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About East Oregonian : E.O. (Pendleton, OR) 1888-current | View Entire Issue (May 21, 2016)
VIEWPOINTS Saturday, May 21, 2016 Quick takes Schnitzer scoops up Pendleton property This has been a vision of mine for years! So happy to see someone blessed with the means to fulill what our community really needs. — Robbin Booth Coleman I used to walk in the bank as a kid and see my grandad riding his horse on a big mural. It made me sad to see nothing there for so long. — Mark Temple 1.2 million vote in primary That’s great, but with three million eligible voters, that’s not good enough. It should be at least twice that. — Ann Snyder Would it be higher or lower if Oregon had an open primary? — Richard Ryan III EOCI work ban lifted There is a great way to clean up and maintain our parks and cemeteries, not to mention helping out the elderly with yard work, and cleaning up the river walk. — LoriAnne Dunagan How about a pothole repair crew? — Karen Marlene Fulbright One of the great lessons of the Twitter age is that much can be summed up in just a few words. Here are some of this week’s takes. Tweet yours @Tim_Trainor or email editor@eastoregonian. com, and keep them to 140 characters. Page 5A Still dificult, dangerous to be gay in the West By NATHAN C. MARTIN High Country News t was a Saturday night in Rock Springs, Wyoming, and 30 or 40 of us were partying in a derelict trailer house on a dead-end road. Suddenly, a queer couple we knew showed up and said a bunch of rednecks had been chasing them down Elk Street. Sure enough, four pickup trucks pulled up moments later and a bunch of burly guys piled out. The encounter escalated into a full-blown brawl — teenagers rolling around in the muddy snow beating on each other. There were more of us than there were of them, so we were able to whoop them soundly and run them off. Then we celebrated what felt like a righteous victory deep into the night. This was in 2001, just a few years after Matthew Shepard’s murder had made gruesomely public the anti-gay violence that was taking place throughout Wyoming. Shortly after, I left the state for about 14 years. During that time, it appeared to me that gay rights had made great strides — not least with the incremental support to legalize gay marriage nationwide. Living in places as different from each other as Buenos Aires, Chicago and New Orleans, I witnessed homophobia now and then, but not nearly as often as I saw jubilant demonstrations of gay pride or, more frequently, plain old gay normalcy. Among the myriad people who are oppressed in this world, homosexuals seemed to be in pretty good shape, particularly white “cisgendered” men. Then I moved back to Wyoming. Trevor O’Brien couldn’t escape to a friendly trailer house when ive young men attacked him one night in December 2015 I Australia or anywhere YDNEY — I boarded a light where everyone discusses the same at Kennedy Airport in New thing. Can it be then that Sydneysiders York. There were HSBC ads in the jet bridge. I lew for 24 hours to are merely New York’s Westsiders the bottom of the world. There were with a smile and an economy that has HSBC ads in the jet bridge. not seen a recession in more than 20 I had my obligatory duty-free years? experience in Sydney, which is to In his great poem “The City,” C.P. say that I was channeled through a Cavafy wrote: “As you’ve wasted Roger duty-free store rather than opting to your life here, in this small corner, Cohen enter it, and so was exposed to all you’ve destroyed it everywhere else Comment the familiar brands I had seen a day in the world.” We never escape our earlier under similar duress. own skins, nor our lives lived to I left a country, the United States, in the this point, however far we go in search of midst of an election campaign. I arrived in a escape. But today’s trap, fashioned through country, Australia, in the midst of an election technology, is of a different nature. The campaign. The electoral battle here pits homogenization of experience is also an the conservative prime minister, Malcolm insidious invitation to conform. Turnbull, from the Liberal party, against Experience, like journalism, withers Bill Shorten from the left-of-center Labor without immersion in place. At some level, party. But the candidate people talk about is the truly lived moment involves the ability Donald Trump. to get lost — lost in a conversation, or in America’s election is the world’s election, the back alleys of Naples, or in silence, or but only Americans get to vote in it. in the scents and inlections of a new city. I left an America raging about refugees There is no greater thrill than being lost in and immigration and came to ind the this way because self is left behind, a form of Australian immigration