incandescent figures who in their
own day and way planted seeds from
which modern Oregon grew.
Steve Forrester, the president and
CEO of EO Media Group, conceived
the book, recruited his talented co-au-
thors and served as editor. His chapter
on author-cum-U.S. Sen.
Richard Neuberger cap-
tures the forward-look-
ing environmentalism,
liberalism and mete-
oric life of the vision-
ary whose upset victory
in 1954 tipped control
LES
of the U.S. Senate to the
AuCOIN
Democrats and made
Lyndon B. Johnson
majority leader.
Novelist Jane Kirkpatrick exam-
ines the life of Abigail Scott Duniway, a
Along the way, he attended the inter-
national conference that produced the
woman of meager formal education who
United Nations, befriended Adlai Ste-
became a nationally known suffragette,
venson, talked with Supreme Court Jus-
abolitionist, newspaper publisher, orator,
tice Felix Frankfurter
author of 22 novels and
and lunched with Elea-
shopkeeper while moth-
THESE THREE
ering six children.
nor Roosevelt.
Author and journalist
Throughout his
EMINENT
R. Gregory Nokes gives
career, Neuberger’s
us Jesse Applegate, a
sunny liberalism chal-
OREGONIANS
lenged Oregon’s pre-
mid-19th century sur-
dId MATTER.
veyor, abolitionist and
vailing conservatism.
It was as if he under-
founder of the Apple-
THEIR
stood what James
gate Trail who as a del-
egate in the state con-
AGITATION WAS Michener would write
stitutional convention
so many years later:
AS IMPORTANT A sailing boat excites
helped ensure that Ore-
gon entered the Union
and inspires when the
AS THEIR
as a free state.
wind is slightly athwart
SuccESS, FOR
Each history is a
its bow, “for then ten-
sion can be maintained,
short chapter in this
AGITATION
and juices can flow, and
186-page work. Based
mainly on primary
OFTEN bEGETS ideas can germinate, for
ships, like men, respond
sources, the story of
cHANGE.
to challenge.”
each three-dimensional
In 1960, the meteor
life will astound, inspire
FREdERIcK
vanished as quickly
and inform both the
as it seemed to have
casual reader and the
dOuGLASS
emerged. Months before
scholar.
LIKENEd IT
completing his first Sen-
ate term, cancer and a
Neuberger
TO GROWING
Neuberger’s career
cerebral hemorrhage
was meteoric. Forrester
cROPS — FIRST claimed Neuberger’s
reminds us that as a
life. He was 47. In death
yOu MuST
21-year-old, Neuberger
as in life, he was always
visited 1933 Germany
in a hurry.
dISTuRb THE
and using shoe leather
Scott Duniway
SOIL.
research produced one
Kirkpatrick trans-
of the first American
ports readers into the
exposés about Adolf
world of Scott Duniway, the “Mother
Hitler’s rising grotesquery. That article
of Oregon Suffrage,” who, beginning
in The Nation would be but one of many
in 1880, shook off five election defeats
pieces Neuberger authored for national
until she helped Oregon women win the
audiences both before and after his stun-
ning election to the Senate.
franchise in 1912. The cause of her life
Richard Neuberger with his wife, Maurine, at the Oregon State Capitol.
MORE ABOUT THE BOOK
Read excerpts from ‘Eminent Oregonians’ in Weekend Break • B1
rested on the belief that citizenship, not
gender, granted an inherent right to vote
and fully participate in democracy.
Following suit, Oregon female leg-
islators formed a bipartisan caucus in
1973 to ratify the Equal Rights Amend-
ment, making the Beaver State the 25th
to do so.
Voters went further in 2014; they
added the ERA to the state’s constitu-
tion by a 2 to 1 margin. The measure
guarantees that “equality of rights under
the law shall not be denied or abridged
by the state of Oregon or by any politi-
cal subdivision in this state on account
of sex.”
Scott Duniway also can be seen as
pioneering Oregon as fertile ground for
literature. Abigail’s 22 books of fiction
presaged the careers of Ursula Le Guin,
Molly Gloss, Jean Auel and Louise Bry-
ant, among others.
Applegate
The mercurial Applegate is best
known as founder of the 1846 Apple-
gate Trail, a route that forked southward
off the Oregon Trail to allow westbound
wagon trains to make it through without
fording the hazardous Columbia River.
