Page 6A
OPINION
East Oregonian
Tuesday, January 6, 2015
OTHER VIEWS
Founded October 16, 1875
KATHRYN B. BROWN
DANIEL WATTENBURGER
Publisher
Managing Editor
JENNINE PERKINSON
TIM TRAINOR
Advertising Director
Opinion Page Editor
OUR VIEW
Better way to
handle disputes
at nation’s ports
The labor dispute affecting
West Coast ports has gone on long
enough. It’s past time to end the
work slowdown and take measures
to prevent a repeat.
The work contract between
the International Longshore and
Maritime Association expired July 1.
Union members began a slowdown
to demonstrate their unhappiness
with the PMA, whose members
operate container terminals on the
West Coast. Ports in Longview and
Portland, as well as those in Seattle
and Tacoma, are impacted by the
slowdown.
But instead of hurting the PMA,
the union has hurt agricultural
exporters and other industries that
import and export their goods via
the ports. The result is billions of
Association of Manufacturers and
the port slowdown cost their
members $2 billion a day.
The region’s apple, potato, hay,
dairy, Christmas tree and pear
industries have all been damaged.
Any crop or commodity that is
shipped in a container is vulnerable
to the ILWU’s slowdown.
Washington state’s apple industry
is losing about $19 million a week,
according to that state’s Apple
Commission. That is the equivalent
of 300 container loads of apples
rotting each week.
The dispute is costing jobs as well
processor reports that slowdown
is costing the company millions
of dollars and reduced its export
volume by 70 percent. As a result
of the lost business, the company
has had to reduce employees’
hours, according to the Idaho
State Department of Agriculture,
which surveyed the damage the
union action has caused to farmers,
ranchers and processors.
“We are losing $700,000 a week
in sales,” Dusty Standlee, president
of Standlee Hay told the ISDA.
“The bigger problem is that we have
contracts in place that are at risk
of being voided by our customer
because we cannot deliver.”
Phrases such as “wreaking
havoc,” “lost business” and
“canceled orders” are repeated as
agricultural exporters are damaged
by the ILWU-created disaster on the
docks.
Such damage to the nation’s
economy cannot be overlooked.
There is a way to prevent the
union from throwing tantrums: Put
the ports under the Railway Labor
Act. That law bars railroad and
airline unions from striking until
they have gone through arbitration
and mediation.
The law was passed because of
the importance the railroads and the
airlines have to the nation and its
economy. Certainly the ports have
a similar impact on the economy.
It only makes sense to place them
under the jurisdiction of the Railway
Labor Act, too.
Members of Congress can wring
their hands about the mess the
current labor slowdown has made of
West Coast ports, or they can pass
legislation that will prevent it from
ever happening again.
Unsigned editorials are the opinion of the East Oregonian editorial board of Publisher
Kathryn Brown, Managing Editor Daniel Wattenburger, and Opinion Page Editor Tim Trainor.
Other columns, letters and cartoons on this page express the opinions of the authors and not
necessarily that of the East Oregonian.
Privilege of ‘arrest without incident’
T
he day after Christmas, a
shooter terrorized the streets
of a Chattanooga, Tennessee,
neighborhood. According to the local
newspaper, the shooter was “wearing
shots out her window at people and
cars.” One witness told the paper
that the shooter was “holding a gun
out of the window as if it were a
cigarette.”
There’s more:
Charles
Blow
Comment
said they were at a stop sign when a woman
shots into their vehicle, hitting and disabling
the radiator. Then more calls reported a
passed them in her car, and
vehicle in the same area.”
came upon the shooter, the
shooter led them on a chase.
The shooter even pointed the
Surely this was not going
to end well. We’ve all seen
in recent months what came
of people who did far less.
using whatever force they
According to the paper,
the shooter was “taken into
custody without incident or
injury.”
Who was this shooter anyway? Julia
Shields, a 45-year-old white woman.
Take a moment and consider this. Take a
town?
It is impossible for anyone to
interact with Esther Motanic’s
cannot pull over so the drivers
even get close enough to the statue
to read the plaque explaining who
she was.
This is a description of Esther
Motanic from the May 22, 1924,
Walla Walla Union-Bulletin
describing the Pioneer Pageant,
“How The West Was Won:”
“Esther Motanic is an
Indian girls of the present
generation, even as the Indian
Michael Brown was unarmed. (Some
witnesses in Ferguson, Missouri, say he had
his hands up. Others say he
Eric Garner was unarmed
on a Staten Island street.
Tamir Rice was 12 years
old, walking around a
Cleveland park and holding
a toy gun that uses nonlethal
plastic pellets, but he didn’t
shoot at anyone.
John Crawford was in an
Ohio Wal-Mart, holding, but
had picked up from a store
shelf.
The police say Antonio
Martin had a gun and
in Berkeley, Missouri, but
And Tuesday, the police say, a handgun
took her in “without incident or injury,”
of course, but can we imagine that result
being universally the case if a shooter looks
different? Would this episode have ended this
way if the shooter had been male, or black,
or both?
It’s an unanswerable question, but
nevertheless one that deserves pondering.
no amount of achieving can ameliorate it.
And in a few seconds, or fractions of a
second, before the conscious mind can catch
up to the racing heart, decisions are made
that can’t be unmade. Dead is forever.
It’s hard to read stories like this and not
believe that there is a double standard in the
use of force by the police. Everyone needs
This letter is in response
to “Boulevard of Bronze” in
Friday’s East Oregonian. There
were 5 photos of bronze statues
with descriptions for each one.