minister, Peter liberation. Dutton, fuming about “illiterate and Yet a world is taking form that wants innumerate” refugees intent on taking you never to be lost, never to feel displaced, “Australian jobs.” never to be unanchored, never to be unable I had a cappuccino before I left. There to photograph yourself, never to stand in was a cute heart shape traced in the foam. awe before mystery, never to exit your safety Next to the Sydney Opera House, familiar zone (or only in managed fashion), never to from photographs, I had a cappuccino. There leave your life behind: a world where you was a cute heart shape traced in the foam. travel for 24 hours to your point of departure. From my window in Brooklyn Heights How reassuring! How desperate! I watch joggers at water’s edge, some with There may be no choice but to head for dogs or infants in strollers. Old industrial the Outback, the vast and empty interior of areas, piers and warehouses that have no this continent-sized land where everyone use in the knowledge economy have been hugs the coast, or perhaps eat Vegemite, transformed into parks and lofts for the apparently a singular experience. I will keep gentriied. From my Sydney hotel window you posted, dear reader, should I survive I gaze at an urban landscape similarly either. transformed. I watch joggers at water’s edge. At least Australians speak a different They wear the same gear. They use the same language. A colleague tells me to “sing devices. They are into wellness in the same out” if I need something. A problem is met way. with the reassuring “She’ll be right.” She? I lose myself in the silvery play of Who? I am asked if “there’s anything else I moonlight on water. Where on earth am I? I can get you, AT ALL.” I eat brekkie. Those have traveled a long way through time zones joggers, apparently, are on a footpath, not over a vast ocean to ind myself in the same a sidewalk, and if I need gas when I head place. for the Outback I’ll ind it at the “servo.” My Twitter feed looks the same. My Every sentence seems to end with a kind of Facebook friends have not changed. My upward-rising lilt that turns it into a half- little universe with all its little excitements question to which I have no answer. and aggravations is still at my ingertips. So I am somewhere else after all. Surely My bills are maddeningly accessible. I am. I wake at night, sleep by day, and ind Through an immense displacement nothing myself altogether lost in translation. has been left behind. Even in another ■ hemisphere I contemplate my life from the Roger Cohen joined The New York Times same angle. People argue about climate in 1990. He was a foreign correspondent for change and same-sex marriage and jobs and more than a decade before becoming acting foreign editor on Sept. 11, 2001. immigration, as if the world is now a place S East Oregonian in Gillette, Wyoming. His mother told the Casper Star-Tribune that O’Brien had responded to the men’s comments about his being gay with a smart remark, so they threw him on the ground and stomped on his groin so hard he had trouble urinating for three days. O’Brien didn’t report the incident, nor did he report the homophobic slurs someone repeatedly carved into his car. In fact, few people beyond his closest friends and family would have known about any of this had O’Brien not killed himself in a park this March 8. He was 20 years old. It is true that many factors likely contributed to O’Brien’s decision to commit suicide. Likewise, the story of Matthew Shepard’s murder is more complex than it might seem on the surface. Many people in Wyoming, for instance, have gone to great lengths to emphasize that both Shepard and his killers may have been high the night he was tied to a fence and pistol-whipped. But rather than adding nuance to the conversation — perhaps by acknowledging that anti-gay violence is sometimes drug- related, too — this emphasis is meant to silence people who might suggest Wyoming has a problem. In Laramie, where Shepard was assaulted and where I now live, folks don’t like to talk about him much. A student organizer here told me that even the gay community sometimes shies away from discussing Shepard’s murder because of all the negativity and distortion people have heaped onto it. But whenever horrifying instances of homophobia come to light, such as the attack on O’Brien — or an assault discussed on public radio last year, in which a Casper, Wyoming, man had his teeth kicked in for cross-dressing — any Wyoming citizen whose eyes aren’t clouded by delusion or prejudice should be able to put the pieces together. Anti-gay violence in Wyoming is real, and it deserves a real response. Shepard’s memory was invoked in 2009 when the U.S. Congress passed the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act. This