Applegate, a surveyor, knew those
hazards well, having captained one of
two overland trains in The Great Migra-
tion of 1843 (then the largest group of
wagons to make the trek from Indepen-
dence, Missouri).
Applegate won a seat in Oregon’s
provisional legislature and in its con-
stitutional convention. He strenuously
opposed Oregon joining the Union as a
slave state, and voters agreed with him
at the polls. Despite Applegate’s denun-
ciations, however, they excluded Blacks
from citizenship, even freed slaves. In
protest, Applegate walked out of the
assembly.
The Black exclusion act stood until it
was repealed in 1920.
These three eminent Oregonians did
matter. Their agitation was as import-
ant as their success, for agitation often
begets change. Frederick Douglass lik-
ened it to growing crops — first you
must disturb the soil.
Les Aucoin, a democrat, represented
Oregon’s 1st congressional district for
18 years. He is the author of “catch and
Release: An Oregon Life in Politics.”
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Patronizing
T
he complaints from the community
regarding Consejo Hispano Executive
Director Jenny Pool Radway and Board
President Rosa Gilbert began months ago.
A letter detailing the executive director’s
cruel treatment of an employee, submit-
ted in October 2020, was ignored and never
investigated by the board. Concerns from
the community continued to mount. In early
February, a letter detailing complaints about
the executive director was signed by about
118 members of the Latino community.
Because the board never made itself
available to the community, in early March,
the complainants were forced to request a
mediator. After six months, the mediation
hasn’t begun and has been watered down to
facilitation.
A mediator renders a binding decision
that the community was willing to abide
by, but apparently the board didn’t want to
run the risk. You can hear the trickle of con-
tempt they have for the community because
“it isn’t clear to them that all the people
who signed the petition fully knew what
they were signing.” (The Astorian, Sept.
23). Patronizing.
The board never talked with the peti-
tioners, so yes, the investigation turned up
“nothing.” The board is beholden to the
community it serves, not the other way
around. When a nonprofit is unwilling to
listen to the people, it becomes a platform
for personal ambitions.
The board, led by Gilbert, has failed
to perform its fiduciary duties. Pool Rad-
way has divided and offended many in the
community and I am glad she is leaving. I
hear the Causa Board performs its duties to
protect the organization and the people it
serves.
EILEEN PURCELL
Warrenton
Sick of power politics
D
emocratic and Republican politicians
offend me in every way as “win at all
costs” is all that seems to matter. The more
I read about politics as practiced today, the
more I become convinced that permanent
incumbency is a terminal disease that will
ultimately destroy what little trust remains
in government to solve the most pressing
problems facing government today.
Viewing state House Speaker Tina
Kotek’s power politics is like watching
an instant replay of U.S. House Speaker
Nancy Pelosi in Washington, D.C. Noth-
ing matters to these people other than forc-
ing their political will on everyone else, no
matter the size of their majority. No-com-
promise politics has a deadly effect on
oppressed minorities.
I feel term limits should be forced on
our elected representatives. Additionally,
their office staffs should also be forced
out of power as this appears to be the only
possible hope minority voters can ever
hope for equal consideration.
The longer the system continues to per-
petuate itself under current rules, the worse
the public mood becomes and the more
public confrontation becomes inevitable.
The Democrats currently have a superma-
jority where they can do as they wish.
At some point, the control of govern-
ment will switch to the minority party of
today because history has shown pow-
er-people inevitably overplay their power
and the former minority gain power and
will seek revenge for all the laws forced
upon them in the past.
SCOTT WIDDICOMBE
Warrenton
Giving thanks
T
hat people have short, if not selective,
memories is a given.
The quality of life and long life spans
Americans now enjoy didn’t exist 100 years
ago. Back then, drinking water was often
contaminated, the air was full of toxins, the
beef supply tainted, rivers and lakes fouled
with raw sewage.
There was no workplace safety. Worse
yet, diphtheria, smallpox, tuberculosis,
influenza and polio sent many to an early
grave.
Over time, numerous federal programs
were developed. The short list includes the
Safe Drinking Water Act, the Occupational
Safety and Health Administration, the Food
and Drug Administration and the Environ-
mental Protection Agency. In addition, vac-
cines were introduced to control and even
eliminate horrible diseases.
People feel they have the right to brand
these actions as government overreach or
fascist. Wouldn’t giving thanks be a better
use of free speech?
TIMOTHY J. BISH
Lewis and Clark