Unfortunately, the bronze statue
of Esther Motanic, 1926 Round-
Up queen, did not make the cut;
yet in the local surveys taken to
select the statues, Motanic was
the second choice with Jackson
Sundown being the most popular.
If Esther Motanic was the
second choice, why was her statue
the police treat whites and blacks
equally, whether or not they have committed
a crime.” In contrast, 6 in 10 whites “have
Everyone needs
to be treated as
though his or her
life matters. More
suspected criminals
need to be detained
and tried in a court
of law and not sen-
tenced on the street
to a rain of bullets.
human beings making split-second decisions
— often informed by fears — about when to
use force and the degree of that force.
But that truth is also the trap. How and
why are our fears constructed and activated?
The American mind has been poisoned,
from this country’s birth, against minority
populations. People of color, particularly
African-American men, have been caught up
in a twister of macroaggressions and micro
Motanic statue deserves
space on Main Street
to be treated as though his or her life
matters. More suspected criminals
need to be detained and tried in a
court of law and not sentenced on the
street to a rain of bullets.
It is no wonder that whites and
blacks have such divergent views
of treatment by the police. As The
Washington Post noted recently
about a poll it conducted with
stop of a car Jerame C. Reid was in.
But none had the privilege of being
“arrested without incident or injury.” They
Brown was shot through the head. Garner
was grabbed around the neck in a chokehold,
tossed to the ground and held there, even as
he pleaded that he couldn’t breathe; it was all
caught on video. Rice was shot within two
scene. Crawford, Martin and Reid were also
cut down by police bullets.
In the cases that have been heard by grand
juries, the grand juries have refused to indict
Maybe one could argue that in some of
rights to respond with lethal force. Maybe.
But shouldn’t the use of force have equal
application? Shouldn’t it be color- and
gender-blind? Shouldn’t more people, in
equal measures, be taken in and not taken
out?
Why weren’t these black men, any of
them, the recipients of the same use of force
— or lack thereof — as Julia Shields?
Charles M. Blow is The New York Times’s
visual Op-Ed columnist. His column appears
in The Times on Saturday.
YOUR VIEWS
girl she is to portray (Sacagawea)
was outstanding in her time.
Champion of oratory in the entire
Pendleton high school in 1922; an
accomplished violinist and pianist;
possessor of a mezzo soprano
voice of unusual quality, she is a
leader in Christian life among the
Indians of her reservation”.
Motanic is a positive role
model. This contrasts with the
selection of Stella Darby, whose
fame was providing prostitutes
for the local men of Pendleton on
Saturday nights and then those
same men attended church with
the their wives and children on
Sunday mornings until the pastor
threatened to reveal the names of
the patrons of the bordello.
Motanic’s granddaughter,
Kathryn Lewis Munden wrote in
a letter to the editor on September
8, 2014, the following statement:
Pendleton city council would think
it appropriate to erect a statue of
my grandmother and that of a
whorehouse madam. So not the
same.”
I recommend that Stella Darby
be relocated to the front of the
Underground Tours and Esther
Motanic take her place.
Jerry Cronin
Pendleton
Motanic a more
meaningful part of
Pendleton history
American chosen as Round-Up
For some time now, I have
been following the articles in the
East Oregonian and the subsequent
discussions regarding the bronze
statues being placed on Main
Street. In general I applaud the
effort of the city council in their
support of these projects, and
I certainly was glad to see the
relocation of the Jackson Sundown
statue that was moved from a
remote corner of the Round-Up
Grounds to Main Street. However,
as I see it, there appears to be one
glaring omission in the current
status of the projects.
I have yet to hear any discussion
of also relocating the statue of
Esther Motanic from its obscure
location in the middle of the
bronze be relocated and included in
the Main Street project.
I am still scratching my head at
the decision to place the bronze of
a prostitute on Main Street rather
than that of Esther Motanic, who
was a much more meaningful part
of Pendleton history.
Dorian avenues to Main Street.
American to attend Pendleton High
School. It seems obvious to me that
Denzel Fisher
Pendleton
Gas prices can’t be all
about attendant wages
I guess being a rural raised farm
boy, I am not smart enough to
explain the higher prices for fuel in
the Pendleton and Hermiston areas
than in other areas and would like
it explained to me. I have heard
the old excuse of “transportation
costs” already, so please give me
LETTERS POLICY
another reason.
Pendleton should have a bit
higher costs due to transportation
costs, but why is Pilot and Space
Age fuel most always in the range
of 10-20 cents a gallon cheaper
than in Hermiston?
Why is fuel costing $2.59-$2.69
here, when Washington has a 14
cents a gallon higher fuel tax but
fuel in the Tri-Cities, also with a
higher transportation cost, is selling
between $2.27 and 2.29 a gallon?
On Dec. 14, 2014, we drove
back from Las Vegas; the highest
fuel cost along the way was $2.49
cheapest was $2.29 in Twin Falls,
Idaho. The price of fuel just prior
to entering Oregon was 16 cents a
gallon cheaper than in Ontario. I
am sure the minimum wages paid
to fuel attendants can’t be all the
costs, so please someone explain it
to this simple farm boy.
John Harvey
The East Oregonian welcomes original letters of 400 words or less on public issues and public policies
for publication in the newspaper and on our website. The newspaper reserves the right to withhold let-
ters that address concerns about individual services and products or letters that infringe on the rights of
private citizens. Submitted letters must be signed by the author and include the city of residence and a
daytime phone number. The phone number will not be published. Unsigned letters will not be published.
Send letters to Managing Editor Daniel Wattenburger, 211 S.E. Byers Ave. Pendleton, OR 97801 or email
editor@eastoregonian.com.