law, co-named for a black man murdered by white supremacists in Texas, strengthened federal law enforcement’s ability to investigate and prosecute hate crimes, including those committed against people on the basis of their sexual orientation. Forty-ive states have passed similar laws that empower state-level authorities. Wyoming is not one of them. It is time we changed that. Few of us believe that harsher criminal punishments can cure social ills. Hate-crime bills often include tougher sentencing provisions, but just as meaningful are the signals that enacting such laws send. Passing a hate crime bill in Wyoming would admit to the state’s citizens that hate crimes persist. It would communicate that acknowledgement and honest discussion of the problem are necessary if we want to stop the violence. A bill would also tell those at risk that they are not alone in facing anti-gay violence or abuse. It would let them know that we, as a state, have their backs. So far, the Legislature’s consistent refusal to pass such a bill has sent a different message to anyone who is lesbian, gay, bisexual or transsexual in Wyoming: This is the Wild West. Better run to your friends and hope they can protect you, because the rest of us don’t really give a damn. ■ Nathan Martin is a contributor to Writers on the Range, an opinion service of High Country News. He is a freelance writer in Laramie, Wyoming. California considers drug sentencing reform San Francisco Chronicle nce upon a time, California lawmakers imagined that tougher penalties and longer jail sentences for drug offenders would stem the drug trade. This approach led to our statewide three-year sentencing enhancement for drug offenders who have prior convictions for possession with the intent to sell, drug sales, or similar offenses. Today, California has met the reality that this was a failed approach. The sentencing enhancements didn’t stop the low of drugs into any of our communities, especially the most vulnerable ones. What they did achieve, unfortunately, was great inancial expense to the taxpayer, and great social expense to lower-income communities. California oficials have already begun the long journey of ixing our criminal justice decisions with realignment, which reduced state prison overcrowding by transferring low-level offenders to county supervision. Now the Legislature has the opportunity to begin the long journey of sentencing reform with SB966, by state Sen. Holly Mitchell, D-Los Angeles. SB966 would repeal the three-year term enhancement for prior drug convictions. Offenders would still be subject to base sentences. Under current law, that’s between two and four years in jail for the possession of drugs for sale. SB966 won’t be a panacea for California’s drug problems. But then again, neither were sentencing enhancements. O Drugs remain widely available, and in many instances they’re stronger than when sentencing enhancements were irst passed. What SB966 will do is free up some of the considerable money that the state of California currently spends on incarceration for proven options that do help — things like drug treatment, rehabilitation and job-training programs. The state is already struggling to increase money and stafing for rehabilitation programs in light of realignment and Proposition 47, which reduced criminal penalties for certain offenses. Increased services could help the many drug-sales offenders who struggle with their own addictions. In the long run, it’s a simple and humane way to save the state money. But some state legislators are still hesitant about ending a failed policy. It’s disappointing to see that SB966 failed to pass the state Senate in late April, defeated on a 16-18 vote, with six abstentions. Most of the “no” votes belonged to Republicans, but three came from Democrats — including Sen. Steve Glazer, D-Orinda. They need to have a change of heart, and fortunately they’ll have the opportunity to do so. Mitchell has until the end of May to bring the bill back for reconsideration. It’s way past time for California to try a new approach to drug offenses. Sentencing reform will save us money and allow money that was previously spent on incarceration to go to more effective forms of drug prevention. SB966 is a good place to start. CONTACT YOUR REPRESENTATIVES U.S. Senators U.S. Representative Ron Wyden Greg Walden Washington ofice: 221 Dirksen Senate Ofice Bldg. Washington, DC 20510 202-224-5244 La Grande ofice: 541-962-7691 Washington ofice: 185 Rayburn House Ofice Building Washington, DC 20515 202-225-6730 La Grande ofice: 541-624-2400 Jeff Merkley Governor Washington ofice: 313 Hart Senate Ofice Building Washington, DC 20510 202-224-3753 Pendleton ofice: 541-278-1129 Kate Brown 160 State Capitol 900 Court Street Salem, OR 97301-4047 503-378-4582